Vonnegut as a "Bug in Amber"
Connection of Fiction and Autobiography in the Works of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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CHAPTER I: Humanity
In this section, the character, Humanity, is going to
become a subject to a thorough literary analysis. Vonnegut
usually repeats himself over and over again in defining and
describing human beings. He uses similar attributes of
Humanity throughout his books and stories. There is a number
of positive qualities that Vonnegut often highlights in his
works, but these are mostly overruled by negative qualities.
Physical appearance
It has been said that Vonnegut's characters "still
bear more of a resemblance to cartoon figures than regular
human beings" (Kakutani:17). Physical appearance of most
Vonnegut's human characters is surprisingly very similar. He
makes all the people in his works appear ridiculous. Billy
Pilgrim, the main character of Slaughterhouse-Five, "was
a funny-looking child who became a funny-looking
youth--tall and weak, and shaped like a bottle of
Coca-Cola" (SH5:23). James Wait, one of the main chara cters
of Galapagos, "was prematurely bald and he was pudgy, and
his color was bad, like the crust on a pie in a cheap
cafeteria, and he was bespectacled" (GAL:6). The main
character of Bluebeard looked like a "gunshot iguana"
(BLU:12). The Swain twins, the main characters of Slapstick,
were not very pretty either. Their appearance may be even
the worst and most repulsive of all Vonnegut's characters.
Wilbur Swain says that
Eliza and I were so ugly that our parents were
ashamed.
We were monsters, and we were not expected to
live very long. We had six fingers on each little
hand, and six toes on each little footsie. We had
supernumerary nipples as well -- two of them
apiece.
We were not mongolian idiots, although we had
the coarse black hair typical of mongoloids, We
were something new. We were neanderthaloids. We had
features of adult, fossil human beings even in
infancy -- massive brow-ridges, sloping foreheads,
and steamshovel jaws. (SLP:31)
In addition to this kind of physical ugliness, many
people in Vonnegut's books are very fat or even obese, for
example Eliot Rosewater (the main character of God Bless
You, Mr. Rosewater), Rudy Waltz (the main character of
Deadeye Dick), Ruth Starbuck (the wife of the main character
in Jailbird), professor Swain (appearing in Slapstick), who
even died of it (SLP:40), and many more. The obesity or
monstrous fatness accompanying ugliness, which has been
described above, adds considerably to the mental picture the
reader forms in his mind during reading.
Most people in Vonnegut's books are not only
charm-free, cosmetically challenged, vertically challenged,
horizontally gifted (to use politically correct language)
etc. because they were not given from above, but their
bodies also look deteriorated by their own doing, or should
be said, lack of doing anything. Many of his characters are
described as unwashed, unshaved, having oily hair etc. The
ghost of Kilgore Trout (apparently Vonnegut's favorite
character), for example, is described like th is: "As in
life, he needed a shave. As in life, he was still pale and
haggard. As in life, he was still smoking a cigarete"
(GAL:255).
Another aspect by which Vonnegut often rudicules his
characters is making them wear completely ludicrous or dirty
and ragged clothes. Of course, they are not constantly
dressed ridiculously -- mostly just in the most important
situations. For example, when the sci-fi writer Kilgore
Trout arrives to Midland City for the grand opening of an
Arts Center he looks in the mirror and sees "a red-eyed,
filthy old creature who was barefoot, who had his pants
rolled up to his knees" (BOC:229). Another good example can
be the moment when Walter F. Starbuck in Jailbird is being
let out of prison and he dresses into civillian clothes and
looks in the mirror. Here is who he saw:
a scrawny old janitor of Slavic extraction. He was
unused to wearing a suit and a tie. His shirt
collar was much too large for him, and so was his
suit, which fit him like a circus tent. He looked
unhappy--on his way to a relative's funeral,
perhaps. At no point was there any harmony between
himself and the suit. He may have found his clothes
in a rich man's ash can. (JAI:66)
The last example might be Otto Waltz applying to the Academy
of Fine Arts in Vienna. He
was told to come back to the Academy in two weeks,
at which time they would tell him whether they
would take him or not.
