CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

SEARCH FOR A HERO: A STUDY OF THE PROTAGONISTS IN THE FIRST SIX NOVELS OF KURT VONNEGUT, JR.

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

English

by

Kathy Hada

May, 1984

The Thesis of Kathy Hada is approved:

Dr. Richard Abcarian

Dr. Richard Lid

Dr. rt Noreen. ommittee Chair

California State University, Northridge

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT v

INTRODUCTION 1

ChaEters

1 Pla,ler Piano 6

2 The Sirens of Titan 15

3 Mother Night 28

4 Gat's Cradle 39

5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater 52

6 Slaughterhouse-Five 68

NOTES 83

BIBLIOGRAPHY 87

iii

11 Art: to maintain self against the disruptive whole ...

- Theodore Roethke

iv

ABSTRACT

SEARCH FOR A HERO: A STUDY OF THE PROTAGONISTS IN THE FIRST SIX NOVELS OF KURT VONNEGUT, JR.

by

Kathy Hada

Master of Arts in English

In the opening chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

says, 11 When I got home from the Second World War ••• , I thought

it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden,

since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen 11

(p. 2). In fact, however, he could not write about his experiences

in the war--the firebombing of Dresden in particular--for twenty­

three years, after writing five novels. As numerous critics have

noted and Vonnegut himself has alluded, the destruction of Dresden

was the destruction of Kurt Vonnegut. He went to war with a world

view founded on order, stability, and justice, but encountered a

world filled with insanity, absurdity, and irrationality. Before

he could write about the war, he needed to rebuild himself

emotionally and psychologically, a struggle that underlies his work

up to and in Slaughterhouse-Five. What he learned during those

twenty-three years is what he communicates in his first six novels,

v

primarily through the protagonist of each. For what Vonnegut tries

to do, above all, in these novels is to create a character who can

live with dignity in an insane world. The character who can find

dignity in the midst of an incomprehensible horror such as Dresden

is a Vonnegut hero.

This paper focuses on the protagonists in Vonnegut's first six

novels to see how they advance his search for a hero. Trying to

come to terms with his devastating experiences in the war, Vonnegut

creates real and metaphoric Dresdens and then explores ways in which

his protagonists can derive a sense of dignity and purpose from their

deranged worlds. He varies his tactics from one novel to the next

and often employs farfetched science fiction gimmicks like

Tr~lfamadore, ice-9, and time travel. Yet his overriding concern

remains constant, until he is finally able to tell his "war story."

With the writing of Slaughterhouse-Five, he exorcises the demon that

Dresden had created and brings to a close a long, painful period in

his life.

vi

INTRODUCTION

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s sixth novel, loosely

recounts the author's experiences in World War II, the firebombing

of Dresden in particular. The novel tells the story of Billy Pilgrim,

a young American innocent fighting in the European arena of the war

who is captured by the Germans and lives through the Dresden

holocaust. Emerging from the war physically intact, Billy is

emotionally ruined for the rest of his life.

In a jumble of serio-comic events, we watch Billy live a life

of seeming success and happiness that is neither very successful nor

very happy. We watch him become 11 Unstuck 11 in time and space,

travelling randomly back and forth between his stint in the war and

his later life as a wealthy optometrist, and between Earth and the

imaginary planet Tralfamadore. Whether we accept the science fiction

gimmicks of time and space travel or see them instead as

manifestations of Billy's severe schizophrenia, we come away from

the novel with the stinging realization that the war devastated Billy

Pilgrim.

In the introduction to the novel, Vonnegut tells us that he, too,

was devastated by the war: 11 I would hate to tell you what this lousy

little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home

from the second World War ••• , I thought it would be easy for me

to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to

1

do would be to report what I had seen."1 In fact, however, it took

him twenty-three years and five novels before he could write about

his experiences in the war. As John Somer explains in The Vonnegut

Statement, the destruction of Dresden was the destruction of Kurt

Vonnegut. He went to war with a world view founded on stability,

order, and justice, but encountered a world filled with insanity,

absurdity, and irrationality. 2 Before he could write about the war,

he needed to rebuild himself emotionally and psychologically, a

struggle that underlies his work up to and in Slaughterhouse-Five.

The plots in his first six novels are variations on a theme.

He destroys persons, places, and things, creating metaphoric and real

Dresdens for his protagonists to confront. His ploys are variously

funny, frightening, and farfetched, like ice-nine, the

chrono-synclastic infundibulum, and Tralfamadorians. Yet his

protagonists are consistently similar. They belong to Thoreau's

mass of men who live lives of quiet desperation and who try to

survive in intolerable situations: "[Vonnegut] offers an

unthreatening, instantly recognizable portrait of man ground under

the heel of American expectations . . He knows what most men

achieve is not satisfaction ••• but resignation and perseverance

in a numbing and draining condition."3 Although his characters often

attain the stereotyped American goals--Paul Proteus, Malachi Constant,

Eliot Rosewater, and Billy Pilgrim all are ostensibly successful and

affluent--they nonetheless feel trapped and used:

Partly because there are no escapes within the bounds of normalcy in the real world of the present, Vonnegut's characters frequently talk and act as though they were prisoners. Their being subject

2 " .

to incomprehensible forces in general, and to a social and economic structure which appears overbearing and unresponsible,also contributes to their sense of imprisonment • • • • And besides feeling himself a prisoner, this version of contemporary man tends to see himself as being used. He may simply believe that the economic system or a particular industry exploits him. Often the feeling is more general and vague: the inexorable Powers of which he asks 11 Why me? 11

shuffle him around like a piece in some cosmic game, as if he serves some larger patterns always incomprehensible to him.4

This study centers on Vonnegut's search for a h~o, but we must

use the term lightly when discussing his works, or the works of any

other modern writer. The traditional concept of herois largely an

irrelevancy in today's fiction and certainly does not fit into

Vonnegut's canon. Yet Vonnegut does develop his own kind of

Sisyphus-like hero during the twenty-three years between the writing

of Player Piano, his first novel, and Slaughterhouse-Five. Spawned

by the Dresden holocaust that he witnessed in World War II, Vonnegut's

hero grew out of his inability to cope in a world where such a horror

can occur. In his novels he tries to come to terms with his war

experiences and his conviction that the world is a giant insane

asylum by putting his protagonists into a world-gone-mad and

experimenting with their reactions to it. Some fare better than

others, but all help Vonnegut to sharpen his focus on what makes for

a hero: a person who can live with a modicum of dignity in our dismal

world.

This study of Vonnegut ends with Slaughterhouse-Five, not

because he finds the epitome of a hero in Billy Pilgrim, but because

the novel provided a catharsis for Vonnegut. After twenty-three years

3

and five novels, he finally could tell his Dresden story. Sanford

Pinsker explains in Between Two Worlds:

Slaughterhouse-Five is largely an attempt at synthesis. In a sense, the thematic strands and characters of [his] earlier novels constitute a warm-up for the ~eat stuff Vonnegut wants to get off his chest • • • • In coming to terms with his memories [of Dresden], Vonnegut explores the assets and liabilities of madness itself. Not merely as a Black Humorist out to outdo the headlines of a world gone absurd, but, rather, as a man driven to the very borders of insanity and beyond in a search for health. Cat•s Cradle ended in apocalyptic death; Slaughterhouse­Five begins there.5

And Vonnegut ends there. He was at the height of his literary

career when he wrote Slaughterhouse-Five, which he curiously calls

a 11 short, jumbled, jangled 11 piece of writing. 6 After that, his

writing changes. His themes and humor are muted, and in the

beginning of his next book, Breakfast of Champions (1973), he bids

farewell to all the 11 junk and characters of his previous works. 117

Although he continues writing novels with Slapstick (1976),

Jailbird (1980), and Deadeye Dick (1982), he stated that after

Slaughterhouse-Five he would no longer write novels--he would write

plays instead. And so we get Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971) and

Between Time and Timbuktu (1972), two of his least memorable works.

Critics confirm this change in Vonnegut after Sl~ughterhouse-Five.

Peter J. Reed, who studied the writer through 1969 in Kurt Vonnegut,

describes the works published since Slaughterhouse-Five as 11 the later

Vonnegut. 118 He claims that his division is not 11 arbitrary and

personal, .. but is 11 Shared by those who see an organic development

through [Vonnegut's] first six novels and detect a break between them

and the mixed works which have appeared subsequently. 119 The later

4

Vonnegut, Reed contends, manifests the author's "decline of powers,

or efforts, ••• revealing ambivalence and weariness." 10

Vonnegut's search for a hero ends with Slaughterhouse-Five

because his confrontation with his Dresden experience culminates with

the novel. Afterward, his urge to probe man's existence in an insane

world no longer obsesses him. Vonnegut himself admits, "I've

finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be

fun • People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not

going to do it anymore. "11

We are going to look back, however, at Vonnegut's first six

novels, studying the protagonist of each as he sheds light on the

author's search for a hero. Beginning with Paul Proteus in Player

Piano and ending with Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five, we will

see how Vonnegut deals with an absurd, alienated world, "always with

some new depth of perception, some new slant." 12 Specifically, we

will see how he explores and develops his key concept of the heroic:

the ability to find dignity in the midst of global absurdity.

5

CHAPTER ONE: Player Piano

11 I quit, I quit, I quit! 11

- Paul Proteus

Player Piano, published in 1952, is a story about 11 people and

machines, 1113 set in the fictional city of Ilium, New York, sometime

after the 11 Second Industrial Revolution ... 14 The backdrop of the

action is a machine-dominated society that, for all intents and

purposes, should be a utopia. It is a place where efficient,

expedient machines do most of the work, creating a highly productive,

stable economy and providing the average American with a life free

of poverty and hunger: 11 Machines were doing America•s work far

better than Americans had ever done it. There were better goods for

more people at less cost, and [no one] could deny that that was

magnificent and gratifying .. {p. 56).

The well-being of the common man was a primary concern of this

society. He lived in a modern, prefabricated house made out of

durable steel, with a radiant heating and cooling system and furniture

11 designed after an exhaustive national survey of furniture likes and

dislikes 11 (p. 158). The houses came stocked with numerous time-saving

appliances, including microwave ovens, ultrasonic washing machines,

and 11dust precipitators, .. so that the owner could spend less time

cleaning and cooking, and more time living-- 11 getting a little fun out

of life 11 (p. 159). Periodically the furnishings and appliances were

replaced automatically with newer models, so that all the people

owned all the same things and the 11 country at large 11 was protected

from the 11 0ld economic ups and downs by orderly, predictable consumer

habits 11 (p. 161).

All the niceties afforded the average citizen in this utopian

society resulted from the widespread mechanization. Machines not

only rel i·eved people of dreary busy-work and assembly-1 i ne chores,

they also did much of the thinking that people used to do, often

haphazardly. The master thinker was a giant computer named EPICAC,

housed in the Carlsbad Caverns, with networks spreading all over the

country: II . . • EPICAC could consider simultaneously hundreds or

even thousands of sides of a question utterly fairly. [It] was wholly

fr.ee of reason-muddying emotions, . . • and never forgot

anthing • In short, EPICAC was dead right about everything ..

(p. 116).

The mechanization of society, epitomized by EPICAC, put an end

to 11mass starvation, mass terror, and mass imprisonment ••••

Objectively, know-how and world law were getting their long-awaited

chance to turn earth into an altogether pleasant and convenient

place in which to sweat out Judgment Dal' (p. 14).

Yet, as we read about all these nice things, we discover that

the society is hardly the utopia it is cracked up to be. Instead,

it was a place where 11 machines frequently got the best of [things],

as machines will. 1115 It was a place where people bowed to machines

and extolled the virtues of efficiency and expediency. It was a

place where the average person, though given lots of free time to

7

enjoy life and assured of food, clothing, and financial security,

lived a useless, undignified life because machines could do things

better and quicker.

One character pinpoints the problem when he explains, 11 Everybody

used to have some personal skill or willingness to work or something

he could trade for what he wanted. Now that the machines have taken

over, it's quite somebody who has anything to offer. All most people

can do is hope to be given something .. (p. 177). Because of such

widespread frustration and loss of self-respect, we watch people run

amok, destroying homes, machines, themselves. We find that alcoholism

runs rampant in Homestead, the section of Ilium where most of the

people live. We learn that a revolutionary underground, the Ghost

Shirt Society, plans to overturn the status quo, replacing perfect

machines with imperfect humans.

Into this milieu enters Dr. Paul Proteus, one of the society's

highest ranking members who seemingly has it all--a terrific job,

a beautiful wife, and a golden future. Ilium is Paul's Dresden.

When we first meet Paul, he is sitting in his prestigious office

at the Ilium Works, petting a cat. We are told at the outset that

11 he was the most important, brilliant person in Ilium, .. although

11 he didn't feel important or brilliant at the time, nor had he for

sometime"(p. 9). We also learn that Paul, following in the footsteps

of his father, the chief architect of Player Piano's society, is

slated for a big promotion which would elevate him to national

prominence.

8

Just what bothers Paul is not clear. He expresses vague feelings

about the futility of life, bl•t these give us only inklings of his

discontent. At one point he senses 11 that the human situation was

a frightful botch, but it was such a logical, intelligently arrived-at

botch that he couldn't see how history could possible have led

anywhere else 11 (p. 114). Later he visualizes civilization as a

11 Vast and faulty dike, with thousands of men ••• stretching to the

horizon, each man grimly stopping a leak with his finger 11 (p. 148).

These feelings, we soon discover, stem from Paul's discontent

with his society. He cannot tolerate the way society treats people,

and he feels especially responsible because of his father and his

own position within the system. He resents the way machines have

technologized people and yearns for a return to the past, when

people 11 humanized 11 machines. 16 Explaining to his wife Anita his

feelings of frustration, Paul says that the machines have robbed

people of the 11 most important thing on earth to them--the feeling of

being needed and useful, the foundation of sel f-respect 11 (p. 169).

As a result, the system 11 Wasn't getting anybody anywhere

was pointless .. (p. 271).

. . . .

In spite of his concern for society's mistreatment of people,

Paul decides not to try to change things but to run away, to quit.

He tells no one of his decision, not even Anita, and he so

successfully masquerades his plans that no one believes him when

It

he finally declares, "I quit" (p. 221). He buys an old farm in the

country, away from the mechanization of Ilium, with the idea that

he will live there independently, without any need for machines.

9

His plans end abruptly, however, when revolutionaries, who call

themselves the Ghost Shirt Society, kidnap Paul and try to convince

him to support their cause. He learns that the revolution would offer

exactly what he knows is needed--a chance to enact change--yet he

nevertheless clings to his desire to run away. He blandly applauds

their efforts but says he wants no part of the action: "It•s pretty

soft, all right ••• but not quite soft enough. J•m walking out.

Sorry" (p. 280). Only when he is given the ultimatum, "You can•t

walk out--they•ll kill you" (p. 280), does he begin to "take a real

interest in what was going on 11 (p. 281).

Paul eventually supports the efforts of the Ghost Shirt Society,

but at too late a stage: things already had been set in motion and

he could be no more than a figurehead. The revolution takes place

but fails, since the Ghost Shirt Society could offer only 11 some

excitement for change .. (p. 278), nothing more. The system was too

strong. Ironically, Paul had seen the hopelessness of the revolution

earlier. While attending his first meeting of the Ghost Shirt Society,

he i ni ti ally thought the group 11 promi sed a change for the better"

(p. 278), but he 11 amended his thought 11 (p. 278) after more fully

understanding the circumstances and people in command. Yet Paul chose

to overlook the frailties of the Society when he joined it. When he

publicly announced his affiliation with the revolutionaries--when he

awakened from the self-centered stupor he had been in for the

duration of the book--he suddenly became myopic about the Ghost Shirt

Society. He could only see the good it hoped to bring.

