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 Slaughterhouse-Five.

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."