He was in rags at the time, with a piece of
rope for a belt, and with patched trousers and so
on. (DED:4)
It would be wrong to understand, however, that all
people in Vonnegut's books are looking dirty, ragged and
ridiculous. There are a couple of exceptions when people
look nice and tidy and beautiful. They are, however, mostly
minor characters. If there appears a main character that
does not look ludicrous, it is because he/she has not
reached the point when Vonnegut decides to make him/her look
that way. Beautiful wives get fat and ugly (e.g. Walter
Starbuck's wife Ruth in Jailbird), succesful people go
downhill and end up in rags (e.g. Malachi Constant in The
Sirens of Titan or, again, W. Starbuck).
Over all, to get back to the idea that all humanity
forms a literary character, it can be said that Vonnegut's
Humanity has a negative (even repulsive) appearance. Even
though there appears a positive quality every now and then,
these are overwhelmed by the majority of the former ones.
Moreover, Vonnegut both assigns this ludicrousness and
ugliness of Humanity to both the natural causes and the
Humanity's neglect of itself. However, it seems that the
former causes are more characteristic of H umanity.
Of course, it can be pointed out that appearance is
not everything, that what a person looks like is not
important, that it is what is inside that counts. One would
be right in pointing it out. Even Vonnegut admits this when
Walter Starbuck talks about body sizes. He says that it is
an issue that
I am very reluctant to discuss--because I don't
want to give them more importance than they
deserve. Body sizes can be remarkable for their
variations from accepted norms, but still explain
almost nothing about the lives led inside those
bodies. I am small enough to have been a coxwain,
as I have already confessed. That explains nothing.
And, by the time Leland Clewes came to trial for
perjury, my wife, although only five feet tall,
weighed one hundred and sixty pounds or so. So be
it. (JAI:70-71)
In contrast, however, Vonnegut seems not to be reluctant to
discuss these aspects of Humanity at all. His descriptions
of Humanity's appearance is a rather common and bold feature
of his books. It appears that Vonnegut uses this effect only
to strenghten his argument about the state of Humanity. Even
though appearance is not important, it makes the reader feel
pity, shame, compassion, contempt or other feelings for
Humanity.
Names
The account of the description of Humanity would not
be complete without mentioning names of the main characters
of Vonnegut's books. Benjamin DeMott in his review of
Deadeye Dick, when discussing Vonnegut's norms, says that in
this novel "the hero is sweet and hapless and bears
a silly-sounding name" (DeMott, 1982:p.1). Silly-sounding,
funny, weird names appear throughout all Vonnegut's writing.
Rudy Waltz is one of them, but not the only one. Several
other names can be mentioned to give a g eneral idea: Billy
Pilgrim (SH5), Rabo Karabekian (BLU), Kilgore Trout, Eugene
Victor Debs (HOC) or Malachi Constant (TIT). It is not only
that the characters are funny. They have funny names as
well.
Environment
Before the analysis will be allowed to penetrate
deeper into the nature of Humanity, it is important to
describe the environment in which Vonnegut's character
Humanity lives. Indication of a literary character by
environment often helps the reader to form a more complete
picture of the character and it will certainly help in this
case as well.
Environment, just like the characters themselves, is
very often interchangeable in Vonnegut's writing. There are
stories and novels taking place in the same cities or towns,
and the places often have similar attributes, qualities and
appearance. Vonnegut's seemingly favorite places are for
example Illium, Cohoes or Schenectady (in New York),
Indianapolis, Midland City (in Ohio), or Cape Cod. Sale says
that
Slapstick opens with a typical Vonnegut cynicism
about America having become a place of
interchangeable parts, so that Indianapolis, which
"once had a way of speaking all its own," now is
"just another someplace where automobiles live."
(Sale:3)
What is interesting, however, is that the environment
mostly reflects the poor appearance of the characters. They
often live in houses or apartments that are in similar
condition as their appearance. Kilgore Trout, for example,
lived in a poor basement apartment in Cohoes, New York
(BOC:20). Walter F. Starbuck in Jailbird, after having left
the prison, lives in one of the dirtiest hotels in New York,
in Hotel Arapahoe. In Deadeye Dick Vonnegut even calls the
house of Rudy Waltz (and the house s of some other people)
a "shitbox". Even a multimillionnaire Eliot Rosewater (ROS)
moves to a small town of Rosewater, Indiana, to live in
a small cramped office.