The 11 good 11 turns out to be nothing more than a machine-smashing

orgy that delights the masses. But when there are no more machines

10

to destroy, and the people have sufficientlyvented their pent-up anger

and frustration, they want to "recreate the same old nightmare"

(p. 320). In the quiet, "now-what?" aftermath of the riot, Paul finds

a group of machine wreckers huddled around a partially functioning

vending machine, fascinated by its automation and anxious to repair

it. Paul realizes that the revolution was senseless; he turns himself

in to the authorities; and the novel ends.

In his first novel, Vonnegut begins his search for a hero with

mixed results. Paul Proteus is a stock character in a predictable

plot that elicits little more response than Vonnegut's characteristic

"Urn." Yet as the lead-off protagonist in a line-up of six, Paul

begins a pattern that Vonnegut will use over and over again.

The most crucial element in the pattern is the protagonist's

enduring a Dresden-like experience. Confronted with an overwhelming

situation, he learns that he is no more than "a victim of

circumstances, either social or cosmic, which effectively control

his destiny." 17 The Dresden that Paul faces is his absurd revolution

that promises only "some excitement for change" (p. 278). His

realization in the end that he is, indeed, a victim of circumstances

leads to his surrender to the authorities. When he shares a final

drink with his defeated comrades, he begins to say "'To a better

world,' ••• but he cut the toast short, thinking of the people in

Ilium, eager to recreate the same old nightmare. He shrugged. 'To

the record,' he said, and smashed the empty bottle on a rock" (p. 320).

Paul knows he has been deluding himself, thinking he can exert control

when, in fact, he cannot.

11

The second element in the pattern that Vonnegut introduces

through Paul is the evasion tactic, which Peter Reed summarizes in

Kurt Vonnegut: "As if reality becomes too much to bear, each

[protagonist] moves into some kind of unreality or seeming

unreality." 18 Throughout most of Player Piano, Paul tries to ignore

the inevitable. Although he eventually commits himself to the causes

of the Ghost Shirt Society, he spends most of his time refusing to

become involved and looking for ways to make his own life more

enjoyable. He longs nostalgically for the past, and even tries to

reinvent the 11 good old days 11 with his purchase of the farm.

The last element in the pattern is the character•s struggle to

be moral, to evince an 11enduring concern to give purpose and goodness

to life." 19 Paul •s struggle to be moral, however, is a questionable

one, because of his overriding preoccupation with himself. He

complains again and again about the plight of people in his

machine-dominated society--an indication of his concern to give

purpose and goodness to life--yet his complaints are empty. His

only response is to escape, to withdraw. He sees the Ghost Shirt

Society as a vehicle for change, yet he declines the opportunity to

play a vital role in it. He only begins to take a real interest in

the Society when his life is threatened--hardly the most altruistic

of motives. Paul •s obsession with his own well-being casts doubt on

his professed humanistic concerns, and we wonder whether his eventual

participation in the revolution is not, as a psychiatrist in the novel

suggests, merely an attempt to rebel against his father.

12

Whatever his motives, Paul comes away from his experiences

convinced that his initial hunches were correct: people need

something to believe in. Although, as John Somer points out, Paul

"learns [little] about the conduct of man ••• and has nothing to

offer in the end," 20 Paul brings to light a key tenet in Vonnegut's

canon--man's need for sincere belief. And although his obsessive

selfishness prohibits him from being a Vonnegut "hero," Paul

articulates more clearly than any of his successors what Vonnegut

proposes as a solution to the human dilemma: 11 For generations [the

people] have been built up to worship competition and the market,

productivity and economic usefulness, and the envy of their fellow

men • • • • [Now] it's all yanked out from under them. They can't

participate, can't be useful anymore. Their whole culture's been

shot to hell These displaced people need something [to

believe in]" (p. 92}. People must be able to live with dignity,

something they gain only when they feel needed, useful. In an

interview in 1970, Vonnegut pleaded that people "must have the

feeling of participation, the feeling of being needed on earth--hell,

dignity. "21

Vonnegut, then, connects a person's need for sincere belief

with the need to feel useful. And only when these needs are satisfied

can a person live with dignity. In Player Piano, Vonnegut implies

that society might meet these needs, if people could break the habit

of measuring a person's worth in terms of his value to the economy.

The shortcoming of the novel, however, is that it offers no

solutions--it only defines the problem. Neither Paul nor anyone else

13

in the story does anything to deal with man's need to believe in

something. The empty rhetoric of the Ghost Shirt Society and Paul's

constant complaints only serve to highlight the dilemma. Still

Player Piano is noteworthy for its introductions. It sets the

confrontation pattern for the protagonists in Vonnegut's subsequent

novels--the 11 Dresden 11 experience, the evasion tactics, and the moral

struggle--and it raises the crucial issue of man's need for something

to believe in. In the subsequent chapters we shall see how Vonnegut

consistently repeats this confrontation pattern and takes up where

he leaves off in Player Piano--by not only posing the problem but

also suggesting solutions.

14

CHAPTER TWO: The Sirens of Titan

11 Live! 11

- Malachi Constant

If Paul Proteus mistakenly thought he controlled his own life,

Malachi Constant, the protagonist of The Sirens of Titan, learned

quickly that it is not so. All mankind is a 11 Victim of a series of

accidents 1122--there is neither free will nor luck nor divine

providence. We find these ideas in Player Piano as ancillary themes,

but in The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut's second novel, the message is

emphatic. To be hoodwinked by explanations about the meaning of life,

as our 11 gimcrack religions .. (p. 7) try to do, is as foolish as

Malachi's being lured by the Sirens of Titan. Neither is real.

The backdrop of The Sirens of Titan is as unusual and significant

as Player Piano's. Filled with science fiction, the novel tells 11 a

true story from the Nightmare Ages, 11 which occur somewhere 11 between

the Second World War and the Third Great Depression 11 (p. 8). Man has

discovered the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, a space-age phenomenon

that enables him to break through the barriers of time and space and

view the universe from a god-like perspective, rather than from the

fragmented, partial view we now have. The result of this awesome

discovery is both wonderful and horrible: with this magnificent,

new insight, man can progress forward as never before, no longer

beleaguered by such trivial questions as 11 What is the meaning of life? 11

15

Yet the grim fact is that man exists for the benefit of another

civilization in another galaxy, that uses Earthlings much like a

11 handy-dandy potato peeler .. {p. 285).

That other civilization in another galaxy is Vonnegut•s favorite

make-believe planet, Tralfamadore. Introduced in The Sirens of Titan

and appearing again in later novels, Tralfamadore houses a colony of

little machine-like creatures who eons ago decided to send greetings

across the universe, 11 as far as the technology of Tralfamadore would

enable them 11 (p. 269). To carry their message, they choose the

Tralfamadorian 11 Salo, 11 who was sent forth some eleven million years

ago to travel 11 from one rim of the universe to the other 11 (p. 269).

In the year 203,117 B.C., however, Salo encountered mechanical

difficulties and was forced down in Earth•s solar system. He landed

on Titan, 11 an extremely pleasant moon of Saturn 11 (p. 138), sent word

of his plight to Tralfamadore, and waited patiently for help: 11 He

sent the message home with the speed of light, which meant that it

would take one hundred and fifty thousand Earthling years to get to

Tralfamadore 11 (p. 271). In the meantime he amused himself on Titan

by watching the activities on Earth, which he could see on a special

viewer in his space ship. It was through this viewer that he got

his first reply from Tra 1 famadore: 11 The reply was written on Earth

in huge stones on a plain in what is now England. The ruins of the

reply still stand, and are known as Stonehenge. The meaning of

Stonehenge in Tralfamadorian when viewed from above is, 'Rep£aeement

paJLt bun.g IUL6hed wU.h a££. po.6.6ibte .6peed' .. (p. 271). The Earth and

Earthlings, it turns out, were the vehicles by which the

Tralfamadorians communicated with Salo. Civilizations would 11 bloom on

16

Eartn and the participants would ••• build tremendous structures

that were obviously to be messages in Tralfamadorian 11 (p. 273). The

Great Wall of China, for example, means in Tralfamadorian, 11 Be patient.

We hav~n·t forgotten about you 11 {p. 272). The Palace of the League

of Nat ons in Switzerland says, 11 Pack up your things and be ready

to leave on short notice .. (p. 272). And so on.

As if this incredible toying with mankind weren't bad enough, the

Tralfamadorians also used Earthlings to get Salo his long-awaited

replacem~~t part, so he could continue his journey across the universe

with the ludicrous message, 11 Greetings 11 (p. 301). This little gadget,

no bigger than "an Earthling beer-can opener 11 (p. 270), gets to Titan

primarily t1rough the machinations of Winston Niles Rumfoord.

Rumfoord, an East Coast Brahmin, discovered the chrono-synclastic

infundibulumo While cruising out in space one day in his $58 million

space ship, ~.e drove into an infundibulum and came out 11 existing in

another wai' (p. 13). The infundibulated Rumfoord was no more than

particles in c.1 immense, wavering band of light. He could temporarily

materialize on planets--Earth, Mars, Titan, wherever he chose--and

could see the ~est, present, and future simultaneously. Most

significantly, ~is altered existence enabled him to understand

Tralfamadore•s m.::ster plan for the human race and his key role in that

plan.

So, 11 While serving the irresistable wishes of Tralfamadore 11

(p. 291), Rumfoord decided to 11 try [his] best to do good for [his]

native Earth 11 (p. :~91). What did he accomplish? He orchestrated a

war between Mars and Earth that resulted in the widespread slaughter

17

of Martians--ex-Earthlings--and he established a new religion called

the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. He believed that in order

to "change the world in a significant way, [he had to] have

showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people's blood, and

a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of

repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed., (p. 174). His

interplanetary war was certainly showy enough: the death toll alone

makes the Dresden firebombing pale in comparison. And he was right

about the "plausible new religion ... His Church of God the Utterly

Indifferent took off like wildfire.

Just as the Tralfamadorians used Winston Niles Rumfoord as their

chief agent to get Salo his replacement part, Rumfoord uses Malachi

Constant to achieve his goals. Malachi, also called Unk and Space

Wanderer, gets bounced around the cosmos like a pinball, with the

wizard Rumfoord in control. The entire universe is Malachi's Dresden.

Malachi comes into the story 11 the richest American and a

notorious rake-hell 11 (p. 11) and leaves a docile, benevolent old

man--and one of Vonnegut's stellar heroes. Before becoming Rumfoord's

pawn, he lives the ultimate Bohemian's life, playing all day,

partying all night, spending money in obscene sums. Yet between the

orgies and extravaganzas, he frequently despairs that his life is

purposeless. Influenced by the meaning of his name, "messenger," he

longs ironically for just one thing: "a single message that was

sufficiently dignified and important to merit his carrying it humbly

between two points 11 (p. 17). Of course, what this early version of

our protagonist has in mind, "presumably, [is] a first-class message

from God to someone equally di sti ngui shed 11 (p. 17).

18

The young playboy Malachi attributes his elite station in life

to divine providence: "Somebody up there likes me" (p. 20). Very

soon after the novel begins, however, things change dramatically for

Malachi. Rumfoord kidnaps him, interns him on Mars as a soldier in

the Martian army, erases his memory, and controls his every action

through electrodes implanted in his head.

One of the few "Martian 11 survivors of the Earth-Mars war,

Malachi, renamed Unk, is sent to Mercury to while away a few years

so that Rumfoord can establish his Church of God the Utterly

Indifferent on Earth. Rumfoord's plan is to spread the word about

a Space Wanderer who was once fabulously well-to-do and is now a

physical and emotional wreck. Equating the fate of the Space

Wanderer with the fate of a 11 blind grandmother [who] steps on a

rollerskate at the head of a flight of cement stairs, a policeman's

horse [that] steps on an organ-grinder's monkey, and a paroled bank

robber [who] finds a postage stamp worth $900" (p. 181), he uses

Malachi--the Space Wanderer--to prove to mankind that they are all

11 Victims of a series of accidents 11 (p. 229).

After he circulates the story about the Space Wanderer and

people everywhere anxiously wait for the prophecy to come true,

Rumfoord snatches Malachi from Mercury, brings him to Earth, and

showcases him as the fool who thinks luck or divine providence is on

his side. Finished with Malachi, Rumfoord then banishes him to Titan

for the remaining thirty years of his life.

At the same time, Rumfoord's puppetry with Malachi accords with

Tralfamadore's "irresistable wishes 11 (p. 291). Early in the novel,

19

when Rumfoord transports the kidnapped Malachi to Mars, Malachi rapes

Beatrice, a woman aboard his space ship, and together they beget a

son, Chrono. A hostile misfit who spends most of his childhood on

Mars, Chrono one day picks up a small, irregularly shaped piece of

metal that he finds in a Martian junkyard, and keeps it as his 11 good

luck 11 piece. Not incidentally, that piece of metal is what Salo needs

for his disabled space craft. Years later, when Rumfoord exiles

Malachi the Space Wanderer to Titan, his .. mate 11 Beatrice and son

Chrono go with him. Thus, Salo•s replacement part gets to Titan.

In The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut creates his first real hero.

Malachi is able to live with dignity in his insane world. It

understandly takes him a long time to wrest some peace and dignity

out of his turbulent, nonsensical life, and like Paul Proteus he

repeatedly tries to resist the forces that so effectively control

his destiny. But Malachi overcomes the selfishness that obsesses

Paul and learns to accept and find meaning in the subservient roles

he is given. In the end Malachi is like a tamed horse that finally

submits to, rather than fights, the reins which hold him in check.

To understand more clearly how Malachi qualifies as a Vonnegut

hero, let us see how he adheres to the pattern of characteristics

introduced by Paul Proteus: The Dresden experience, the evasion

tactics, and the moral struggle. We noted earlier that the entire

universe is Malachi•s Dresden. He starts out in the novel young,

confident, and narcissistic, but experience after experience knocks

the vitality out of him until he is scarcely more than a robot,

20

bewildered and belitt'ied by the manipulations of Rumfoord and, less

directly, the Tralfamadorians.

The early, 11 pre-Dl·esden 11 Ma 1 a chi appears briefly in the novel,

just long enough to provide a counterpoint to the character he later

becomes. He first meet~ Rumfoord during this stage of his life, when

the two men visit at Rumfoord's mansion to discuss Malachi's

forthcoming intergalactic adventures. The arrogant Malachi

summarily dismisses Rumfoord as an eccentric and chides him for his

preposterous predictions, even though he witnesses Rumfoord's

mysterious ability to dematerialize. Malachi is somewhat wary of

the old man's inexplicable feat, but he remains smug about his

privileged lot in life. After all, he could claim the dual advantage

of divine predilection (11 somebody up there likes me 11) and an immense

bank account. Not even the superhuman Rumfoord could touch him.

When Malachi's Dresden experiences occur, however, he quickly and

dramatically changes to a victim of circumstances beyond his control,

the pawn in a complex, incomprehensible game. His kidnapping to Mars

begins these experiences. Living as the mindless robot 11 Unk," he has

no knowledge of who he is, where he came from, or what he is doing

in the Martian army. He moves cautiously, acutely aware of only one

certainty: that someone or something controls him through the

electrodes in his head. He nevertheless is driven by the glimmer of

a memory that compels him to find his mate, his son, and his best

friend, Stony Stevenson.

