Food for Thought

1. Food for Thought • “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘G– d*&% it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ” --Kurt Vonnegut • What rule would you give to future generations?

2. Born November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana Died April 12, 2007 in New York, New York Kurt Vonnegut

3. Family Life • Fourth-generation German: children were never exposed to their heritage because of the anti-German attitudes that had spread throughout the United States after World War I • Because of the Great Depression, Vonneguts lost most of their wealth

4. Family Life • Vonnegut's father fell into severe depression and his mother died after overdosing on sleeping pills the night before Mother's Day in 1944. • Attainment and loss of the "American Dream" became theme of many of Vonnegut's writings.

5. Education • Attended Cornell University; majored in chemistry and biology • After college,enlisted in the United States Army, serving in the World War II • Following the war, studied anthropology at the University of Chicago

6. World War II • Experiences as POW in Germany had profound influence of his writing, including Slaughterhouse Five. • While a POW, witnessed firsthand the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945. • Experience in Dresden = the basis for Slaughterhouse-Five, which was published in 1969

7. Vonnegut on what he saw in Dresden • “The firebombing of Dresden,” Vonnegut wrote, “was a work of art.” It was, he added, “a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany.” • Review: What did Vonnegut say about the bombing of Dresden during the interview? How would you describe his tone?

8. Historical Context of Publication • Slaughterhouse Five was published in 1969. What do you know about this year and/or this decade as a whole?

9. Critical Reception and Censorship • Slaughterhouse Five, wrote the critic Jerome Klinkowitz, “so perfectly caught America’s transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age.” • Novel reached No.1 on best-seller lists, making Vonnegut a cult hero. Some schools and libraries have banned it because of its sexual content, rough language and scenes of violence.

10. Other Works • 1952 First novel = Player Piano • 1959The Siren of Titans • 1963Cat's Cradle • 1965 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater • 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five • 1973 Breakfast of Champions • 2005A Man Without A Country (Subtitle: A Memoir Of Life In George W. Bush's America)

11. Final Thoughts • A Man Without a Country (2005) = collection of autobiographical essays • Concludes with these lines within a poem called “Requiem”: When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, “It is done.” People did not like it here.

12. “So it goes.” • “Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round,” Vonnegut wrote at the end of Slaughterhouse Five, “was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.” • “Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.”

13. “So it goes.” • One of many repeated, mantra-like words and phrases that run through Vonnegut’s books, “so it goes” became a catchphrase for opponents of the Vietnam war. • Why might this phrase resonate with an anti-war audience?

14. Kilgore Trout • In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut introduced the recurring character of Kilgore Trout, his fictional alter ego. • As you read the novel, note Vonnegut’s self-deprecating humor in describing this character’s lack of skill as a writer. • Smith, Dinitia, “Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture’s Novelist, Dies” New York Times. April 13, 2007.

15. Narrative Flow, or Time's Arrow • Slaughterhouse-Five = a nonlinear work; includes many flash-backs, flash-forwards, and changes in setting. • At beginning of Chapter Two, non-linear structure will become clear. • Non-linear structure sometimes described as holistic rather than mechanistic: conveys experience as a continuous whole

16. Life in Tableaux • Central character (Billy Pilgrim) knows every event which has ever happened or will happen to him • Each scene in Billy Pilgrim's life = a tableau/scene/moment with an impact on totality of his existence • The worldview of the Tralfamadorians, the aliens who kidnap Billy during the course of the book, seems to express how Vonnegut would like the reader to experience the novel.

17. Is Vonnegut a true Tralfamadorian? • Not exactly…although Billy Pilgrim's life is nonlinear, the novel's actual structure is clear, somewhat traditional, and shaped by cause-and-effect relationships. • Critics argue that the Tralfamadorians’ contempt at human's conception of time is actually Vonnegut's self-contempt.

18. Limits to the Holistic Structure • Example of a clear transition between tableaux : "And then Billy was a middle-aged optometrist again...(Vonnegut, 85)", or "And Billy took a very short trip through time...” • Vonnegut always alerts the reader to the shift in time and space, as though the flow of the novel were a tow rope which pulls the reader safely through a series of tableaux.

19. Diagram for Structure • The structure of Slaughterhouse-Five looks like this: Each box represents a tableau; numbers represent physical chronology; and the line represents narrative flow

20. Motifs: Definition • Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes. • Look for and trace the motifs listed on the next slide.

21. Motifs in Slaughterhouse Five • “So it goes” • “If the accident will” • “an old fart with his memories and Pall Malls” • “My name is Jon Jonson” • “And so on” • the smell of mustard gas and roses • The Children's Crusade • a dance with death

22. CHAPTER ONE • Key to the novel is the opening section in which, apparently, the author speaks in his own voice about a visit he made to talk with an old war buddy, Barnard V. O'Hare, as he was completing the manuscript for the novel. • It explains how the novel came to be outfitted with its subtitle ("Or The Children's Crusade | A Duty-Dance with Death") and how it came to be dedicated to O'Hare's wife. 

23. CHAPTER ONE • Chapter One makes explicit the author's purpose in writing the novel, as well as his skepticism about whether there is any hope it might contribute to its intended effect. On to the discussion questions on your study guide…