Similarly as described in the section about physical
appearance, when a person is not living in a decrepit or
cramped house or apartment, it mostly means only that
he/she has not started to go downhill yet. Rudy Walts has
not always lived in a "shitbox". Walter F. Starbuck,
similarly, has not always lived in a dirty hotel room
either. On the contrary: these people were mostly
"fabulously well-to-do", as Vonnegut often describes them.
Humanity as a character also lives in a decrepit,
cramped, dirty old house -- the Earth. In perhaps all
Vonnegut's books he constantly alludes to the Earth's being
heavily polluted and nearly destroyed. It is possible to see
the analogy in this: Humanity was "fabulously well-to-do" in
the beginning but it has taken the course downhill.
The Fruit of Humanity's Existence
It is possible now to proceed to perhaps most
startling facts about Humanity revealed by Kurt Vonnegut. He
constantly criticizes many vices thought up or created by
men. There are two vices about which Vonnegut gets most
bitter: war (Vonnegut served in one himself) and ecological
disaster. "The more you learn about people, the more
disgusted you'll become," says the ghost of Kilgore Trout to
the ghost of his son Leon Trout, who served in the war of
Vietnam.
"I would have thought that your being sent by
the wisest men in your country, supposedly, to
fight a nearly endless, thankless, horrifying, and,
finally, pointless war, would have given you
sufficient insight into the nature of humanity to
last you throughout all eternity."
Kilgore Trout continues,
"Need I tell you that these same wonderful
animals, of which you apparently still want to
learn more and more, are at this very moment proud
as Punch to have weapons in place, all set to go at
a moment's notice, guarranteed to kill everything?"
(GAL:254)
These are not the only bitter words Vonnegut expresses about
the issue of wars, but they may well suffice to demonstrate
the point. The same speech of a ghost to a ghost can be used
for illustrating Vonnegut's bitternes about the latter vice
as well:
"Need I tell you that this once beautiful and
nourishing planet when viewed from the air now
resembles the diseased organs of poor Roy Hepburn
when exposed at his autopsy, and that the apparent
cancers, growing for the sake of growth alone, and
consuming all and poisoning all, are the cities of
your beloved human beings?
"Need I tell you that these animals have made
such a botch of things that they can no longer
imagine decent lives for their own grandchildren,
even, and will consider it a miracle if there is
anything left to eat or enjoy by the year two
thousand, now only fourteen years away?" (GAL:254)
Vonnegut, however does not criticize only these
things in modern society. There are many more targets of his
bitterness and anguish, e.g. racism, jingoism, commercial
greed, slavery etc.
Fatal Lusts
Vonnegut presents two main drives of Humanity's
misbehavior. He calls these incentives 'monsters'. "Lions?
Tigers?" he asks. The answer is "no." He says that lions and
tigers are asleep most of the time and that the monsters he
has in mind never sleep. He says that they inhabit our heads
and our minds. They are "the arbitrary lusts for gold" and
"girl's underpants" (BOC:25). Vonnegut often writes about
one more monster that proves to be as dangerously
destructive as the already mentioned two. This monster is
ambition. However, ambition seems to stand hand in hand with
greed for wealth.
Money
Lust for gold seems to be the most often expressed
lust of Humanity. Humanity's greed for money appears almost
in all Vonnegut's novels. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater opens
with this statement:
A sum of money is a leading character in this
tale about people, just as a sum of honey might
properly be a leading character in a tale about
bees. (ROS:7)
A similar example may be found in The Sirens of Titan, where
the main character looks at his solar watch: "He held his
watch to sunlight, letting it drink in the wherewithal that
was to solar watches what money was to Earth men" (TIT:14).
These two excerpts certainly illustrate the
importance people assign to money. They assign more value to
money and gold than to fellow human beings. Compared to
money, human beings lose their value as Vonnegut points out
for example in Galapagos, when Ecuador undergoes an
economical crisis:
Ecuador, after all, like the Galapagos
Islands, was mostly lava and ash, and so could not
begin to feed its nine million people. It was
bankrupt, and so could no longer buy food from
countries with plenty of topsoil, so the seaport of
Guayaquil was idle, and the people were beginning
to starve to death. Business was business. (GAL:23)
In Deadeye Dick, Midland City's population is entirely wiped
out by an explosion of a neutron bomb. This weapon causes
death of all living beings and leaves all the property
untouched. Ironically, Vonnegut asks whether it matters that
all those people died so suddenly. "Since all the property
is undamaged, has the world lost anything it loved?"