Malachi's next stop--Mercury--is the locus of his second Dresden

experience. Moved from Mars to a cavern several miles beneath the

surface of Mercury, Malachi stays there, dumbfounded, for three years.

21

Though Rumfoord no longer controls him as rigidly as he had on Mars,

Malachi remains a baffled victim of overwhelming circumstances,

confined in terrifying surroundings with only periodic hints from

Rumfoord that his strange incarceration would soon end. Frustrated

and alone, he decides to fight "with the only weapons at hand--passive

resistance and open displays of contempt" (p. 200).

After his sojourn on Mercury, Malachi 1 s Dresden experiences

continue on Earth. Weary from his travels, he "decides not to be

afraid" (p. 225), but he is once again baffled by what happens. The

11 Central symbol of wrong-headedness" (p. 255) for the Church of God

the Utterly Indifferent, Malachi is exposed as the long-awaited Space

Wanderer and then is sent off to Titan for the rest of his life.

Just before he enters his Titan-bound space ship, he capsulizes

his feelings: 11 It--it's probably not worth saying, ••• but I'd

still like to say I haven't understood a single thing that•s happened

to me since I reached Earth 11 (p. 258). He hears the devastating

news that, as Unk, he strangled his friend Stony Stevenson to death

several years earlier. He is reunited with Bea and Chrono, although

none of them by this time wants much to do with one another. And

the three of them go to Titan, Malachi 1 s last intergalactic journey.

No longer buoyed by the prospect of meeting Stony and horrified by the

thought that he killed his best friend, Malachi vows never to be used

again: "If anybody ever expects to use me again in some tremendous

scheme of his, ••• he is in for one big disappointment • • • • I

resign • • • • I withdraw • • • • I quit" (p. 290).

22 ~ '

Malachi's Dresden ends on Titan, where he spends the remaining

years of his life, mostly alone but mostly content. He and his

strange little family never become close, yet they learn to love one

another in a unique way. His anger gradually changes to muted

happiness, even after he finds out about Rumfoord's and Tralfamadore's

schemes and how both used him so wretchedly.

Malachi thus endures not one but many Dresden-like ordeals.

Except for when he is Unk, completely controlled by Rumfoord, he tries

to evade his experiences when they 11 become too much to bear ... 23 His

evasions, the second characteristic of the confrontation pattern we

noted earlier, begin when Rumfoord first predicts Malachi's future.

Like Paul Proteus, he ignores the inevitable, fully aware that the

superhuman, infundibulated Rumfoord is probably correct. He continues

to throw lavish parties and spend money recklessly, in foolish defiance

of Rumfoord's predictions.

After his robot-like existence on Mars, his next evasion tactic

occurs on Mercury, where he concocts his own explanations for the

puzzling world he finds himself in. Trapped at the bottom of an

intricate labyrinth of tunnels and caves, Malachi thinks that he is

on Earth, that his space ship merely took a serious wrong turn, and

that he needs only to find his way out. En route to his cavernous

prison, he thinks he sees skyscrapers and searchlights and he weeps

for joy that he is finally home. Three years later, however, 11 Unk's

imagination had done a lot with the glimpses he'd had of the

supposed buildings •• Unk's imagination was now certain that the

masters of all creation lived in those buildings. They were

23

Unk's ••• and maybe Stony's jailers •••• They were experimenting

with Unk ••• in the caves. They wrote messages [to him] in

harmoniums, [plants growing on Mercury]

things for sure 11 (p. 207-208).

Unk knew all those

His final evasion takes the form of defiance, reminiscent of his

pre-Dresden days when he refused to accept Rumfoord's predictions.

Aboard the space ship to Titan, he declares that he is finished being

used, unrealistically figuring that his mere refusal to participate

would put a halt to any future plans involving him: 11 No matter what

happens, no matter what beautiful or sad or frightening thing

happens, I'll be damned if I'll respond. The minute it looks

like something or somebody wants me to act in some special way, I will

freeze 11 (p. 289).

Throughout his ordeals, Malachi struggles to be a moral

person--illustrating the third characteristic of the confrontation

pattern--and he succeeds. Although the young Malachi Constant behaves

as amorally as the Tralfamadorians, the changed Malachi--Unk and

Space Wanderer--is driven by noble, altruistic concerns. In spite of

his faulty memory, which Rumfoord launders periodically, the

simpleton Unk tries to remember the three special people in his life:

Bea, Chrono, and Stony Stevenson. He senses that he is being used,

that his mind is controlled by someone or something, so he writes

himself notes to help him remember: 11 Unk, you know why you keep on

going? You keep on going because you have a mate and a child ••••

[They] have learned to get along alone. They don't miss you. They

never think of you. But you have to prove to them that they need you

24

in the biggest way possible 11 (p. 131). He also writes about Stony

who, like Unk, kept 11 catching on that somebody was using him 11 (p. 128)

and so was eliminated by Rumfoord--through Unk. Unk•s determination

to remember his family and best friend, rather than any other person

or bit of information that could shed light on his Martian milieu,

is testimony to his struggle to be a good, moral person. He is

willing to march mindlessly to 11 rented-a-tent, rented-a-tent 11 (p. 97)

as long as he has his dream to gather together 11 his wife, his son,

and his best friend, to steal a space ship, and to fly away to some

place where they could all live happily ever after .. (p. 140).

On Mercury, Malachi continues his struggle to be a good, moral

person. Though, in his cockeyed version of reality, he thinks he has

lost Bea and Chrono, he still believes he has a chance of finding

Stony Stevenson. In fact, what 11 keeps him going 11 on Mercury is the

prospect of meeting Stony: 11 He dreamed that his good friend Stony

Stevenson was waiting for him around the next bend. His mind became

lively with the things he and Stony would say when they met. Unk•s

mind still had no face to go with the name of Stony Stevenson, but

that didn•t matter much 11 (p. 207).

The true test of his struggle to be moral, however, comes when

Malachi learns of Stony•s death and is unwillingly reunited with Bea

and Chrono just before the three take off for Titan. Fed up with his

life as mankind•s (and Tralfamadore•s) doormat, Malachi angrily

declares that he has 11 taken part for the last time ••• in experiments

and fights and festivals [he doesn•t] like or understand .. (p. 290).

He, Bea, and Chrono demonstrate only 11 politeness, glum compassion, and

25

suppressed indignation at having been forced to be a family at all 11

(p. 291). But out of his oppressed life he gradually finds meaning.

His bitterness subsides, and he and Bea develop a philosophy that gives

them a sense of purpose and dignity. Bea sums it up when she says to

Mal a chi, 11 The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody •••

would be not to be used for anything by anybody • • • • Thank you

for using me 11 (p. 310-11). Malachi enhances their philosophy when

he later explains to Salo that he and Bea eventually realized "that

a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love

whoever is around to be loved 11 (p. 313). He can advise his son,

Chrono, to "live!," for he eventually discovers a meaning to attach

to the word. Fittingly, touchingly, Chrono responds by going off

to join the majestic blue birds of Titan. In what Donald Lawler

calls an apotheosis, 24 Chrono shouts to his parents before he leaves,

"Thank you, r~other and Father, for the gift of life" (p. 312).

Thus Malachi Constant, one of Vonnegut's most severely battered

protagonists, finds dignity in a world that displays the author's

most extreme absurdist visions. As Robert Scholes explains, "This

novel suggests that the joke is on us every time we attribute

purpose or meaning that suits us to things which are either

accidental or possessed of purpose and meaning quite different from

those we would supply." 25 The joke certainly was on Malachi, until

he adopted the premise of the joke as the basis for his philosophy

and, in turn, learned to prize "the kind of durability that can be won

from the clearest recognition of inadequacy."26

26

Malachi•s insights into love, purpose, and dignity are precisely

what Paul Proteus failed to understand. They are the something that

Paul--and the people in Player Piano•s society--needed to believe in,

the something that could have remedied the devastating feelings of

frustration and helplessness that occur when people 11 have no use ...

In Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut experiments

with science fiction and fantasy to create Dresden-like situations

for his protagonists. In his next novel, Mother Night, the

Dresden-like experience comes not from alien creatures or machines,

but from the protagonist•s own decision to 11 Serve evil too openly

and good too secretly. ~~ 27

27

CHAPTER THREE: Mother Night

11 0h, God--the lives people try to lead ...

-Howard W. Campbell, Jr.

Compared to Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night

is a very different kind of book. It has a first-person narrator,

Howard Campbell, who tells his story in short, choppy chapters, some

no longer than several paragraphs. It has an introduction by Vonnegut,

an 11 editor's 11 note, and an explicit moral: "We are what we pretend

to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." It

contains no science fiction or fantasy; instead, it uses the

realities of the here and now to present a compelling Dresden-like

experience that overwhelms the protagonist.

Mother Night is set in Germany during World War II, in New York

after the war, and in Israel. When the story opens, Howard Campbell

is in an Israeli prison, awaiting trial for the 11 Crimes against

humanity" he committed during the war (p. 34). "An American by birth

[and] a Nazi by reputation" (p. 17), Howard had inspired the Nazis to

pursue their 11 final solution" through his work as chief 11 writer and

broadcaster of Nazi propagand~' and 11 leading expert on American

problems in the German Ministry of Popular Entertainment and

Propaganda .. (p. 33). Not surprisingly, after the war he is "high on

the list of war criminals, because [his] offenses were so obscenely

public" (p. 33). Fifteen years elapse, however, between the end of

28

the war and Howard's trial. He spends them living in a dingy New York

apartment--his "purgatory" (p. 30).

As the novel jumps from Germany to New York to Israel, Howard

sporadically relays his background as an American transplanted in

Germany. He moved to Germany with his parents at age 11, grew up to

become a moderately successful playwright, and married a popular

German actress, Helga Noth. When the war came, his parents returned

to America, but Howard remained in Germany. He planned to continue

his "peaceful trade" as playwright and ignore the war by living with

Helga in their own "nation of two" (p. 44).

Then came an offer he couldn't resist: to be an American spy.

Under an arrangement with American intelligence, Howard would play the

role of Nazi radio star, goading the Nazis to cleanse the world of

non-Aryan races, especially the Jews. But at the same time he would

transmit information over the air to his American superiors by means

of pauses, coughs, hems and haws, and other seeming flaws in his

broadcasts. Hence comes Vonnegut's indictment of his protagonist for

serving evil too openly and good too secretly.

Howard is so good at lambasting the Jews that the world comes

to know him as a notorious anti-Semite and the personification of

wickedness. Everyone wants him arrested and punished for his key

role in the Nazi regime, and several times he almost is caught. But

because he is an equally effective spy, his secret American contact,

Frank Wirtanen, keeps him out of trouble. After the war he goes to

New York with a new identity and lives in such anonymity that he

eventually takes back his real name. As the war fades in peoples•

memories, few remember or care about Howard Campbell.

29 il '

His fifteen years in New York pass quietly and uneventfully,

until through 11 dumb luck 11 he befriends a neighbor, George Kraft. A

half-witted Russian spy, Kraft alerts the world--those who still cared,

at least--to Campbell's whereabouts, and Howard suddenly becomes the

center of attention for a variety of people and groups: the insane

Dr. Lionel Jones, a quack dentist who judges people according to the

quality of their teeth; the Iron Guard of the White Sons of the

American Constitution, the neo-Nazi version of the YMCA; the crazy,

aging Bernard O'Hare, the American soldier who once captured Howard

during the war and swore vengeance after his curious escape. Most

importantly, a woman claiming to be Helga, but who later confesses to

be Helga's sister, Resi, comes into his life.

Hungry for human companionship, Howard decides to accept Resi

as a sustitute for her sister, and the two of them plan to create

the 11 nation of two 11 which had once existed between Howard and Helga.

No longer anonymous and now sorely wanted for his war crimes by the

new republic of Israel, Howard agrees with Resi and his friend

George Kraft that they should leave America. Hours before they board

a plane for Mexico, however, Frank Wirtanen appears briefly. He

tells Howard that Kraft and Resi are Russian spies, preparing to

escort him to Russia where he would be exhibited "to the world as a

prime example of the sort of Fascist war criminal this country

shelters" (p. 144).

Through the tactics of Wirtanen, Howard is saved once again, but

this time he finds his freedom intolerable. He turns himself in to

Zionist agents and goes to Israel for trial. His attorney there

30

assures Howard that he would be exonerated if only he could prove he

was an American spy during the war. For the last time Frank Wirtanen

comes to the rescue. But Howard still could not tolerate the prospect

of freedom, so he opts out: he hangs himself.

Like Malachi Constant, Howard Campbell is a true Vonnegut hero.

At first glance he does not seem to fit the heroic mold of his

predecessors: he knowingly perpetrates evil and ends up killing

himself for his crimes against humanity. But upon closer scrutiny,

he is indeed a member of Vonnegut's family of protagonists who endure

Dresden-like experiences, find themselves victims of experiences

beyond their control, and nevertheless struggle to be moral.

As if responding to his observation in The Sirens of Titan that

"only inwardness remained to be explored," 28 Vonnegut creates an

"inward" Dresden for Howard Campbell. More precisely, he has Howard

create his own hell. When Howard accepts the espionage job and

becomes two persons--an ardent Nazi on the outside with an "honest me"

hidden deep inside--he sets the stage for a whopping dilemma.

His Dresden starts during the war and grows gradually. In the

beginning, before Helga dies, his wartime lot actually pleases him.

His spying assignment gives the "ham" in him "an opportunity for some

pretty grand acting" that enables him to "fool everyone with [his]

brilliant interpretation of a Nazi" (p. 41}. He is very popular

in the Nazi social circles because of his ability to "cheer [the Nazis]

up and make them want to go on" (p. 43). Years later he would admit

that, had the Nazis won the war, he would have "become a sort of Nazi

31

Edgar Guest, writing a daily column of optimistic doggerel [that he]

might even have come to believe" (p. 139).

As the war progresses, the insanity of the war, the Nazi effort,

and his own role increasingly oppress Howard. After his wife dies,

he realizes that "happiness has no place in war 11 (p. 80) and that he

is not immune to the suffering going on all around him. The death

of Helga strips away all meaning Howard had assigned to life. Left

alone in a crazy world that "replied in kind to his gibberish 11 (p. 96),

he looks elsewhere for meaning but finds little. Only the absurdist

explanation offered by his German friend Heinz sounds appropriate:

'"All people are insane • • • • They will do anything at any time,

and God help anybody who looks for reasons"' (p. 90).

Howard's Dresden changes when he goes to New York to 1 ive. Hi th

the war behind him, he is tormented now by his bleak, empty life in

what he calls 11 purgatory." He spends these postwar years "as an odd

duck and recluse in Greenwich Village" (p. 46), living in "a depressing

attic apartment with rats squeaking and scrabbling in the walls"

(p. 30). Though his parents had left him a sizeable inheritance, he

furnishes his apartment with war surplus--"a narrow steel cot, olive

drab blankets , folding canvas chairs" (p. 47)--and eats

leftover C-rations. Despondent, alone, he toys with the idea of

taking drugs, thinking they would make him feel happy, but he

concludes that he is "already drugged": "My narcotic was what had

got me through the war ••• --my love for Helga" (p. 47). The postwar

Howard thus becomes a death-worshipper who tries to keep alive his

love for his dead wife and, hence, make his life bearable: "I drank

32

toasts to her • . . and didn•t give a damn for one thing else 11 (p. 47).

