Kurt Vonnegut Sarcasm and Black Humor
Kurt Vonnegut uses sarcasm to portray the humor, foolishness, and futility of real life issues, people events, and expectations. In his books, he writes like a satire, but in reality, that's not what it really is. He has many opinions and questions of mans' search for the meaning of life. Objects, events, and people, of real life, are represented in his books and are put into Vonnegut's context. Characters in his books are put through a lot of adversity and find out they do not have the ability to control or change fate. War and religion are often questioned in Vonnegut's books. All of these things, become victims of Vonnegut's sarcasm and satire. A unique writing style in most of his books, he writes like a satire to attack a satire and its ideal world with definite answers (Kennard 1). A significant part to Vonnegut's books is the satiric and humorous qualities used to emphasize the serious points of his books. In the books, which are considered science fiction, contain wild black humor, which is uncommon amongst these types of books (Overview 1). His humor targets the futility of warfare, the negative effects of technology, and the potential of man's evil to cause havoc. He laughs and is p
Character often represents opinions. In Player Piano, Finnerty and Lasher represent Vonnegut's opinions on mechanization (Kennord 2). Vonnegut doesn't agree when a person makes another person an object or possession. He illustrates this in Sirens of the Titan with the human character, Malachi Constant, forcibly becomes mechanized unk (1). In Mother Night, the Nazi's treatment of the Jews is represented by an American who is held and tried in Israel for broadcasting "anti-scientific speeches" for the Nazi's in World War Two. His characters often represent the negativity of certain people and he makes their wrongs become apparent. Vonnegut is trying to correct the way we look at the world, much like Billy was prescribing glasses for those with bad vision (Kennard 4). He shows us reality in a different way than most other people, he shows it truthfully. He has a unique sarcastic way of showing reality with objects, characters, and events. He shows his opinions on religion, science, and government with sarcasm. Vonnegut's characters go through what he has gone through. He tries to show man that we can be each other's saviors instead of each other slavemasters (6). He does this by showing the negatives of his opposing side in his books, with sarcasm and humor. essimistic towards government and religion (Introduction 1). Vonnegut is anti-technology, anti-machine, and anti-science and he shows this throughout his books (Overview 1). Objects represent certain eras and the people within those areas. Such as in Jailbird, the restaurant and hotel represent the depression (Reed 1). These two are under separate control. The hotel has become derelect and represents (the poor people who are being denied for aid) by the restaurant. The restaurant has become glitterly and is barely effect. The restrauant represents the wealthy people who are capable of helping, but still keep their excess wealth (3). A participant in World War Two was Vonnegut. He uses his experience a subject in many of his books. He makes the cruel bombing of Dresdon meaningless to show the purposeless cruelty of man (Kennard 5). He takes World War Two's glory and victory away with sad and sarcastic stories. In Welcome to the Monkey House, there are three good short stories that support this. In D.P., an orphaned Negro boy in a German orphanage finds he does not fit in. One day he saw a man just like him in the woods. He sneaks out of the orphanage and goes to meet the man. The man is an American general and doesn't like the boy calling him dad. He asked the boy to go back, but he wouldn't. They gave him chocolates, a knife, and other stuff, but still the boy would not go. Finally the boy went back after the general said he would come back for him one day to take him to his people (Vonnegut Welcomme 153-155). Vonnegut tries to show the negative effects of war in his books. He never gives glory to war, in fact he tries to take it away. He shows war in a very real way. He doesn't try to promote it like most authors, making him different. There is a concern of genuine human questions throughout his books. These questions often are about war, peace, technology, and human happiness. These questions recur throughout his books and are answered ridiculously (1). He likes to emphasize the "comic absurdity" of man looking for meaning and order in his life when the character exists in a "meaningless and disorderly universe" (Introduction 1). Vonnegut directs his satire to his characters. He also directs most of this satire to himself as much as he does to society (Overview 1). Evil is represented in Cat's Cradle with a chemical called ice-nine. This chemical is passed from generation to the next within the Hoenikker family. This is much like evil being passed down from generation to the next. This evil can spread easily and will expand uncontrollably, much like the ice nine which spread through the water and froze the oceans and e
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Approximate Word count = 2750
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)
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