(DED:34) "Wake up, you idiots! Whatever made you think paper
was so valuable?" (GAL:24) Vonnegut cries this out as if in
agony over the people's blindness wi th greed and money, and
the readers can hear this outcry very often thoughout his
works.
In a short play, "The Chemistry Professor", when
talking about earning money, the characters are suddenly
"caught up in a mad, slobbering war dance about wealth. It
ends in panting exhaustion" (PSU:265). Another character,
Kimberley is "sexually aroused by wealth" and starts singing
a silly song about money and stock. (PSU:265)
The most outstanding exception is the novel God Bless
You, Mr. Rosewater which suggests that there still are good
people in the world, that even in a world spoiled by greed
and money, there is the possibility of doing good by means
of money. A man who managed to do this was Eliot Rosewater
who took the inherited wealth and started helping people.
Underpants
Another thing that drives human beings is sexual
lust, Vonnegut says. He suggests that people's inability to
control their animal drives leads the planet into doom,
mostly by means of overpopulation.
Mary Hepburn, one of the main characters in
Galapagos, describes, for example, "how easily a teenage
virgin could be made pregnant by the seed of a male who was
seeking sexual release and nothing else, who did not even
like her" (GAL:124). In Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut
points out that most countries are in such a miserable
condition that there is no more space for people they have
nothing to eat. And still they go on having sexual
intercourse, which is, as Vonnegut reminds us, how babie
s are made. "More babies were arriving all the
time--kicking and screaming, yelling for milk" (BOC:12-13).
With tongue in his cheek, Vonnegut shows that
'babies' is a wonderful way of overcoming wars, that even
after long lasting wars there still seem to be plenty of
people around (GAL:33). This, however, encourages many
people to think of murdering, wiping out cities etc. "as
show business, as highly theatrical forms of
self-expression, and little more" (GAL:33).
Humanity, evidently, as Kurt Vonnegut describes it,
is producing more than it can sustain, yet it is ignorant of
this fact. "Just because something can reproduce, that does
not mean that it should reproduce," (HOC:49) Vonnegut says.
Otherwise, Humanity could suffocate. The word "locusts" also
comes into mind; or "Planet Gobblers", which is a short
story written by Kilgore Trout. The story was
about us, and we were the terrors of the universe.
We were sort of interplanetary termites. We would
arrive on a planet, gobble it up, and die. But
before we died, we sent out spaceships to start
tiny colonies elsewhere... (PSU:209)
Humanity, however, does not realize that there is Earth only
and after it "gobbles up" this planet, there will be no more
food, no more planets to consume.
Big brains
Vonnegut does not only describe the drives of
Humanity, he even uncovers the source of these lusts and of
all the bad things Humanity does. In Galapagos, the source
is Humanity's imagination, destructive ideas, people's
oversized brains. "If catastrophe comes more easily to man
than courtesy and decency," Contemporary Authors suggests,
"man's large brain is to blame" (Contemporary Authors,49).
"Can it be doubted that three kilogram brains were once
nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race?"
(GAL:8) Vonnegut asks. He asserts that the planet is
basically innocent, "except for those big brains" (GAL:9).
These brains are "irresposible, unreliable, hideously
dangerous, wholly unrealistic" and they are "simply no damn
good" (GAL:25).
These brains make people lie, for example (GAL:67).
They are the "irresponsible generators of suggestions as to
what might be done with life" (GAL:78). They generate crazy
ideas in the heads of human beings who cannot help but carry
them out. Vonnegut calls this aspect of human brains
"diabolical" (GAL:266).
They would tell their owners, in effect 'Here
is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably,
but we would never do it, of course. It's just fun
to think about.'
And then, as though in trances, the people
would really do it--have slaves fight each other to
the Death in the Colloseum, or burn people alive in
the public square for holding opinions which were
locally unpopular, or build factories whose only
purpose was to kill people in industrial
quantities, or to blow up whole cities, and on and
on. (GAL:266)
Even Kilgore Trout realizes in Breakfast of Champions
that evil is put into the world in the form of bad ideas
(BOC:15). Furthermore, Vonnegut illustrates the danger of
wild ideas on the saying "If wishes were horses, beggars
would ride." He shows that since people discovered tools
(and weapons, consequently) "the homicidal beggars could
ride" (BOC:28). In simpler words, Humanity's brains managed
to make people's wishes (crazy ideas etc.) come true.