Underlying his need to recreate Helga is the smarting reality of

his postwar predicament. Because the world knew him as Howard

Campbell the Nazi, he had to conceal--indeed deny--that crucial part

of him. But since we are what we pretend to be, this denial is, in

essence, complete self-abnegation. In meager attempts to cope with

his self-denial, Howard discards the false identity given him after

the war; he applies for a teaching position 11 Simply to demonstrate

to myself that there really was such a person as me 11 (p. 54); he

fantasizes that Helga is still alive and giving him her "uncritical

love .. (p. 44); he carves a chess set from a broom handle and then feels

11 Compelled to show somebody, somebody still among the living, the

marvelous thing [he] had made 11 (p. 48). Yet, through it all, he

longs for his painful, anonymous existence to end. As children know

their game of hi de-and-seek is over when someone calls 11 0lly-olly-ox­

in-free," Howard wishes that someone would 11 give that cry for me,

[ending] my endless game of hide-and-seek 11 (p. 30).

Part of Howard•s protracted Dresden experience, both during and

after the war, is his sense of being used--a variation on Vonnegut•s

theme of protagonist as victim. While Howard knowingly submits to

teing used and creates his own Dresden, his foreknowledge could not

a·l lay the pain he would suffer or make more bearable his eventual

ret<lization that, like pigs in the Chicago stockyards, every part of

him would be used. He unknowingly transmits the news of Helga•s

dea·,·h even before he has heard about it. His unpublished plays bring

fame and fortune to an aspiring Russian playwright, Stepan Bodovskov,

33

who publishes them as his own works. Even the contents of his private

diary describing his love for Helga are usurped and transformed into

an international pornographic best-seller. By the time Resi comes

into his life, he feels 11 SO used up that [he couldn't] love anymore 11

(p. 166). All he could do was lament the ways he had been ruthlessly

and unjustly exploited: "That part of me that wanted to tell the truth

got turned into an expert liar! The lover in me got turned into a

pornographer! The artist in me got turned into ugliness such as the

world has rarely seen before. Even my most cherished memories have

been converted into catfood, glue, and liverwurst.. (p. 150).

Typical of Vonnegut's heroes, Howard tries to evade his Dresden.

During the war his primary means of evasion is his 11 nation of two, 11

the metaphor he uses to describe his relationship with Helga.

Claiming that his 11 WOrld rather than [himself] was diseased .. (p. 185),

he escapes the sick world by living in a private 11 Sovereign territori'

that he and Helga create:

Das Reich der Zwei, the nation of two my Helga and I had--its territory, the territory we defended so jealously, didn't go much beyond the bounds of our great double bed. Flat, tufted, springy little country, with my Helga and me for mountains. And, with nothing in my life making sense but love, what a student of geography I was! (p. 44)

As Vonnegut critic Stanley Schatt explains, "[Howard] escapes the

'Mother Night' forces in man by creating his own little world from

which he can watch his actions as a Nazi with detachment and even

smug amusement, secure in the knowledge that he is only acting." 29

When Helga dies, however, that world collapses and Howard becomes 11 a

nationless person" (p. 44).

34

Without Helga Howard lapses into a 15-year spell of schizophrenia,

11 that boon to modern mankind 11 (p. 133), to escape reality. Through

schizophrenia, the psychological disorder characterized mainly by a

split from reality, he is able to play his wartime roles successfully,

pretend that Helga is still alive, and convince himself that he alone

is sane in an increasingly insane world. Thus we read Howard's

description of the crazy Dr. Lionel Jones, his explanation of the

totalitarian mind (the cuckoo clock in hell with missing gears), and

his insistence that all the gears of his own 11 thinking machine .. are

intact (p. 162-63).

He spends nearly all his time in New York evading his Dresden.

He refuses to accept the person he had become years earlier in Germany

and ignores the crimes committed by this 11 most vicious sonofabitch 11

(p. 138). He placates himself as best he can, drinking toasts to his

imaginary Helga, listening to his war-surplus recordings of "White

Christmas, .. and, later, playing chess with his neighbor Kraft. The

machinations of Kraft and Resi, however, eventually jolt Howard out

of his longterm dawdling, and his overdue confrontation begins. The

botched kidnap attempt and Resi's subsequent suicide bring Howard

to a crossroad that offers two options: return to purgatory or face

himself.

Not surprisingly, a sudden onslaught of catatonia stymies

Howard's intent to contend with his past. Confronting his Dresden

at last, the horror so overwhelms him that his mind freezes and he

swoons with feelings of unreality. People around him begin to "glow11

like "lightning bugs" (p. 169) and he feels unable to move until a

35

policeman prods him. Beneath the cataleptic surface, however, lay

determination to act. When he meets his old wartime nemesis, Bernard

O'Hare, he immediately recognizes O'Hare as a reflection of himself,

an embodiment of the same "Mother Night" forces that he himself had

succumbed to years earlier. He chastises O'Hare with eloquence and

clarity that bespeak this painful awareness of his own sins:

"I'm not your destiny, or the Devil, either!" I said. "Look at you! Came to ki 11 evil with your bare hands, and now away you go with no more glory than a man side­swiped by a Greyhound bus! And that's all the glory you deserve! ••• That's all that any man at war with pure evil deserves.

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, ••• but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive" (p. 181).

His catalepsis returns after confronting O'Hare, yet Howard

continues to fight off the inclination toward mental inertia.

Acknowledging that he is indeed what he had pretended to be, he

determines to punish "the undiluted evil in [him], the evil that had

had its effect on millions, the disgusting creature good people

wanted dead and underground" (p. 184). He begs an acquaintance to

"call up somebody who wants to give [him] a trial" (p. 184), and waits

stoically for "three Zionist heroes" to take him away: "The instant

they did that, [he] felt enormously relieved" (p. 187).

The reappearance of Frank Wirtanen during Howard's trial in Israel

puts a crimp in his plans to punish himself. With Wirtanen's avowal

of Howard's espionage role in World War II, Howard would be exonerated

of all wrongdoing and set free. But, while the world might be ready

36 ~

to forgiv~ him, Howard knows he is nonetheless guilty and finds the

prospect tf freedom 11 nauseating 11 (p. 192). Condemning himself for

11 crimes agl inst himself 11 (p. 192), he commits suicide in his jail cell.

In tak·ing his life, Howard succeeds in his struggle to be moral.

Once he conironts his Dresden and sees that the ''honest me [hidden]

deep inside 11 is really the vile Nazi who 11 Strutted like Hitler's

right-hand %.n 11 (p. 41), he wants to be punished. When the world

refuses him, . e assumes the responsibility. In this sense, ki 11 ing

himself is a htghly moral act. Howard Campbell, then, is a unique

Vonnegut hero. He could not live with dignity, given the untenable

circumstances of his peculiar 11 inward" Dresden. Yet his suicide is

not an evasion. It is the culmination of his struggle to be a moral

person. Through his death, he conquers the "Mother Night 11 forces in

him.

In Mother Nig1t, Vonnegut alters somewhat his definition of hero.

Whereas, in the pre~ious two novels, he bases his concept of hero on

the premise that d i ~mi ty derives from fee 1 i ngs of useful ness or

purpose, in this nov,,l he takes a slightly different tack. For Mother

Night does not tell the story of Howard's discovering meaning or purpose

in life, as The Siren·~· of Titan does. Rather it chronicles Howard's

embracing and contending with the evil in him--evil that enabled him

to pretend to be moral most of his life. Thus Vonnegut shifts his

focus in Mother Night t1 the moral struggle, more closely aligning

man's ability to live w-.th dignity--the key requirement of the heroic-­

with his success in the struggle to be a good, moral person.

37

In his next novel, Vonnegut shifts his focus again. Returning

to the formula he used in Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan that

dignity comes from a sense of meaning or purpose in life, he

downplays the moral struggle to explore how the age-old panacea,

religion, can fill man's need for sincere belief.

38

CHAPTER FOUR: Cat's Cradle

11 My God--life! Who can understand even one little minute of it?" - Jonah

Vonnegut's fourth novel takes its name from a game that children

play with string. The object of the game is to create a 11 cat's

cradle 11 by manipulating a piece of string, yet the result is 11 nothing

but a bunch of X's between sombody's hands. 113° Children 11 grow up

crazy 11 trying to make some sense out of the inane game. They 11 look

and look and look at all those X.'s, 11 but there is 11 no damn c.a.t,

no damn c.ttadte.11 (p. 114).

The game is the dominant metaphor for the hyperbolic absurdity

of life depicted in the novel. With the imaginary eat's cradle, a

person fabricates meaning from a meaningless tangle of string.

Likewise, with science, religion, and other ''truths, 11 man imposes

meaning on his helter-skelter existence. He pretends to comprehend

what Vonnegut sees as essentially incomprehensible by assigning

scientific or religious explanations to the world around him and his

behavior in it.

While science and religion perform the same function, Vonnegut

believes that science can be infinitely more harmful than religion. 31

To make his point, he fills eat's Cradle with highly intelligent but

socially irresponsible scientists, one of whom concocts ice-9, a lethal

form of ice that causes a world-wide disaster. The scientists brag

-- 39

brag about the importance of their work: "New knowledge is the most

valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with,

the richer we become" (p. 36). But Vonnegut questions this stance by

creating a nightmare in which a new bit of truth plays global havoc.

It all started innocently enough and with admirable intentions.

Dr. Felix Hoenikker, the renowned scientist who had enriched mankind

with his invention of the atomic bomb, developed ice-9 in response

to a Marine Corps complaint that the soldiers had to trek through too

much mud and swampland. Ice-9 was a version of ordinary H2o that

would freeze in temperatures below 114°F and would instantly alter

the composition of normal water to assume its characteristics. A

crystal of ice-9 would turn a muddy, mucky swamp into an instant

hard-surfaced plane--the side of a huge ice cube. But the danger

of ice-9 far outweighed its potential benefit, and when a chip

accidentally dropped into the Caribbean Sea, life on earth came to an

abrupt end as the oceans of the world crystallized into a sea of ice-9.

"What hope can there be for mankind when there are men such as

Felix Hoenikker to give such playthings as ice-9 to such short-sighted

children as almost all men and women are? 11 rails Jonah, the novels'

protagonist, as he confronts his Dresden experience (p. 164). A

free-lance journalist sent on an assignment to the fictional Caribbean

island of San Lorenzo, Jonah is a first-hand observer to the events

that trigger the ice-9 disaster, and as a typical Vonnegut protagonist,

he is powerless to do anything about it.

Jonah tells his story in retrospect, six months after the ice-9

disaster. He has replaced his christened name, John, with Jonah and

40

has adopted the religion of San Lorenzo, Bokononism. It is as a

Bokononist that Jonah writes about his incredible experiences, with

the purpose of "examining all strong hints as to what on earth we,

collectively, have been up to" (p. 13).

The novel opens in Ilium, New York, Paul Proteus' old hometown.

Ilium now houses the Research Laboratory of the General Forge and

Foundry Company, a giant think tank where people like Felix Hoenikker

work "to increase knowledge, to work toward no end but that" (p. 36).

Ilium is also the town where the Hoenikker family lived and the three

Hoenikker children--Angela, Frank, and Newt--grew up.

Travelling on business, Jonah stops in Ilium to do some research

for a book he wants to write. Entitled The Day the World Ended, the

book was 11 to be an account of what important Americans had done on

the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan ..

(p. 11). Since Felix Hoenikker had been the chief architect of the

atomic bomb, Jonah hoped to gather information about him during his

stopover in Ilium.

What he discovers is an amoral scientist and his oddball family.

Before his accidental death caused by ice-9, Hoenikker had lived such

a detached life that he rarely talked to his children, he once tipped

his wife for cooking a nice breakfast, he abandoned his running car

in the middle of traffic, and he puzzled over a colleague's comment

about the word "sin":

After the [atomic bomb] went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to [Hoenikker] and said, 11 Science has now known sin. 11 And do you know what [Hoenikker] said? He said, "What is sin?.. (p. 21)

41

When his wife died "for lack of love and understanding" (p. 53),

Hoenikker turned to his daughter Angela to take over the functions of

housekeeper and mother. A six-foot horsefaced dullard, Angela spent

her young adulthood as a servant to her father and nanny to her

brothers. She had no friends, no social life, no ambitions. Her

eventual marriage to the handsome Harrison Conners surprises Angela

as much as anyone.

Angela's brother Frank was a secretive lad whom his schoolmates

called Agent X-9. He spent most of his childhood torturing bugs

trapped in Mason jars and building model airplanes in the basement

of a neighborhood hobby shop. He walked out during his father's

funeral and disappeared, surfacing several years later as the Major

General of San Lorenzo.

Little Newt, the youngest member of the Hoenikker family, was a

pre-med dropout from Cornell University. A fraternity brother of

Jonah, Newt became Jonah's primary source of information about Felix

Hoenikker. At the time of their correspondence, Newt was preparing

to marry Zinka, a 42-year-old Ukrainian midget who danced with the

Borzoi Dance Company. After a brief premarital sojourn, however,

Zinka called off the wedding and returned home to Russia.

The strange circumstances surrounding the Hoenikker children

stem from their father's invention of ice-9. When Felix died, the

children found the concoction 11 in pots and pans on the kitchen

countertop 11 (p. 166). They divided the ice-9 chips among themselves,

storing them in little Thermos jugs that accompanied them everywhere.

Later, each Hoenikker would barter his supply of ice-9 for something:

42 p '

Angela for her handsome husband, Frank for his government position, and

Newt for his aborted affair with Zinka (whom we learn was a Russian

spy).

After introducing the Hoenikker family and ice-9, Vonnegut takes

us to San Lorenzo, where Major General Frank Hoenikker is about to

be married. 11 Papa 11 Monzano, the island•s gravely ill president, has

passed the gavel to Frank, and with the presidency goes marriage to

his beautiful daughter Mona. To celebrate his impending marriage,

Frank invites Angela and Newt to San Lorenzo--his first communication

with his sister and brother since their father•s funeral years earlier.

Delighted to hear from Frank and learn of his wedding plans, Angela

and Newt hurry off to San Lorenzo. At the same time, Jonah is

preparing to travel to San Lorenzo on an unrelated journalistic

assignment.

They all converge upon the island at the same time and receive

a grand, ceremonious welcome. Major General Hoenikker and Papa

Monzano greet them at the airport and crowds of islanders assemble

to witness the arrival of their new First Family. But the pomp and

circumstance end abruptly when Papa collapses on the dais.

Jonah, at this point a mere bystander, goes to his hotel,

reflecting about his first impressions of San Lorezno: the masses of

deadened, poverty-ridden people; the dying president and his

extraordinarily beautiful daughter; Major General Hoenikker, the

awkward boy pretending to be a sophisticated, adept leader. Arriving

at the new San Lorenzan Hilton Hotel--so new that he is the first and

only guest--Jonah encounters a ringing telephone as he enters his

43

room. He is summoned to Frank Hoenikker•s house, where Angela and

Newt are staying, to discuss "a very important thing in [Jonah • s]

life" (p. 111)--the opportunity to become the next president of San

Lorenzo. Frank explains to Jonah: "You're a worldly person, used

to meeting the public; and I'm a technical person, used to working

behind the scenes, making things go 11 (p. 133).

Jonah, like Howard Campbell, at first rejects the offer. But

after thinking about the benefits--wealth, status, marriage to

Mona--he accepts. Eager to formalize their deal, Frank decides to

introduce Jonah to the islanders the next day, amid ceremonies planned

for the annual observation of 11 0ne Hundred Martyrs to Democracy, ..

a memorial day for 100 San Lorenzans who fought and died in

World War II.

