The following article endeavors to present Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle as a novel that debates the usefulness of truth versus that of foma. The necessity for the reader to understand the distinction ...between the two and the roles they have within the text is essential to the author's overall goal in writing his novel. What Vonnegut seeks to show us is that mankind's blind faith in the benefits of scientific discoveries, without taking into consideration the ethical implications of these discoveries, can lead to disaster and that, in contrast, the practice of focusing on our better nature leads, more often than not, to better human relations and, therefore, may be preferable, in spite of the fact that such optimistic perceptions may differ from reality.
Perhaps what draws critical attention all too quickly to the anti-war theme alone is the novel's opening chapter itself, which details the author's own efforts to fictionalize his experiences as an ...American infantry scout in World War II and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden during the 1945 air-raid. ...the novel tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a war veteran who fashions in his mind an elaborate alternative reality as he struggles to come to terms with the horrors of war he witnessed two decades ago. ...it is a psychiatric treatment that helps capitalism to domesticate him: "He was treated in a veteran's hospital near Lake Placid, and was given shock treatments and released. ...following two tragic events, a plane crash which leaves him the sole survivor and the death of his wife Valencia of carbon monoxide poisoning as she rushes to the hospital he is admitted to, Billy makes up his mind to go public with his Tralfamadorian vision. ...what Vonnegut in fact accomplishes in the novel is a systematic critique of the ascetic ideal of Billy, uncovering its socio-political implications and ideological affiliations. ...rather than displaying any kind of indifference to human suffering and death, the author in the text compares his attempt to write the novel to the biblical event of Lot's wife looking back to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, violating the divine injunction not to do so, and consequently turning into a pillar of salt.
The following work draws a comparison between the images and symbols of time in T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton" and Kurt Vonnegut's "SlaughterhouseFive." In spite of the texts' different genres, styles ...and background, they express similar sentiments, and they match the use of several symbols. By doing so, they develop noticeably analogous concepts, such as ever-present time, the ambivalent relationship of humanity with the realm of possibility, and the overestimation of death.
Mostly addressed to novice scholars and instructors, this paper discusses some of the implications that the concepts of Theoretical Framework and Method of Analysis have for the field of Literary ...Studies. The limits between the two notions are unclear, which may lead to inconsistent teaching results or rejection of research proposals. The paper suggests a tentative definition for these yet unresolved conceptual issues. Then, it provides an example of the working of framework and method applied to Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Stress is given to the fact that in Literary Studies the frame and method deployed by the scholar should not be confused with the frame and method used by the author whose work constitutes the corpus of analysis.
McNamee explains the meaning of two odd-sounding words, granfalloon and karass, that came to his mind when he attended the fortieth reunion of his high-school class in Northern Virginia. Those two ...words came from Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle. Set on a Caribbean island whose republican founder is a font of koan-like proverbs, the novel depicts a Ragnarokian world's end brought about by American technocracy. In the madcap-but-wise universe of that founder, Bokonon, a granfalloon is an association of people who think that association means something. It is actually meaningless. Just as McNamee's meaningless membership is in a class of people who just happened to be born about the same time and found themselves confined within the same walls for four years of secondary education. Meanwhile, karass is made up of people who, though members of the granfalloon, actually do have significance.
In this essay, I examine the unpublished drafts and false starts of Slaughterhouse-Five alongside Vonnegut's notes and personal correspondences written between his return home from World War II and ...the publication of the novel in order to make the case that the novel is as much evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder as it is of a deep and prolonged grief. This grief is attached to a specific fellow prisoner-of-war who manifests in various incarnations in nearly all unpublished versions and early drafts of the novel. This individual is ultimately fictionalized in the character of Edgar Derby; however, many of his characteristics also prefigure the character of Billy Pilgrim.
This article explores the function and meaning of the void in novels on the strategic bombing of Germany written by Hubert Fichte, Kurt Vonnegut, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Instead of directly ...narrating the catastrophic event, the selected novels omit it, thereby producing a formal void. This paper claims that the narrative voiding of the traumatic event relates to two intersecting phenomena: (1) the psychic void in acute trauma, and (2) the difficulty of representing warfare—air raids in this case.
This study focuses on the political chaos in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (1963). While the main scholarly studies focus on the postcolonial peculiarities of the novel, this study will focus on the ...post-nuclear characteristics and will render the novel's position distinctive within the discourse on political and social affairs. The study's significance is its emphasis on the role of human beings, which brings dangers and devastation to the human race. Though the study will allude to some apocalyptic visions regarding the existence of the human race, the study tries to offer profound understanding of how human weaponry used in the nuclear age might threaten the human health and future existence. During the sixties and seventies, the arms race was severely critiqued by contemporary literary works. Among these works is Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle which depicts the chaotic politics of the time. Hence, this study will solely accentuate the portrayal of political chaos and how it threatens human social stability and peaceful lives. Political threat causes harmful effects to humanity's health, mentality, and psyche which is exemplified in the novel's characters. The fictional characters embody the real human sufferings. Thus, there will be no discussion on specific political powers which compete with each other to gain martial success over the other. Instead, the study will focus on how the fictional characters suffer from the consequences of war and how they behave after them. The analysis of such feelings will be discussed by applying two concepts, namely, Slavoj Zizek's concept of power reductionism and Jean-François Lyotard's concept of critique of the existing order.
This article is devoted to the analysis of one of Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian short stories, Harrison Bergeron, through the setting analysis focusing mainly on the use of media as a means of creating ...mono logical setting and discussing the dance scene as an act of escape from this mono logical setting. Kurt Vonnegut, a contemporary American novelist and short story writer, using his experiences during World War II, reflects on the post war American society especially through his satirical works about power structures. And in this short story he satirizes the forced equality in an imaginary American society.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1952) illustrates people who become enslaved to a controlling system of cybernetics that enhances its power through computer, consumer culture, and advertising industry ...in postwar America. In this study, I investigate Player Piano through the idea of cybernetics that reduces human beings into intelligent machines and mindless bodies. Player Piano constitutes an effort to make sense of powerful systems through the metaphors of the machine. It is a struggle to illustrate a deterministic attitude of the universe that leaves human with no choice.
PDF