Suicidal Tendencies
A rather common tendency that Humanity seems to have
in Vonnegut's works are suicidal tendencies. How often the
reader encounters characters who die prematurely of their
own will. So often, the bad ideas in people's brains make
them do such a horrible thing as commit suicide.
In Timequake, Vonnegut says that people are the
smartest animals on the planet, who "hate being alive so
much." (TQK:5) In "Welcome to the Monkey House", there are
so called suicide parlors, where people can kill themselves,
or rather have themselves killed in a humane way, by a nice
woman, with a last meal, with pleasant atmosphere etc.
(WTM:28-47)
A rather common manner of ending one's life is eating
Drano, a poisonous chemical normally used for cleaning
drains. Celia Hoover, the wife of one of the main characters
of Breakfast of Champions and Deadeye Dick, commits suicide
this way. (DED:190) Drano appears also in Vonnegut's later
books as a succesful tool of deliberate self destruction.
Vonnegut also writes that the Earth itself, Humanity itself
looked as if it were eating this chemical.
The planet itself was breaking down. It was
going to blow itself up sooner or later anyway, if
it didn't poison itself first. In a manner of
speaking, it was already eating Drano. (DED:197)
Stupidity
From reading Vonnegut, one can easily conclude that
Vonnegut intends to show that people are stupid, that
Humanity as a whole is stupid, dumb and ignorant. With
several characters the writer takes it to the extreme, such
as Kimberley in the "Chemistry Professor". The play's
commentary calls her "scatterbrained" (PSU:261), but
stupidity could be the image the reader forms when reading
about her going to look up an unimportant comment in the
library, a comment that has been uttered just by the w ay,
and even more when, after a few pages, Kimberley enters
again and asks innocently "Which building is the library?"
(PSU:268) Others, more important characters, may be seen as
stupid as well. Howard, for example, sees Billy (SH5) as
"a vaguely dissatisfied dupe," and adds that "he is a blank
and stupid man" (Howard:133). In Cat's Cradle Bokonon says
that he could write a whole book, "a history of human
stupidity" and use it for a pillow (CAT:191).
In Hocus Pocus, ignorance, conceit and dumbness show
up to be the most frequently pin-pointed problems of
Humanity. The main character, Eugene Debs Hartke, for
example, speaks about a Jack Patton who was
against everybody's reproducing, since human beings
were, in his own words, "about 1,000 times dumber
and meaner than they think they are."
I myself, obviously, have finally come around
to his point of view. (HOC:49)
Later, Hartke continues and says:
I think that William Shakespeare was the
wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly
frank, though, that's not saying much. We are
impossibly conceited animals, and actually dumb as
a heck. Ask any teacher. You don't even have to ask
a teacher. Ask anybody. Dogs and cats are smarter
than we are. (HOC:146)
He continues with the outpour of his heart and calls the
board of Trustees of Tarkington College dummies, people who
caused the war in Vietnam dummies and even himself the
"biggest dummy of all" (HOC:146).
From the several examples shown above, it is clear
that Vonnegut does not have a very high opinion of
humankind, but rather a contemptuous one. Bryant notices
that "Vonnegut cites human stupidity and the human condition
as the two chief obstacles to the achievement of the highest
good," and that it is human stupidity "that leads men to
kill and cheat and steal" (Bryant:323) .
Machines
Another quality of Humanity corresponds with the
above described stupidity. This quality is seen when
Vonnegut describes people as machines. The impulses by which
the reader forms the image of Humanity as a machine are both
direct and indirect. In Sirens of Titan Vonnegut explains
the term machine. In his opinion, to be a machine is to be
vulgar, to lack sensitivity and imagination, and to be
"purposeful without a shred of conscience" (TIT:200). These
traits, or most of them, can be recognize d in most human
characters in Vonnegut's books.
Humanity's vulgarity is obvious from perhaps
everything Vonnegut has written: from how people talk and
how they act, from their 'animal' attitude towards sexuality
etc.