What happens the next day, however, is a horrendous comedy of

errors. Papa, tormented to extremes by his illness, eats a sliver

of ice-9 and dies instantly. Meanwhile, the activities of the day

begin with an Air Force demonstration, but one of the planes

malfunctions and crashes into the cliff on which the presidential

palace sits. The collision causes a massive landslide, dumping

the palace into the sea below. Of course, with the palace goes the

frozen body of Papa and, in what Jonah calls 11 the grand ah-whoom"

(p. 174), the ocean crystallizes instantly into a worldwide block of

ice-9.

With giant tornadoes brewing, Jonah and Mona escape to a secret

hiding place beneath the ground, where they stay for seven days until

the tornadoes dissipate. When they emerge they find total destruction:

buildings have been destroyed, almost everyone has been killed, and

44

the island has been ravaged. Overwhelmed by what she encounters, Mona

touches a crystal of ice-9, now everywhere, to her lips and dies.

Jonah wanders aimlessly, until he runs into the only other survivors-­

Newt, Frank, and an elderly couple named the Crosbys. They band

together for the next six months as a"Swiss Family Robinson 11 (p. 183),

during which time Jonah writes his story. The novel ends with no

glimmer of hope, no hint of change. The end of the world has come,

and it is just a matter of time before the few remaining people perish.

With Cat•s Cradle, Vonnegut once again presents a horrifying

episode akin to his own Dresden experience. With the same didactic

spirit we found in Player Piano, he assumes the role of social critic

in Cat•s Cradle, warning his readers not to accept naively "the myth

of scientific progress. 1132 His fear that unchecked scientific study

could produce another Hiroshima--or worse--is at the heart of the

novel. And his grim belief that something catastrophic will happen

if scientists do not become more socially responsible prompts him

not only to describe the frightening possibilities but also to examine

how people would exist in its aftermath. These concerns, coupled

with his ongoing search for a hero, combine to yield one of Vonnegut•s

best literary efforts.

Jonah•s Dresden experience is, of course. the ice-9 apocalypse.

The irony, a twist Vonnegut adds to intensify the horror, is that

Jonah becomes embroiled in the mess because of his noble intention to

write about the bombing of Hiroshima. In the hope that he could focus

people•s attention on the atrocity that a presumably wonderful

45

scientific discovery can cause, he winds up a victim of the very kind

of atrocity he hoped to prevent. With the ice-9 disaster, his plans

to write about "the day the world ended" materialize into a book that

recounts the literal story.

Like his predecessors--especially Malachi Constant--Jonah is

clearly a victim of circumstances beyond his control. By the time

he discovers that ice-9 exists, a fear that haunts him since his early

days of research at the General Forge and Foundry Company, the

disaster is imminent. The "grand ah-whoom" takes place swiftly and

quietly as he watches helplessly: "[It] made me feel as though my

own free will were as irrelevant as the free will of a piggy-wig

arriving at the Chicago stockyards" (p. 128). Later, recalling his

impression of a painting by Newt that looked like "a sort of spider's

web," Jonah realizes he was right in seeing the "scratches ••• as

the sticky net of human frailty hung up on a moonless night to dry"

(p. 113).

Jonah's escape from his Dresden experience differs from his

predecessors. His is an actual, physical escape rather than a

psychological evasion ora refusal to accept reality. When the ice-9

disaster strikes and the sky fills with violent tornadoes, Jonah and

Mona flee to a dungeon that Papa Manzano had converted into "a cozy

bomb shelter" (p. 175). Safe in this "rock womb" (p. 176), Jonah

and Mona nevertheless know their sanctuary is temporary. The "creature

comforts of the dungeon did nothing to mitigate" their painful

awareness of what was happening above them: "Tornadoes, strewing the

poisonous blue-white frost of ice-9 everywhere, tore everyone and

46

everything above ground to pieces. Anything that still lived would

die soon enough of thirst--or hunger--or rage--or apathy 11 (p. 177).

Jonah's one attempt at a psychological evasion was his 11 SOrdid

sex episode .. (p. 178) with Mona. Fantasizing that his 11 heavenly

Mona 11 would provide him 11 profound, comforting secrets 11 and imagining

that 11 behind her marvelous eyes lurked mysteries as old as Eve, 11

Jonah foolishly looked to the vapid Mona much like Howard Campbell

had looked to Helga. But, while the 11 nation of two 11 had worked for

Howard and Helga, it is a dismal failure for Jonah and Mona, one

which Jonah dismisses abruptly: 11 Suffice it to say that I was both

repulsive and repulsed 11 (p. 178).

Emerging from his short-lived sanctuary with Mona, Jonah prepares

to confront his Dresden but cannot anticipate the shock and horror he

encounters. The widespread destruction and death sends him reeling,

and Mona•s abrupt suicide causes him to collapse. In a final, weak

attempt to escape reality, he simply closes his eyes and lets his

11 mind go blank 11 (p. 183). Discovered soon after by the other

survivors, he feels 11 deep, idiotic relief 11 to embrace another human

being, even if it were a 11 fleshy, humid barnyard fool 11 (p. 183).

We are not privy to what happens during the six-month interval

between the i ce-9 disaster and Jonah • s 11 Writi ng .. this book. Other

than describing his post-ice-9 life as a 11 Swiss Family Robinson ..

existence and noting his conversion to Bokononism, Jonah gives no hint

of a moral struggle. All we really know is that, in the aftermath

of ice-9, Christianity could not provide him a suitable moral code.

47

He needed a moral framework that embraced the global absurdity of his

post-ice-9 world, and Bokononism better fit that bill.

Vonnegut downplays any moral struggle in Cat•s Cradle, in order

to highlight Bokononism as a workable solution to Jonah•s Dresden-like

predicament. What we read, then, is not an account of Jonah•s

attempts to be a moral person but an interpretation of the ice-9

catastrophe from his perspective as a Bokononist. With any moral

struggle behind him, he shows us how Bokononism has enabled him to

live with a modicum of dignity in the deranged post-ice-9 world.

Through Bokononism Jonah emerges as one of Vonnegut•s most heroic

protagonists. To understand this, we need to understand Bokononism,

an ingenious Vonnegut invention.

A 50-year-old San Lorenzan religion, Bokononism derives its name

from its founder, Bokonon. Bokonon and his partner McCabe came to

San Lorenzo to establish a utopia but created a religion instead.

They abandoned their utopian plans when they found that good is always

counterbalanced by evil. No matter how much "good" they could create

in their utopia, at least an equal portion of "bad" would ensue.

Rather than put forth the Sisyphean effort of eradicating evil, they

decided to exploit "the priceless equilibrium between good and evil":

"It was a belief of Bokonon that good societies could be built only

by pitting good against evil, and by keeping the tension between the

two high at all times" (p. 74). They used themselves to enact their

theory of dynamic tension: McCabe became the "good guy" and Bokonon

became the outlaw. And, as the strife between Bokonon and McCabe

grew, "so did the happiness of the people grow" (p. 118).

48

Using his growing reputation to market his religion, Bokonon

candidly admitted that it consisted of a 11 pack of foma (harmless

untruths)": "Truth was the enemy of the people because the truth was

so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people

with better and better lies" (p. 118). In one of the many 11Calypsos"

that comprise the "Books of Bokonon," he explains:

I wanted all things To seem to make some sense, So we all could be happy, yes, Instead of tense. And I made up lies So that they all fit nice, And I made this sad world A par-a-dise. (p. 90)

With Bokononism Vonnegut uses two provocative ideas from his

earlier works. The first comes from Mother Night, in which the

"editor" notes that "lies can be the most beguiling forms of truth." 33

As we saw in the previous chapter, Howard Campbell ~ the person he

had pretended to be. His lies became his truths, and the novel

chronicles his insight into the "real" Howard Campbell. The second

idea is the usefulness of religion. Noted briefly in Player Piano

through the character of Paul Lasher, an ex-Presbyterian minister,

and developed further in The Sirens of Titan through Winston Niles

Rumfoord's Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, the idea is fleshed

out in Cat's Cradle. While Vonnegut does explain the general premise

of Rumfoord's religion and describes people happily handicapping

themselves to ensure parity, he does not highlight the clever interplay

between religion and lies, nor does he give us such wonderfully

bizarre yet apropos dogma until Bokononism. With his concepts of

11 karass," "vin-dit, 11 11 wrang wrang," "boko maru, 11 and others, he lays

49 ,, '

out systematic explanations and behavioral formulas, all based on

11 foma, 11 that make life bearable.

A- mirror to life, Bokononism is riddled with inconsistencies,

contradictions, and trivia. The first 11 book, 11 for example, is prefaced

by the warning, 11 Don•t be a fool! Close this book at once! It is

nothing but foma! 11 (p. 177). The other 11 books 11 are filled with

nonsensical sayings and trivial doggerel: 111 Busy, busy, busy• is

what we Bokononists say whenever we think of how complicated and

unpredictable the machinery of life really is 11 (p. 51) and 11 We do,

doodley do, doodley do, doodley do,/What we must, muddily must,

muddily must, muddily must;/Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,

muddily do,/Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust 11

(p. 178).

The beauty of Bokononism is that, through its doggerel and

deception, it 11 actually contributes to the mutual love and enjoyment

of life by the natives of San Lorenzo}4 And it transforms John from

a heavy drinking, chain smoking, twice married wanderer who once

contemplated nihilism out of his frustration with his inability to

understand life into Jonah, the simple, sardonic, but basically content

soul who has been gulped in and spewed out by a terrifying whale.

His embracing Bokononi sm changes him from a man who cries out, 11 My

God--life! Who can understand even one little minute of it? 11 to

one who quietly acknowledges that life is, after all, a eat's cradle

that was 11meant to happen. 11 As a Bokononi st Jonah can 1 ive with

peace and dignity, fully aware that his world is deranged and his own

life absurd. He is, indeed,aVonnegut hero.

50

In Cat•s Cradle, Vonnegut broaches an interesting solution to the

human dilemma of finding meaning in a meaningless world: lies. In

spite -of the silliness and humor of Bokononism, the fictive religion

readily demonstrates the palliative effect that 11 harmless untruths 11

can have in situations--like that described in the novel--which defy

logic and reason. In a world where a Dresden holocaust, nuclear

obliteration, or ice-9 catastrophe can occur, 11 foma 11 clearly can be

more helpful than potentially harmful truths which science may unfold.

Systematically presented as they are in Bokononism--or any religion-­

they help structure peoples• lives and, more importantly, they give

people something to believe in.

Once again, then, Vonnegut addresses man•s need for sincere

belief, the issue he raised three novels earlier in Player Piano.

In Cat•s Cradle he repeats his twofold contention that, to be heroic,

the protagonist must be able to live with dignity and that, to live

with dignity, he must satisfy his need for sincere belief. We saw

Paul Proteus and Howard Campbell try, but fail, to live with dignity,

and we saw Malachi Constant and then Jonah succeed. Next we will

see how Vonnegut•s last two protagonists, Eliot Rosewater and Billy

Pilgrim, fare in this same struggle.

51

CHAPTER FIVE: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

11 Be generous. Be kind ...

- Eliot Rosewater

With his fifth novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965),

Vonnegut moves closer to telling his Dresden story. While we still

encounter metaphoric Dresdens in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, World

War II is a major cause of Eliot Rosewater•s problems, and a climactic

scene in the novel depicts the city of Indianapolis engulfed a

Dresden-like firestorm. Like Vonnegut, Eliot Rosewater was a bright,

educated young man whose neatly ordered world view was turned upside

down after he experienced war•s pain, inhumanity, and pointlessness.

Yet the crux of Eliot•s dilemma in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

is not World War II. Although the war looms large in Eliot•s

background, most of Eliot•s problems arise from the society in which

he lives: a society that fosters the existence of two classes of

people--the 11 haves 11 and the 11 have nots 11 --a society that makes for a

11 savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate .. distribution of

wealth. 35 As the narrator tells us in the opening lines of the novel,

Eliot•s Dresden is 11 a sum of money 11 (p. 7).

Eliot Rosewater, like Paul Proteus and Malachi Constant, is one

of society•s 11 haves. 11 Born into America•s wealthiest family, Eliot

inherits a whopping amount of money, invested and protected by the

Rosewater Foundation. So tremendous is the Rosewater fortune that

52

Eliot draws a yearly income of $1 million from the interest and

dividends alone. The provisions of the Foundation were such that

the money would pass to each new Rosewater generation and, while the

corporate charter forbade any tampering with the capital, the

recipients were free to spend the earnings as they pleased. When

the novel opens, Eliot is the Foundation•s president.

A Ph.D in international law who once 11dreamed of helping the

United Nations in some way 11 (p. 16), Eliot has an impressive

background and credentials. He was 11 raised, educated, and entertained

on the Eastern seaboard and in Europe 11 (p. 16). He had an illustrious

career in World War II, rising to the rank of captain and earning

numerous medals for his courage and accomplishments. He married a

well-bred Eastern socialite, Sylvia duVrais Zetterling, and became

president of the Rosewater Foundation by the time he was forty-six.

At first, Eliot 11 chose to take the Foundation seriously, 11 using it as

a mechanism for achieving 11 beautiful, compassionate, and scientific

things 11:

11 Rosewater dollars fought cancer and mental illness and race

prejudice and police brutality and countless other miseries,

encouraged college professors to look for truth, bought beauty at any

pri ce 11 (p. 17).

But Eliot•s picture is not entirely golden. The longer he serves

as president of the Foundation, the more intense he feels about the

unfair distribution of wealth in America; the more tormented and

self-deprecatory he becomes because of his graced position. In a

letter to his heir-- 11 whoever you may be 11 (p. 10)--he articulates

his sentiments about 11 the wild ways money is passed around on earth 11

53

(p. 21) and places bl arne on 11 those sadly recent ancestors [who]

had not made it the law of the Utopia that the wealth of each citizen

should be limited'' (p. 12). He redefines the so-called American

dream in a new dictum: 11 Grab much too much, or you'll get nothing

at a11 11 (p. 13). And he criticizes himself as the 11drunkard,

Utopian dreamer, tinhorn saint, and aimless foo1 11 who thought he

might change things (p. 14).

Part of Eliot's problems, we learn, stems from two colossal

tragedies that occurred during his young adulthood. The first was

a sailing accident when Eliot was nineteen. Through his negligence,

his mother fell overboard from the Rosewater yacht and drowned.

The second, even more traumatic for Eliot, was a wartime accident

in which Eliot opened fire on a group of supposed enemies, only to

find that he had murdered innocent civilians. When he had discovered

his terrible mistake, he 11 Seemed reasonably well for about ten

minutes • • • • And then he calmly lay down in front of a moving

truck 11 (p. 64). Not surprisingly, Eliot subsequently suffered a

severe nervous breakdown from which he never completely recovers.

The memory of these incidents, especially the latter, haunt

Eliot for years afterward. Knowing that people had suffered and died

at his hands, he feels compelled to atone for his sins in some

significant way. His early post-war desire to help the United Nations

and his later largesse as president of the Rosewater Foundation

bespeak Eliot's need to make amends for his past.

Soon after he becomes president, however, he sees that his

position in the Foundation is a sham. His money was not buying him

54

the freedom he needed--freedom from his deep-set guilt--and the

projects he was funding served little purpose. To Eliot, the pursuit

of knowledge, truth, and beauty~~the function of the arts and science-­

is largely an irrelevancy in a world where suffering and death are

the common denominators of humanity. These concerns, coupled with his

growing frustration with the senseless 11 Way money is passed around,"

lead him to abandon his posh New York life in search of a more

satisfying, redemptive way to live.

