Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
Childhood
• Born in Indianapolis, Indiana
• Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was the youngest of three children, along
with middle child Alice and first-born Bernard.
• Lived during the Depression.
• During the Depression Kurt Sr. saw his architectural business
disappear. He had to sell the family home and take Kurt Jr. out
of private school.
• WWII broke out when he was sixteen
Adulthood
• At twenty Vonnegut entered the army and was shipped off to
Europe.
• Fought in the Battle of the Bulge, during which he was
captured and sent to a POW to Dresden inside Germany.
•
• On February 13, 1945, British and American bombers
destroyed the city by dropping high explosives followed by
incendiary bombs. The bombs killed up to 60,000 civilians.
Vonnegut and his fellow POWs survived by accident only
because they were housed some 60 feet underground in a
former meat locker and slaughterhouse.
• After the war, Vonnegut married Jane Cox. They had three
children, Mark , Edith and Nanette.
Writing Career
• At Shortridge High, Vonnegut wrote for the student paper, The
Echo.
• Went to Cornell and became the managing editor of the
student paper, The Sun.
• Wrote many short stories including, “All the King’s Horses”,
"Report on the Barn House Effect," “Tomorrow and Tomorrow
and Tomorrow”, “Welcome to the Monkey House”,
“Mnemonics”, “The Package”, and “EPICAC”
• In 1952, his novel Player Piano was published.
• He then published the sci-fi epic The Sirens of Titan, the spy
novel Mother Night, the religion Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You,
Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-Five.
Slaughterhouse Five
• Historical Context:
• Vonnegut and the other POWs in Dresden were some of the
only survivors of the Dresden bombing. They waited out the
bombing in a meat cellar deep under the slaughterhouse.
• Vonnegut’s job for weeks after the bombing was to gather up
and burn the remains of the dead. His experience at Dresden
marked him for life and eventually resulted in SlaughterhouseFive.
Slaughterhouse Five
• Themes:
• War: The bombing of Dresden in WWII is a basis for all the events
of the story. Billy Pilgrim shifts in and out of the meat locker in
Dresden, where he very narrowly survives asphyxiation and
incineration.
• The Illusion of Free Will: In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut uses
the Tralfamadorians to derive the philosophical question of
whether free will exists.
Slaughterhouse Five
• Symbols
• The Colors Blue and Ivory: On various occasions in
Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy’s bare feet are described as being blue
and ivory, as when Billy writes a letter in his basement in the cold
and when he waits for the flying saucer to kidnap him. These
cold, freezing colors suggest the fragility of the thin line between
life and death, between worldly and otherworldly experience.
Cultural Context of “EPIAC”
• Korean War Begins
• Senator Joseph McCarthy Begins Communist Witch Hunt
• U.S. President Truman Orders Construction of Hydrogen Bomb
“EPICAC”
• A man works for the military running this super computer that
can figure out any problem u give it. Along with this man there
is a woman named Pat who the man is in love with but she
keeps denying his efforts to get her to marry him. The man
started asking the computer what he could do to win over this
woman and the computer starts printing him poetry to give to
Pat. All the while this computer is gaining love for Pat the
same as the man was. At the end of the story the machine
asks if Pat liked his poetry and the man explained how a
machine cant love so the machine destroys itself.
Personification
• Definition: the attribution of human nature or character to
animals, inanimate objects, or abstract notions, especially as a
rhetorical figure.
• Examples: Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,
Sighing, through all her works, gave signs of woe. - John Milton
• In EPICAC: “…I want to vindicate EPICAC…Maybe he didn’t do
what the Brass wanted him to, but that doesn't mean he wasn’t
noble and great and brilliant”
Imagery
• Definition: Imagery means to use figurative language to
represent objects, actions and ideas in such a way that it
appeals to our physical senses.
• Example: Charles Dicken’s “ The Great Expectations”
• “It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying
on the outside of my little window… Now, I saw the damp lying on
the bare hedges and spare grass…”
• Example from EPICAC: “ EPICAC covered abot an acre on the
fourth floor of the physics building at Wyandotte College…
ignoring his spiritual side for a minute, he was seven tons of
electric tubes, wires, and switches, housed in a bank of steel
cabinets and plugged into a 110-volt A.C. line just like a toaster or
a vacuum cleaner”
Hyperbole
• Definition: obvious and intentional exaggeration used for
effect
• Examples: “He is as skinny as a toothpick”
• Example from EPICAC: “… the brass wanted him to be a super
computing machine that cold plot the course of a rocket from
anywhere on earth to the second button from the bottom of
Joe Stalin’s overcoat, if necessary… Or with his controls set
right, he could figure out supply problems for an amphibious
landing of a Marine division, right down to the last cigar and
hand grenade”
Love/Hate in EPICAC
• The man who runs EPICAC loves Pat and uses the computers
poems to get her to marry him.
• EPICAC hates being a computer when he finds out computers
cant love a human.
Interesting Facts
• According to Vonnegut in Bagombo Snuff Box, the university
rejected his first thesis on the necessity of accounting for the
similarities between Cubist painters and the leaders of late
19th Century Native American uprisings, saying it was
"unprofessional."