Lack of sensitivity is also a very often used quality
of humans. Vonnegut demonstrates this by many ways: the
previously mentioned Humanity's attitude towards sex
(lacking sesitivity altogether), human greed (people are not
stopped by anything in their chase for silver and gold) and
the omnipresent shadow of war, when people forget the value
of human life altogether and turn into "homicidal imbeciles"
(HOC:3).
That people are purposeful is also a very often
expressed quality of humans. People keep doing what they
seem to be programmed for, what they seem to be designed
for. One of these purposes is surely the already mentioned
reproduction. An example of this can be found, for example,
in Deadeye Dick:
The actress playing Celia could ask why God
had even put her on Earth.
And then the voice from the back of the
theater could rumble: 'To reproduce. Nothing else
really interests Me. All the rest is frippery.'
(DED:185)
Another aspect of Vonnegut's novels that can hint at the
issue of purposefulness, is people being reduced into
unthinking entities by various institutions. People are
often seen as robots under orders, willing to do anything.
One of the most often described institutions is surely the
army. For example, the main character in Hocus Pocus says
that he was a professional soldier and would have killed the
returning Jesus Christ if ordered by a superior officer
(HOC:2). In Sirens of Titan Vonnegut describes soldiers as
people with antennae in their heads, controlled by radio to
do anything the commander chooses (TIT:63).
The only exception from the traits of 'a machine'
applied to Humanity is the lack of imagination. It cannot be
said that Vonnegut's characters lack imagination. On the
contrary, human imagination is often emphasized. It is
a very important quality of Vonnegut's Humanity.
This chapter has so far dealt with indirect
indications of people's being machines. However, this trait
is also very often defined in the text directly. This direct
definition is perhaps most common in Breakfast of Champions.
One of the Kilgore Trout's books, Now It Can Be Told, says
that all people, all living things are machines and the only
entity with free will is the reader of the book (BOC:173-5,
253-7). Another example is people being seen from the
viewpoint of Tralfamadorians (Vonnegu t's favorite 'race' of
aliens). These beings see everything what happens, what
happened and what will happen, at the same time.
Lionel Merble was a machine. Tralfamadorians,
of course, say that every creature and plant in the
Universe is a machine. It amuses them that so many
Earthlings are offended by the idea of being
machines.
Outside the plane, the machine named Valencia
Merble Pilgrim was eating a Peter Paul Mound Bar
and waving bye-bye. (SH5:154)
Another way of direct definition of this character trait is
considering the parts of human body to be components of
a machine. Talking about anatomy Vonnegut often uses words
like wires, motors, switches, computers etc. (e.g. BOC:3).
The idea of pre-programmed human being appears also in
Timequake, where Vonnegut suggests that its genes which make
us behave in this or that way (TQK:118). Genes are some kind
of programming of human beings, they cannot be changed.
No-one chooses genes, they are inherited. A child gets
his/her genes at conception and has to live with them
through the rest of his/her life. This also may allude
humans to machines.
To sum up, Vonnegut argues that "human beings are
robots, are machines" (BOC:3). He both indicates this
directly and indirectly. Vonnegut also provides a 'formula'
(defining the term 'machine') by which the reader can see
this by him/herself (TIT:200). There is, however, one
element in the formula, into which the image of humanity
does not fit. This element is human imagination.
Family life
The last feature that needs to be discussed when
describing Vonnegut's humanity is the appearance of families
in the novels. Vonnegut's families seem to be undergoing
a crisis, just as everything about Humanity that has been
described so far.
People often say that family is the basis of every
state and every human society. Should family be broken, the
society would break as well. The problems would start among
the young people, but then, as they would grow up, become
the heads of their own families and have their own children,
the problems would appear among their posterity as well: the
brokenness spreading from generation to generation. This is
exactly what is happening in Vonnegut's writing. The family
in Vonnegut's books just se ems not to work properly.
Especially the relationship between father and son often
fails to function correctly.
Kilgore Trout can be one of the examples. His three
marriages failed and his son, Leon, ran away from home when
he was sixteen. It was "because I was so ashamed of him,"
Leon explains the reason (GAL:255). "When I got to be
sixteen, though, I myself had arrived at the conclusion my
mother and the neighbors had reached so long ago: that my
father was a repellent failure, ... He was an insult to life
itself..." (GAL:256). Kilgore Trout had a depressing
childhood, too (BOC:31). Another example of not very good
relationship between father and children can be found in
Bluebeard, where the main character, Rabo Karabekian says:
One might think that my two sons, Terry and
Henri Karabekian, . . ., might enjoy coming here
with their families. Terry has two sons of his own
now. Henri has a daughter..