His quest takes him on a whimsical journey to such remote,

unrelated places as Elsinore, California; Vashti, Texas; Clover Lick,

West Virginia; and Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He hobnobs with local

volunteer firemen, the "salt of the earth 11 (p. 23), and becomes an

avid admirer of science fiction writers, "the only ones with guts

enough to really care about the future 11 (p. 18). In letters to his

wife from these various towns, he castigates the "shallow and

preposterous posing that was [their] life in New York" (p. 31) and

expresses his hope of discovering "something" that will tell him

"where to go, what to do there, and why to do it" (p. 31).

His search ends in Rosewater, Indiana, the "drab little American

town" (p. 33) where his family had made its fortune years earlier.

Echoing the Homesteaders from Player Piano, the people of Rosewater

are simple, "discarded" Americans whose usefulness or purpose in

society had ceased long ago. They live in ramshackle houses, work

desultorily in deadend jobs, and suffer the full range of maladies

that typically beleaguer "have-nots." Vonnegut is merciless in his

description of Rosewater: "All was shithouses, shacks, alcoholism,

55

ignorance, idiocy, and perversion, for all that was healthy and busy

and intelligent in Rosewater County shunned the county seat 11 (p. 39).

Here, in this pathetic town with its cretinous inhabitants, Eliot

finds his niche. He explains to Sylvia, 11 I look at these people,

these Americans, • and I realize that they can't even care about

themselves any more--because they have no use • • • • I'm going to

love these discarded Americans, even though they're useless and

unattractive .. (p. 36). He settles into a decaying one-room office,

installs a telephone, and opens business as the Rosewater Foundation.

His motto: 11 How can we help you? 11 (p. 49).

Disbursing paltry sums of money with abundantadvice to whoever

needs 11 help, 11 Eliot becomes the spiritual volunteer fireman of

Rosewater. 36 His telephone number spreads rapidly to every house and

phone booth in town, and people begin calling him at all hours of

the day, whenever their problems become too much to bear. In an

average day, Eliot would give a man $500 not to commit suicide, tell

another to take aspirin with a glass of wine, soothe a paranoid

woman who, 11 by almost anybody's standards was too dumb to live,.

(p. 156), buy parole for an unfairly imprisoned wrongdoer ( 11 most of

Eliot's clients weren't brave enough or clever enough for lives of

crime 11 (p. 56)), and dole out unlimited amounts of love and

understanding. The people of Rosewater, in turn, revere Eliot as a

godsend and saint. They take literally the Foundation's motto,

relying on him for their every need. Most find that what he has to

offer surpasses what any religion can offer, so they look upon him

as a spiritual leader as well. Thus, at one point in the novel, we

56

see Eliot preparing to baptize two newborn babies, whom he greets

unceremoniously with 11 Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth, .. and instructs,

11 There• s only one rule that I know of, babies: • ••• you • ve got to

be kind 111 (p. 93).

The 11 new 11 Eliot nevertheless remains pained and guilt-ridden.

Though his humanistic concerns are sincere and, in his own way, he

succeeds in countering the country•s inequitable distribution of

wealth, Eliot seems defeated, jaded, alone. His wife had joined him

briefly in Rosewater but had returned to New York, unable to adjust to

her changed husband and his new squalid life style. His father, a

prominent, hard-nosed U.S. Senator, had practically disowned him,

forcefully dena unci ng Eli at • s 11 compassion for the maggots in the slime

on the bottom of the human garbage pail 11 (p. 46). Eliot himself had

taken to drinking heavily, torn between his wife and family on one

hand and the people of Rosewater on the other.

Back in New York, 11 it was common gossip 11 that Eliot was a

11 flamboyantly sick man 11 (p. 23). In addition to the fact that he

had 11 killed his mother, had a terrifying tyrantfor a father, 11 and had

endured a horrifying experience in world War II, he was now playing

a lunatic Good Samaritan in the depraved town of Rosewater. Wilfully

forfeiting luxuries for squa 1 or, he was 11 Variously spoke of as

•The Nut, • 1The Saint, • 1The Holy Roller, • •John the Baptist, • and

so on 11 (p. 10). In a society where money was the yardstick for

measuring success, people naturally wondered about Eliot•s sanity.

Here, ostensibly, was a 11 have 11 who chose to be a 11 have not. 11

57

The plot of the novel hinges on the question of Eliot's sanity.

Since the bylaws of the Rosewater Foundation declared that "all officers

were officers for life unless proved legally insane" (p. 8), Eliot

stood to lose the presidency if the speculation about him proved

true--that he was insane. With no heir to succeed him, the Rosewater·

fortune would then revert to the closest living relative, a distant

cousin named Fred who "didn't even know ••• that he was related

to the Indiana Rosewaters" (p. 95).

A weasley young lawyer, Norman Mushari, sees the situation as a

prime opportunity. He masterminds a plan whereby Fred will bring

Eliot to court, have him declared insane, and inherit Eliot's money.

Norman, of course, will represent Fred and pick up a handsome fee for

his services.

The lawsuit is the last straw for Eliot. Beleaguered by his

father's constant harassments, crushed by the break-up of his

marriage, worn by three years of ministering to the people of Rosewate~

he cannot tolerate the added stress of a sanity hearing. En route to

a "last chance" meeting with Sylvia, he lapses into a schizophrenic

stupor and, hallucinating, sees the city of Indianapolis engulfed in

a huge firestorm. He blacks out--and awakens a full year later in a

mental institution, surrounded by his father, doctors, and lawyers.

The picture of mental and physical health, he seems to have undergone

a dramatic transformation back to his pre-Rosewater days, before

the absurdity of his grandiose life had bothered him.

As Eliot regains consciousness, his father is asking him to

explain some solution. Puzzled by the request, Eliot asks a few

58

cautious questions, protecting his facade of sanity, and discovers

the startling news that a year has elapsed, that his sanity hearing

is scheduled the very next day, and that fifty-seven Rosewater women

have filed paternity lawsuits against him. Suddenly, as he tries to

fit these pieces of information into an understandable whole, 11 the

memory of all that had happened in the blackness came crashing

back And with that mighty inward crash of memories came the

idea for settling everything instantly, beautifully, and fairly"

(p. 188). It was the solution his father was asking about.

Realizing that the existence of an heir would put an end to

Norman Mushari's greedy plans, Eliot announces his intention to

"legally acknowledge that every child in Rosewater County said to be

mine is mine, regardless of blood type" and to issue them 11 full rights

of inheritance as my sons and daughters" (p. 190). His concluding

remark, "And tell them ••• to be fruitful and multiply" (p. 190)

ends the novel.

This upbeat conclusion initially catches us off guard. From what

we have seen in the previous novels, we expect a "typical" Vonnegut

ending: one of despair (Gat's Cradle), resignation (Player Piano

and The Sirens of Titan), or death (Mother Night). But what we find

in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater seems just the opposite. After all,

in one masterstroke, Eliot stymies the wicked Mushari's get-rich­

quick scheme, breaks the tyrannical hold his father had over him, and

creates a practical, effective way to counter society's pervasive

11 I've-got-mine-to-hell-with-you" modM v.<..vencU. Does he not resemble

59

the classical literary hero who emerges victorious in a struggle

against a villain?

Yet when we remember who our protagonist is--a questionably sane,

guilt-ridden, tormented soul who blacks out for a full year--we

begin to doubt his triumph and wonder whether, as Peter Reed contends,

the conclusion to the novel is not "something of a throwaway ending,

with comic undercutting on the one hand and darkly tragic implications

on the other." 37 Looking at it in this light, we cannot help but

think that Eliot's final proclamation is just crazy enough to prove

his insanity. And, while Eliot may win the temporary battle with

Mushari on the technicality of an heir, we fear that he will likely

wind up the loser in the long run.

This ambiguity in the conclusion and in the character of Eliot

suggests that we should assess the nature of Eliot's Dresden

experience more closely than we did in the previous novels. For

Eliot's Dresden is less clear, less specific than the others. Rather,

it consists of a number of unrelated circumstances that converge upon

him.

The first of these has to do with money: the way money dominates

people and the way it is used as the primary measure of a person's

success, happiness, and moral stature. As in our own society, the

society in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater elevates people who have

money above the rest of humanity and dismisses those with little or

none as useless, ignorant, and even sinful. It is no wonder, then,

that both groups--the "haves" and "have nots"--suffer from a variety

of neuroses, all stemming from their possession of or desire for

60

money. For the 11 haves," there is the terrible realization that their

wealth does not ensure happiness and their suspicion that society

has conned them cruelly into expecting otherwise. For the 11 have nots, 11

there is the constant striving to get money, to 11 Slurp from the Money

River 11 as Eliot describes it, and their vehement envy of others more

fortunate.

Closely aligned with money is society's rampant materialism.

When our 11 Sadly recent ancestors had not made it the law ••• that

the wealth of each citizen should be limited" (p. 12), people's

greed quickly turned into an obsession to "grab much too much •

(p. 13). As a result, today 11 0ne baby [will] be born owning a big

piece of the country ••• and [another will] be born without owning

anything" (p. 87).

II

Society's mad scrambling for money and material things form a

major part of Eliot's Dresden. While most of the wealthy people in

the novel are "samaritrophic"--"barely able to hear their consciences"

(p. 42-43)--Eliot is painfully aware of the wildfire avarice around

him, and his conscience rails at him to do something about it. Thus

we hear him exhort science fiction writers to 11 think about the silly

ways money gets passed around, and then think up better ways" (p. 22).

We read in his letter to the next president of the Rosewater

Foundation his advice to "be generous. Be kind. You can safely ignore

the arts and science. They never helped anybody. Be a sincere,

attentive friend of the poor" (p. 15). And we find him trying to

raise his father's consciousness, to 11 cure" his father's

samaritrophia: 11 1 think it's terrible the way people don't share

61

things in this country • • • • The least a government could do . . . is to divide things up fairly among the [people]. Life is hard

enough, without people having to worry themselves sick about money,

too. There's plenty for everyone in this country, if only we'll

share more" ( p. 88 ) •

Eliot's discontent with his society could pose a sufficiently

overwhelming dilemma. Yet there is more to Eliot's Dresden than

his social milieu. The deaths he caused in his youth, especially

during World War II, also contribute to his Dresden. Although Eliot

neither talks nor thinks about these tragedies, Vonnegut gives us

enough background information to make it clear that they continue

to bother him. His attempted suicide, his passionate post-war

hatred of the arts, and his refusal to talk about the accidents with

anyone, including his psychiatrists, all point to the intense anguish

and guilt that Eliot suffers as a result of them.

In light of his two-pronged Dresden, Eliot is understandably a

very disturbed person, if not "flamboyantly sick." He estranges

himself from his family and friends, and wilfully abandons his

comfortable, glamorous New York life. Before discovering Rosewater

and formulating plans for his "work of art" there, he wanders around

the country, desperately trying to find a salve for his pain. He

equates himself with Hamlet, caught in a similar excruciating dilemma,

and wonders more than once whether "the sleep of death" is not the

most appealing prospect for him. Even after he finds his "answer"

in Rosewater, he does not derive the peace and fulfillment he

anticipated. After his initial excitement and enthusiasm wane, he

62 ' '

settles into a monotonous routine that reflects his capitulation, his

resignation to accept the pain. Yet, while he cannot find a solution

to his own problems, he nevertheless does what he can to help others

resolve theirs.

His move to Rosewater, thus, stems from mixed motives. On one

hand, it was the most practical, selfless, and beneficial activity he

could undertake, given his anti-capitalistic, humanitarian views. He

could muster the zeal of a religious convert when explaining his work

there. Responding to the widespread speculation about his sanity, he

would ask, 11 What if the nut ••• gave sensible explanations? 11

{p. 154), and then launch into an eloquent diatribe on America's

greed, using the 11 Money River 11 metaphor:

11 The Money River [is] where the wealth of the nation flows. We [the Rosewaters] were born on the banks of it • • • • We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts' content. And we even take slurping lessons so we can slurp more efficiently. 11

Eliot was fleetingly heartless, for he was thinking angrily in the abstract. 11 Born slurpers never are [aware] that they slurped. And they can't imagine what the poor people are talking about when they say they hear somebody slurping. They don't even know what it means when somebody mentions the Money River. When one of us claims that there is no such thing as the Money River I think to myself, 'My gosh, but that's a dishonest and tasteless thing to say. 111

11 I admit [my office in Rosewater] is no Taj Mahal. But should it be, with other Americans having such a rotten time? 11 {p. 88-89)

Rosewater also provided Eliot a fairly safe, effective way to

avoid his Dresden. It enabled him to distance himself from the rest

of society and its materialistic preoccupations. His Foundation

office became his protective womb where he could spend much of his

time sleeping, and his ever-present bottle of Southern Comfort kept

63

him sufficiently inebriated to numb any pain when he was awake.

Consuming his time by "snoozing and scratching himself and occasionally

answering the telephone" (p. 89), Eliot found his days passed quickly,

quietly, and painlessly.

While Eliot could ignore his Dresden in Rosewater, Norman

Mushari's lawsuit brought that life to an abrupt end and pushed Eliot

into a confrontation. At this point, his evasion tactics intensify.

Moving into 11 a kind of unreality,n 38 similar to Howard Campbell's

onslaught of catatonia, Eliot hears "the click 11 and suddenly becomes

samaritrophic. As Noyes Finnerty, a Rosewater ex-convict explains,

"You get to know a man, and deep down there's something bothering him

bad, and maybe you never find out what it is, but it's what makes him

do like he does All of a sudden [one day] you hear the

click from him. You turn and look at him. He's stopped working.

He's all calmed down. He looks real dumb • • • • That thing that

bothered him so will never click on again 11 (p. 168). With his

conscience "clicked 11 off, Eliot had "no surface memory" of the pain

and torment that had driven him to Rosewater. Dressing for a meeting

with Sylvia in Indianapolis, he thinks, "I never felt better in my

life. I feel as though ••• some marvelous new phase of my life were

about to begin 11 (p. 166).

This euphoric evasion is short-lived, however, and soon gives way

to a full-blown breakdown. In a frightening hallucination, Eliot sees

the city of Indianapolis engulfed in a firestorm, emblematic of how

life has consumed him--terribly and totally. He blacks out,

"departing from sanity as his burdened mind sinks into the serenity of

64

a breakdown."39 When he regains consciousness a full year later,

his first thoughts reflect his continuing desire to escape: "Eliot

wished he were a dickey bird, so that he could go up into the tree top

and never come down again. He wanted to fly up so high because there

was something going on at ground-zero that did not make him feel good"

(p. 178). Then, however, he remembers his unique solution to his

problems, and his need to escape ends.

Eliot's coup de grace--adopting the Rosewater children and

making them his heirs--culminates a long struggle to be moral and live

with dignity. His struggle begins when he becomes disenchanted with

his life in New York and his position as Rosewater Foundation

president. Expressing the contempt he feels in the trivial but

satiric couplet, "Many, many good things I have bought I Many, many

bad things I have fought" (p. 17), he rejects that life style because

it did not yield "good things." His subsequent move to Rosewater was

his experiment to achieve good by loving people "who have no use 11

(p. 183). For, as Kilgore Trout would explain, "Poverty is a

relatively mild disease for even a very flimsy American soul, but

uselessness will kill strong and weak alike, and kill every time 11

(p. 184). And, for the most part, Eliot succeeds with his experiment.

Yet, as we have already noted, Rosewater did not satisfy Eliot

completely. Though his work there-- 11 treasuring people as people"

(p. 184)--sustained him morally, his life still lacked dignity. The

pain from having ostracized himself from Sylvia, his family, and

friends and the guilt from having killed peopled tormented him so,

that he could love others but not himself. He was too selfless. The

65

pathetic state of his office-cum-home in Rosewater bespeaks this

tragic self-neglect. And his perpetual alcoholic stupor marks his

ongoing attempt to dull his anguish.

His struggle to be moral--to practice what he preached--continues

to the very end of the novel. When he announces his solution to the

lawsuit and consequently lays the foundation for a permanent endowment

to the people of Rosewater, he succeeds in this struggle. And,

suspicious though we may be of his sanity and the ultimate

consequences of his action, we feel that for the first time in the

novel Eliot finds dignity as well. Knowing he has contrived a unique

solution to a seemingly intractable problem, he appears more self­

assured and proud than he has at any other point in the novel. His

triumphant last words, 11 Tell them to go forth and multiply, .. reflect

the pleasure he feels at the prospect of seeing his work legitimated

and the knowledge that he has not failed the people of Rosewater. For

once he can set aside his guilt and love himself. The novel thus

ends with an air of generosity that 11 lifts [us] out of the topsy­

turvy world of enslaving power into the world of instinctive love .. 40-­

a transcendance that applies equally to Eliot, enabling him to derive

a sense of self-worth and emerge as a wonderfully endearing Vonnegut

hero.

In his search for a hero, Vonnegut keeps returning to the basic

question of man's ability to live with dignity in the face of such

overwhelming,terrifying realities as the Dresden firebombing. We have

seen repeatedly how he connects the needs to invent 11 WOnderful new

lies 11 and to feel useful with the overarching need for sincere belief.

66

Eliot Rosewater appreciated these needs for himself as well as

for others. The purpose of his work in Rosewater, after all, was not

merely for his own benefit but also for the people there. He showed

them--and us--that money does not solve problems, but that love can.

Love in Eliot's view--taking a sincere interest in others, 11 treasuring

people as people 11 --can infuse peoples' lives with a sense of purpose

and meaning, and thus give their lives dignity.

This concept of love is not new to Vonnegut's canon. Malachi

Constant first introduces the idea when he and Bea decide that man's

primary purpose should be to 11 love whoever [is] around to be loved ...

But for Malachi it is a discovery that comes late in his life. For

Eliot it is an enduring motivation that drives him from the very first

page of the novel.

In his next novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, when Dresden itself poses

the dilemma which the protagonist must face, Vonnegut's simplistic

philosophy about love cannot suffice. For Billy Pilgrim, one of

Vonnegut's kindest protagonists, gives and receives love easily, but

does not find the redemptive quality in love that Eliot and Malachi

find. Billy, as we shall see, is so emotionally wracked by his

experiences in World War II that he must resort to schizophrenic

explanations to exist with a modicum of peace and dignity.

67

CHAPTER SIX: Slaughterhouse-Five

11 So it goes."

- Billy Pilgrim

In Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Vonnegut finally confronts his

Dresden experience. No longer a metaphor for the horror and insanity

that modern man must face, Dresden is the literal catastrophe in

Slaughterhouse-Five, and Vonnegut, as the implied author, not only

narrates the story but also insinuates himself in the action. Writing

his Dresden book at last, Vonnegut wants his readers to know that

"he was there," that the incredible war experiences that Billy

Pilgrim endured he also endured. At the very outset of the novel,

he tells us, "All this happened, more or less ... 41

Even though Vonnegut criticizes his book as a "failure" and a

"short, jumbled, jangled" piece of writing (p. 14), it represents

a triumph for him, the end of a struggle which had taken him twenty­

three years and five novels to resolve. After exploring protagonists•

reactions to Dresden-like experiences in his previous five works and

experimenting with ways in which they could live with dignity in the

face of such horrors, Vonnegut was ready to 11 get the real stuff [that

was bothering him] off his chest1142--he was ready to write about his

own devastating experiences in World War II.

To tell his story, he creates the kind, innocent Billy Pilgrim

who, scarcely out of high school, enters World War II just in time

68

to fight in the Battle of the Bulge. Still in civilian clothes, Billy

finds himself in the company of a few American survivors who wander

aimlessly for days around the wintery German countryside. Billy

practically freezes to death before he and his comrades are captured

and sent marching off with other POWs (including Vonnegut) to prison.

Throughout an incomprehensible itinerary that eventually sets him in

Dresden, Billy yearns to be left alone, attracted in his near-death

state to the peace and painlessness that only death could bring him.

"I'll be all right. You guys go on without me," he pleads (p. 24).

But his German captors prod him on, giving him the bare essentials

in food and clothing to keep him alive.

By the time Billy gets to Dresden, his "dance with death" (p. 1)

has ended and his spirits pick up considerably. When he encounters

Dresden, the "Florence of the Elbe," he is awestruck by its beauty:

The Americans arrived in Dresden at five in the afternoon. The boxcar doors opened, and the door­ways framed the loveliest city that most Americans had ever seen. The skyline was intricate and voluptuous and enchanted • It looked like a Sunday school picture of Heaven to Billy Pilgrim. (p. 98-99)

Assigned to work in a factory producing a vitamin syrup for pregnant

women, Billy goes about his work in Dresden with the unquestioning

obedience and naivete of a child. As long as conditions were somewhat

tolerable, "everything was pretty much all right with Billy Pilgrim"

(p. 104).

Then comes the Dresden firebombing, the horrifying massacre that

leaves 135,000 dead and transmorgrifies beautiful, thriving Dresden

into the lifeless "surface of the moon" (p. 118). Protected from the

69 Q '

firestorms by the shelter of the slaughterhouse where he lives, Billy

emerges to find destruction unparalleled in human history--an

apocalypse that would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki pale in comparison.

The horror intensifies when the 11 corpse mining .. begins. With the

vitamin factory destroyed (and all the pregnant women gone), Billy

and his fellow prisoners are charged with the sickening task of

digging up and disposing of bodies, a daily chore that lasts until the

war ends several months later: 11 There were hundreds of corpse mines

operating by and by. They didn't smell bad at first, were max museums.

But then the bodies rotted and liquified, and the stink was like roses

and mustard gas 11 (p. 141).

With the war over, Billy returns home, supposedly forgetting all

that has happened to him. He goes to optometry school, gets married,

becomes rich. He turns a one-office optometry practice into a five­

office chain; he fathers two children; he drives Cadillacs. He

becomes active in community affairs and even serves as president of the

local Lion's Club. To all the people who know him, Billy Pilgrim is

a loving family man, a successful businessman, and a model citizen.

His experiences in the war are, presumably, unimportant memories.

Our narrator, however, tells us otherwise. So stressful are

Billy's war experiences that, shortly before his capture by the

Germans in 1944, he becomes 11 Unstuck in time, 11 and he remains a victim

of spastic time travel for the rest of his life. Whenever things

become too unbearable for Billy, his mind would leap in time to an

unpredictable moment, in both his past and future, all the way from

his pre-birth to his death. As a result, Billy lived in a 11 constant

70

state of stage fright, ••• because he never knew what part of his

1 ife he was going to have to act in next11 (p. 17).

We also read about Billy•s conviction that he had been kidnapped

by creatures from the alien planet Tralfamadore and displayed in a zoo

there for several years. On the night of his daughter•s wedding, years

after the war, Billy claims he was scooped up by a flying saucer and

taken to Tralfamadore, where he lived with the beautiful Montana

Wildhack, the fictive counterpart of a Marilyn Monroe. Because this

entire episode existed in a time warp, Billy says, he was not gone

from Earth for more than a microsecond.

Vonnegut cautions us that Tralfamadore might be a figment of

Billy•s imagination. The third short paragraph into Billy•s story

states silllJly, 11 He says 11 (p. 17), showing the narrator•s doubts about

Billy•s claims and suggesting that we too should be wary. Later in

the novel, we learn that Billy had once read a Kilgore Trout novel

about aliens kidnapping humans and housing them in a zoo on their

home planet--a further indication that Tralfamadore is a product of

Billy•s schizophrenia.

Whether real or imaginary, Tralfamadore plays a significant role

in Billy•s story. 43 For what Billy supposedly learns there becomes

his credo, embodying Tralfamadorian explanations about the 11 true 11

nature of reality (which our faulty human perceptions prevent us from

seeing) and the Tralfamadorian philosophy for living in a

deterministic universe. He redefines the nature of time and death,

and shrugs off wars as inevitable occurrences.

So taken is Billy by these ideas that he determines to spread the

Tralfamadorian gospel to as many people as possible: 11 So many souls

71

were lost and wretched, Billy believed, because they could not see as

well as his little green friends on Tralfamadore •••• He was going

to comfort [these] people with the truth ••• 11 (p. 20). He writes

letters to newspapers. He goes on late-night radio talk shows. He

tries to convert his family, friends, and patients to his unique

outlook.

Not surprisingly, the people around him think that Billy has gone

crazy. But they attribute his insanity to a serious head wound he

suffered in a plane crash, along with the shock of his wife's death

shortly thereafter. No one suspects that the war might be the culprit.

So, by the time Billy is only forty-six, everybody generally assumes

he is a 11 senile widower .. {p. 16).

That, essentially, is the story of Billy Pilgrim. There is no

beginning, middle, or end. His story starts -i.n me.d~ JLU-- 11 Listen.

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. He has gone to sleep a senile

widower and awakened on his wedding day 11 {p. 16)--and ends with the

questioning chirp of a bird in Dresden-- 11 Poo-tee-weet? 11 (p. 142). The

sequencing of action is as erratic as Billy's time travelling. In the

novel's scant 142 pages, the time and place change over fifty times.

Chapters vary in length from two to fifteen pages. Paragraphs are

frequently as brief as one sentence, as Vonnegut moves from one

thought to another, often without a transition or segue. We read

poems, song lyrics, excerpts from historical documents, inscriptions

on jewelry, epitaphs, and military signs. Clearly, the novel is

written in the 11 telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the

planet Tralfamadore 11 (p. 1), a style in which symbols and messages

72

are clumped together· and read all at once: "There isn't any particular

relationship between all the messages, except that the author has

chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce

an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep" (p. 59).

Vonnegut thus experiments with a new mode of writing in

Slaughterhouse-Five, a style that not only differs from that in his

previous novels but, more importantly, fills his need to describe an

indescribable horror. By manipulating time, space, and event so that

they seem to coexist in the novel, Vonnegut cleverly draws us into

Billy's schizophrenia. As a result, we experience--and not merely

observe--Billy's insanity and feel with Vonnegut the full horror of

Dresden. Vonnegut realized that we "lack the imaginative ability to

comprehend the full actuality" of Dresden, 44 so he employs a new

strategy in Slaughterhouse-Five that lets him "conceptualize and

define the night terrors of an era so unreal, so unbelievable, that

the very term 'fiction' seems no longer to have any currency."45

While we obviously cannot read all the symbols and messages in

Slaughterhouse-Five simultaneously, we do come away from the novel

with an appreciation for its innovative structure that transcends

time and space: "The way in which the short scenes from severa 1

points in time are spliced together helps sustain the impression of

concurrent action and intensifies the sense of an interrelationship

f t u46 A d d b th "b t i d o even s •• ~ • n we are move y e eau y, surpr se, an

depth" that the novel evinces, even though it has· "no suspense, no

moral, no causes, no effects" (p. 59).

At the heart of the novel's beauty, surprise, and depth is the

73

character of Billy Pi 1 grim. The protagonist who ends Vonnegut • s

search for a hero, Billy follows the pattern of his predecessors--

confronting the real Dresden, trying to evade the unbearable reality

of it--and shows us that, even under the most trying situations, man

can live with dignity. For Billy, schizophrenia is not only his

escape mechanism but also his salvation. It provides him with an

interpretation of life, based on "harmless untruths" like the

Bokononists• foma, that enables him to live with peace and dignity.

To begin our discussion of Billy's experiences in the war and

how they affected him so severely, let us recall a passage from the

introduction to Mother Night in which Vonnegut summarizes the Dresden

holocaust. The "I" in the excerpt, referring to Vonnegut, could

equally refer to Billy, since Vonnegut•s and Billy's experiences

were the same:

There were about a hundred of us in our particular work group, and we were put out as contract labor to a factory that was making a vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women. It tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke. It was good. I wish I had some right now. And the city was lovely, highly ornamented, like Paris, and untouched by war. It was supposedly an "open" city, not to be attacked since there were no troop concentrations or war industries there.

But high explosives were dropped on Dresden by American and British planes on the night of February 13, 1945 • • • • There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen under­ground.

And then hundreds of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam. More bombs were dropped to keep the firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm. It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. And so what?

74

We didn't get to see the fire storm. We were in a cold meat locker under a slaughterhouse with our six guards and ranks and ranks of dressed cadavers of cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep. We heard the bombs walking around up there. Now and then there would be a gentle shower of calcimine. If we had gone above to take a look, we would have been turned into artifacts characteristic of fire storms: seeming pieces of charred firewood two or three feet long--ridiculously small human beings, or jumbo fried grasshoppers, if you will.

The malt syrup factory was gone. Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men. So we were put to work as corpse miners, breaking into shelters, bringing bodies out. And I got to see many German types of all ages as death found them, usually with valuables in their laps. Sometimes relatives would come to watch us dig. There were interesting, too. (p. vi-vii)

These five brief paragraphs poignantly describe the nightmare

that Billy endures. In the backdrop is the war, irrational and

monstrous. At the core of the nightmare is Dresden itself, a

catastrophe so awesome and horrifying that it throws Billy into a

psychological tailspin for the rest of his life. Like Eliot Rosewater,

Billy becomes "flamboyantly sick" because of the war and Dresden.

The novel is filled with illustrations of how the war devastates

Billy. In addition to time travel and his Tralfamadorian

hallucinations, we see the effects of Dresden in such maladies as

narcolepsy, amnesia, and shell shock:

Billy had fallen asleep while exam1n1ng a female patient •••• He had fallen asleep at work before. It had been funny at first. Now Billy was starting to get worried about it • • • • He tried to remember how old he was, couldn't. He tried to remember what year it was. He couldn't remember that either ••••

Billy turned his attention to his desk. There was an open copy of The Review of Optometry there. It was opened to an editorial, which Billy now read. A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He

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was expecting World War III at any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon. (p. 38-39)

We also learn that Billy would find himself 11 Weeping every so often, ..

for no apparent reason: 11 Nobody had ever caught Billy doing it. Only

[his] doctor knew. It was an extremely quiet thing Billy did, and

not very moist 11 (p. 42). Finally, we read of Billy's post-war

hospitalization, his self-commital to a mental hospital when he

found himself 11 alarmed by the outside world 11 (p. 67). Although

11 nobody else suspected that he was going crazy ••• now he was in

the mental hospital [and] the doctors agreed: He was going crazy 11

(p. 67). While they 11 didn't think it had anything to do with the

war, .. Vonnegut tells us that Billy had 11 found life meaningless ..

because of what 11 he had seen in the war 11 (p. 67).

Probably the most moving illustration of the war's continuing

effect on Billy occurs at his eighteenth wedding anniversary party,

a full twenty years after Dresden. When a barbershop quartet begins

singing to honor Billy and his wife, 11 Unexpectedly, Billy Pilgrim

found himself upset by the song and the occasion 11 (p. 113). He is

so .. pulled apart inside .. by the episode that he 11 thought hard about

the effect the quartet had had on him, and then found an association

with an experience he had had long ago. He did not have to travel

in time to the experience. He remembered it shimmeringly 11 (p. 117).