But they do not speak to me.
'So be it! So be it!' I cry in this manicured
wilderness. 'Who gives a damn!' Excuse this
outburst." (BLU:6)
Deadeye Dick also shows the reader (in the
relationship between the main character and his father) that
an unsuccessful father can only produce an unsuccessful son.
In this case, the father is a painter, a failure of
a painter, actually, and the son becomes an unsuccesful
writer. The fact that parents pass a great part of
themselves on their posterity is demostrated or mentioned in
many of Vonnegut's books. In Hocus Pocus, for example, the
main character says:
And if I feel that my father was a horse's
fundament and my mother was a horse's fundament,
what can I be but another horse's fundament? Ask my
kids, both legitimate and illegitimate. They know.
(HOC:146)
To mention another example, the fact that Kilgore Trout was
not very successful caused the same in his son, who "was
flunking every course but arts at school" (GAL:256).
Bluebeard shows another problem in the family: members
of a family not caring about one another: the husband not
caring about his wife and wife not caring about her husband.
"...my Mother, who let herself become quite heavy,
and who didn't care much what her hair looked like,
either, or her clothes. Mother didn't care because
Father didn't care." (BLU:14)
There are more family problems, such as divorce and
child abuse in Vonnegut's books, but there is no need to
examine them in detail.
As a result of malfunctioning families, Humanity often
experiences and suffers from loneliness. Vonnegut realizes
the need for a family. "Human beings are genetically such
gregarious creatures," he says. "They need plenty of
like-minded friends and relatives almost as much as they
need B-complex vitamins and a heartfelt moral code"
(PSU:204). He uses a Christian saying "One Christian is no
Christian." and changes it to "One human being is no human
being." (PSU:216). Wilbur Swain speaks in Slap stick with an
old lonely man:
An old man crawled up to me afterwards and
told me how he used to buy life insurance and
mutual funds and household appliances and
automobiles and so on, not because he liked them or
needed them, but because the salesman seemed to
promise to be his relative, and so on.
"I had no relatives and I needed relatives,"
he said.
"Everybody does," I said.
He told me he had been a drunk for a while,
trying to make relatives out of people in bars.
"The bartender would be kind of a father, you
know-" he said. "And all of a sudden it was closing
time." (SLP:125-126)
Vonnegut also shows that loneliness might be the reason for
the bad things in the world: "all the damaging excesses of
Americans in the past were motivated by loneliness rather
than a fondness for sin" (SLP:125).
Summing up Humanity
This part of the essay has shown the overall image of
Humanity in Vonnegut's books. It has illustrated that
Humanity (as a literary character) is ugly, dirty,
funny-looking, fat and is definitely not "going to win
a beauty contest" (SLP:51). It has been born with some of
these qualities, and the others were caused by Humanity
neglecting itself. The environment, where Humanity lives is
as miserable as its physical appearance: the Earth has
turned into a cramped, neglected, dirty, smelly place.These
negative qualities are, however, strongly overpowered by
'inner' qualities. Humanity is seen as a machine moving
incontrollably forward, driven by several 'fatal lusts'
(such as greed for money and wealth, ambition, sex). The
machine never stops, decency is unimportant, human lives are
unimportant. The 'monster' moves onward, destroying
everything that gets in its way. However, the machine also
seems to be driven by a much higher force, by something
completely out of Humanity's control.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I: Humanity
Characteristics of Humanity
Playthings, puppets
Human life and its value
Bugs in Amber
CHAPTER II: Divinity
Characteristics of Divinity
Other Divinity characters
The Divine Father
Religion
CHAPTER III: Hero vs Villain
Hero vs. Villain
Unsuccessful Ways Out
Successful Ways Out
Humanity vs. Divinity
On meaning and purpose of life
CHAPTER IV: Vonnegut as the Hero
Fiction and Autobiography merged
Vonnegutīs amber
Vonnegutīs ways out
CONCLUSION
List of Abbreviations Used
Bibliography
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Last modified: Apr 2, 1998