It was the Dresden holocaust. The singing group reminded him of

the four guards in Dresden when they emerged from the slaughterhouse

to discover the devastation: 11The guards drew together instinctively,

rolled their eyes. They experimented with one expression and then

another, said nothing, though their mouths were often open. They

76 0 '

looked like a silentfilmof a barbersoop quartet .. (p. 117).

So horrifying is Dresden and the war that insanity is Billy•s only

escape. Through his schizophrenia, that 11 boon to modern mankind, ..

Billy can evade the unbearable present by escaping into his past or

future. Though he has no control over his time travelling, it

happens mostly when the pain or stress of a particular moment

intensifies beyond endurance. Like a regulator opening a valve to

keep an engine from overheating, Billy•s subconscious trips a

mechanism in his memory that sends him to other times, other places:

The naked Americans took their places under many showerheads along a white-tiled wall •••• An unseen hand turned a master valve. Out of the showerheads gushed a scalding rain. The rain was a blowtorch that did not warm. It jazzed and jangled Billy•s skin without thawing the ice in the marrow of his long bones • • • • Billy zoomed back in time to his infancy. He was a baby who had just been bathed by his mother. Now his mother wrapped him in a towel, carried him into a rosy room that was filled with sunshine • Billy gurgled and cooed. ( p. 57)

Billy•s schizophrenia also enables him to fabricate the

wonderful, bizarre tale about Tralfamadore, where he supposedly lived

with Montana Wildhack in an 11 erotic dream come true ... 47 Though, as

we already noted, the Tralfamadorian episode probably occurs only in

Billy•s mind, it nevertheless offers Billy a sanctuary to which he

can time-travel, a shelter reminiscent of Jonah•s and Mona•s rock

womb. In Billy•s fevered mind, Tralfamadore was as real as the war,

and his 11 life 11 there was a comforting and peaceful as the war was

disruptive and frightening.

Billy does not struggle to be moral in the same sense that the

other protagonists do. His is a struggle more for meaning rather

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than morality. For Billy, goodness comes easily, especially during

the war when he is portrayed largely as innocent, childlike, and

incapable of evil. From the moment he is captured in Germany, he is

the "naive little boy" in the company of rough-tough men. On his

march through Germany with the other POWs, he continually irritates

the other soldiers, bumping and crashing into them because one of

his shoes had lost a heel. "Pardon me; excuse me," he would politely

say, while they would rail at him with expressions and expletives he

had never heard before. Nevertheless, as more Americans would join

his marching group, he would always try "to be friendly, to help,

~~he could, [even though] his resources were meager" (p. 101).

The portrait of Billy as innocent child is enhanced by his

inability to comprehend what is happening to him. Festooned in

remnants of clothing that make him look variously like Cinderella,

a clown, and a "dirty flamingo, .. Billy is unaware of how 11 Screamingly

funny .. he appears. When a British prisoner sees how absurd Billy

looks, he is "filled with pity" and talks to him like a father to his

son:

"Are you really an Ameri can? 11 said the Englishman.

"Yes," said Billy. "And your rank? 11

"Private." "What became of your boots, 1 ad?" "I don't remember." "Is that coat a joke? 11

"Sir?" "Where did you get such a thing?" Billy had to think hard about that. "They

gave it to me, 11 he said at last. "Jerry gave it to you?" "Who?" "The Germans gave it to you?" "Yes."

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Billy didn't like the questions. They were fatiguing.·

"Ohhhh--Yank, Yank, Yank--" said the Englishman, "That coat was an insult."

"Sir?" "It was a deliberate attempt to humiliate you.

You mustn't let Jerry do things like that."

After the war, when Billy grows up to discover that "he really

didn't like life at all" (p. 68), his quest to find meaning begins.

While it is easy for him to be good and moral, to lead a happy, decent

life ostensibly, inside Billy is an emotional wreck, desperately

searching for an answer to the bird 's existential question, "Poo-tee-

weet?" At first he seeks medical help, checking himself into the

veterans' hospital and finding a kindred spirit in his roommate,

Eliot Rosewater: "They both had found life meaningless, partly

because of what they had seen in the war • • • • So they were trying

to reinvent themselves and their universe (p. 67). Articulating

Billy's sentiments, Rosewater explains that, in a world where a

Dresden holocaust can occur, people need "a lot of wonderful new lies,

or [they] just aren•t going to want to go on living" (p. 68).

When medicine fails him, Billy takes his cue from Rosewater and

develops his own set of lies--putting an end to his search for meaning.

His response to Dresden, the war, and man's inhumanity to man is

contained in his "lessons from Tralfamadore" (p. 131). The most

significant Tralfamadorian concept concerns the nature of time, which,

according to Billy, humans do not understand correctly. Time consists

not of a sequence of discrete moments, "like beads on a string," but

of a simultaneous combination of the past, present, and future: "It

is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows

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another one, . . . that once a moment is gone it is gone forever ••

All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always

will exist" (p. 19). As a result of this new definition of time, Billy

and his Tralfamadorian friends view death from a different perspective:

"When a person dies, he only appears to die. He is still very much

alive in the past" (p. 19). And since the past is one with the present

and future, "it is very silly for people to cry at funerals" (p. 19):

"When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'" (p. 19)

Along with their concepts of time and death, the Tralfamadorians

"teach" Billy about the deterministic nature of the universe,

countering the fatuous human notion of free will. Moments are

"s true tured" to happen: they a 1 ways have happened, and they a 1 ways

will happen. There is nothing that can be done to alter a moment,

whether it be a moment of happiness and joy or an instance of

senseless slaughter and cruelty. Thus, Billy concludes that "the idea

of preventing war on Earth is stupid" (p. 78). And he is able to

accept the fact that the Dresden massacre happened because "the

moment was structured that way" (p. 102). Talking about Dresden at

one point with a history professor, Billy explains, "It was all

right • • • • Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly

what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore" (p. 131). /

Embracing the Tralfamadorian philosophy, Billy can safely dismiss

the questioning bird's "Poo-tee-weet?" as irrelevant. "There is no

why," the Tralfamadorians tell him, "because the moment simply is"

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(p. 51). He also can find peace and pleasure by taking the

Tralfamadorian's advice to 11 ignore the awful times, and concentrate

on the- good ones 11 (p. 78).

Billy Pilgrim, then, is able to forge a sense of dignity and

purpose from his exotic Tralfamadorian views. Insane though he is,

his schizophrenia gives him a formula for living with dignity. It

changes him from the tormented soul who 11quits, surrenders, apologizes,

and asks to be 1 eft a 1 one 11 (p. 121) to the contented man who can

compose his own epitaph, 11 Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt 11

(p. 81). He is a true Vonnegut hero.

As the introduction to this paper stated, Vonnegut's search for

a hero ends with Slaughterhouse-Five not because he finds the epitome

of a hero in Billy Pilgrim, but because the novel brings a long,

personal struggle for Vonnegut to an end. By writing his 11 war book, ..

the story he had been contemplating since Player Piano, Vonnegut was

finally able to exorcise the demon that Dresden had created.

Looking back at Vonnegut's novels, we can see how each

contributes essential themes, concepts, and ploys that appear in

Slaughterhouse-Five. Player Piano, though the least memorable novel,

introduces the key concept of the heroic--the ability to live with

dignity in our deranged twentieth century society--that we find

repeated in each of his subsequent works. The Sirens of Titan first

shows how a severely battered protagonist can live with dignity, and

introduces Tralfamadore, Vonnegut's favorite make-believe planet

that figures so prominently in Slaughterhouse-Five. Mother Night

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broaches the idea of "1 ies as the most beguiling forms of truth" and

introduces schizophrenia as the "boon to modern mankind." eat's Cradle

develops the idea of "hannless untruths" through the ingenious religion

of Bokononism. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater highlights the necessity

for wonderful new lies and depicts a character who, like Billy Pilgrim,

suffers as a result of his experiences in World War II.

Pulling together these various thematic strands and developing

his innovative "schizophrenic" style of writing, Vonnegut finally

tells his Dresden story powerfully and startlingly. He draws us into

Billy's insanity so convincingly that we cannot know whether his time

travel and Tralfamadorian episode are real or imaginary. He forces

us to witness war's pointlessness and mutilation and confront with

him the horror of Dresden. Most importantly, he leaves us applauding

Billy for his wildly crazy explanations, for we see how they enable

him to live with dignity.

In his search for a hero, Vonnegut steadily and consistently

wrestles with the irrationality and absurdityt symbolized by Dresden,

that modern man must face. What we repeatedly find as a result of

this search is Vonnegut's affirmation of the human spirit--his

conviction that, in the midst of the most extreme adversity, man can

derive a sense of dignity and purpose. We thus can thank Kurt

Vonnegut for providing us with a significant contribution to our own

quests for wonderful new lies.

82

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five, in Seven Contemporary Short Novels, ed. Charles Clerc and Louis Leiter (Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1975), p. 3.

2John Somer, 11 Geodesic Vonnegut; Or, If Buckminster Fuller Wrote Novels, .. in The Vonnegut Statement, ed. Jerome Klinkowitz and John Somer (New York: Delta, 1973), p. 223.

3Josephine Hendin, Vulnerable Peo le: A View of American Fiction Since 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 , p. 10.

4Peter J. Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (New York: Warner, 1972), p. 208-209.

5sanford Pinsker, Between Two Worlds (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1977)' p. 95-96.

6slaughterhouse-Five, p. 14.

7Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Breakfast of Champions (New York: Dell, 1980), p. 5.

8Peter J. Reed, 11 The Later Vonnegut, 11 in Vonnegut in America, ed. Jerome Klinkowitz and Donald L. Lawler (New York: Delacorte Press, 1977), p. 150.

9Reed, 11 The Later Vonnegut," p. 150.

10Reed, 11 The Later Vonnegut, 11 p. 150.

11slaughterhouse-Five, p. 16.

12Karen and Charles Wood, 11The Vonnegut Effect: Science Fiction and Beyond, .. in The Vonnegut Statement, p. 146.

83

@ .

CHAPTER ONE

13wood, p. 139.

14Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Player Piano (New York: Dell, 1980), p. 21. (All further quotes from Player Piano are taken from this edition. Page numbers are given parenthetically in the text following each quote.)

15wood, p. 144.

16From the transcript (p. 6) of 11 At the Edge of History: A Conversation With William Irwin Thompson, .. aired on Bill Moyers Journal, March 26, 1979, c. Educational Broadcasting Corporation.

17Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., p. 193.

18Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., p. 193.

19Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., p. 193.

20 Somer, p. 224.

21 "Can Merlin Save the Whales?" Boston Sunday Herald, March 29, 1970, p. 9.

CHAPTER TWO

22Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan (New York: Dell, 1980), p. 229. (All further quotes from The Sirens of Titan are taken from this edition. Page numbers are given parenthetically in the text following each quote.)

23Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., p. 193.

24oonald L. Lawler, 11 The Sirens of Titan: Vonnegut•s Metaphysical Shaggy-Dog Story, 11 in Vonnegut in America, p. 68-69.

25Robert Scholes, The Fabulators (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 45.

26Hendin, p. 10.

84

27 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Mother Night (New York: Dell, 1980), p. xii. (All further quotes from Mother Night are taken from this edition~ Page numbers are given parenthetically in the text following each quote. )

CHAPTER THREE

28The Sirens of Titan, p. 8.

29stanley Schatt, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976)' p. 47.

CHAPTER FOUR

3°Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle (New York: Dell, 1980), p. 114. (All further quotes from eat's Cradle are taken from this edition. Page numbers are given parenthetically in the text following each quote.)

31 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., "Address to Graduating Class at Bennington College, 1970," Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons (New York: Dell, 1965) p. 159-168.

32 Schatt, P. 61.

33Mother Night, p. ix.

34schatt, p. 63.

CHAPTER FIVE

35Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (New York: Dell, 1980), p. 12. (All further quotes from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater are taken from this edition. Page numbers are given parenthetically in the text following each quote.)

36Richard Giannone, Vonnegut: A Preface to His Novels (New York: Kennikat Press, 1977), p. 74.

37 Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., p. 170.

38Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., p. 193.

85

39Giannone, p. 78.

40Giannone, p. 79.

CHAPTER SIX

41 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five, in Seven Contemporary Short Novels, ed. Charles Clerc and Louis Leiter (Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1975), p. 2. (All further quotes from Slaughterhouse-Five are taken from this edition. Page numbers are given parenthetically in the text following each quote.)

42Pinsker, p. 98.

43Tralfamadore plays such a significant role in Slaughterhouse­Five that Glenn Meeter contends in 11 Vonnegut's Formal and Moral Otherworldliness: Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five .. : ''Slaughterhouse-Five makes of the Dresden fire-bombing a kind of appendix to a discussion of Tralfamadorian notions of time and civilization .. (in The Vonnegut Statement, p. 206).

44James Lundquist, Kurt Vonnegut (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1977), p. 69.

45Lundquist, p. 69.

46Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., p. 180.

47Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., p. 196.

86

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Cat•s Cradle. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1963.

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1965.

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Mother Night. New York: Fawcett, 1961.

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. The Sirens of Titan. New York: Dell, 1959.

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: De1acorte Press, 1969.

SECONDARY SOURCES

BOOKS:

Giannone, Richard. Vonnegut: A Preface to His Novels. New York: Kennikat Press, 1977

Harris, Charles. Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd. New Haven: College & University Press, 1971.

Hauck, Richard Boyd. A Cheerful Nihilism. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1971.

Hendin, Josephine. Vulnerable People: A View of American Fiction Since 1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Klinkowitz, Jerome and Donald Lawler, eds. Vonnegut in America. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977.

Klinkowitz, Jerome and John Somer, eds. The Vonnegut Statement. New York: Delacorte Press, 1973.

Lundquist, James. Kurt Vonnegut. New York: Frederick Ungar Press, 1977.

87

Olderman, Raymond M. Beyond the Wasteland. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.

Pinsker, Sanford. Between Two Worlds. New York: Frederick Ungar Press, 1977.

Reed, Peter J. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. New York: Warner, 1972.

Schatt, Stanley. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976.

Scholes, Robert. The Fabulators. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Walsh, Chad. From Utopia to Nightmare. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

ARTICLES:

Bodtke, Richard. 11 Great Sorrows, Small Joys: The World of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 11 Cross Currents, 20 (1970), 120-125.

Carson, Ronald. 11 Kurt Vonnegut: Matter-of-Fact Moralist. 11

Listening, 6 (1971), 182-195.

DeMott, Benjamin. "Vonnegut's Otherworldly Laughter... Saturday Review, 54 (1971), 29-32, 38.

Goss, Gary. 11The Selfless Billy Pilgrim ... Buffalo Spree, 5 (1971), 34-61.

Hayman, David. 11 The Jolly Mix: Notes on Techniques, Style, and Decorum in Slaughterhouse-Five ... Summary, 1 (1971), 44-50.

Kazin, Alfred. 11 The War Novel: From Mailer to Vonnegut ... Saturday Review, 54 (1971), 76-78.

Leff, Leonard. Cradle ...

11 Science and Destruction in Vonnegut•s Cat's Rectangle, 46 (1971), 28-32.

May, John R. 11 Vonnegut's Humor and the Limits of Hope. 11 Twentieth Century Literature, 18 (1972), 25-36.

Palmer, Raymond C. 11 Vonnegut's Major Concerns... Iowa English Yearbook, 14 (1969), 3-10.

Samuels, Charles Thomas. 11 Age of Vonnegut. 11 New Republic, 164 (1971), 30-32.

88