This page hosted by
Get your own Free Home Page
Introduction
If you have ever read any book by the infamous American
writer Kurt Vonnegut, several things have certainly caught your
attention. It is not only his unusual style that makes him
special in contemporary American literature. It is not only the
skill with which he manages to convey the main message to readers
of various age groups. It is not only the message itself which
always makes people think and discover startling facts about our
world. What I find most interesting and what I decided to focus
this essay on, is Vonnegut's image of Humanity and Divinity and
the relation of these two poles.
You may have noticed that Kurt Vonnegut's works seldom have
a villain and hero characters. This has been observed by many of
his readers and many literary critiques as well (e.g. Ranly,
Reed). However, I think that there is always at least one villain
character, although it is definitely not a human being. Whom
Vonnegut tends to present as a villain is God. Sometimes he calls
Him God Almighty, sometimes The Creator of the Universe,
sometimes Mother Nature. Sometimes Vonnegut does not mention God
at all, but all the same, there is always a force that carries
the attributes of a villain character. However, in most cases he
refers to 'Christian' God. 'Christian God', however, does not
mean that the image that is created by Vonnegut is the same as
the Christians' image of God. This essay will prove that it is
not the same, that it is very different. 'Christian God' means
only that Vonnegut refers to the same God as Christians do, even
though Vonnegut sees Him in an altogether different light. This
conclusion can be arrived at from various references to the Holy
Bible, the life of Jesus, or criticising Christians and their
faith.
Hero characters also do not come easy in Vonnegut's books.
All human beings in his literary works are little pathetic things
which seem to be lead by a Master Puppeteer from above and
therefore cannot be responsible for what they do and thus cannot
be considered to be villains. In his autobiographical collage
Palm Sunday, Vonnegut himself says that his books argue that
"most human behavior, no matter how ghastly or ludicrous or
glorious or whatever, is innocent," (Palm Sunday:xviii). Maybe
humanity in general could be considered to be a hero character,
since it has to live through the neverending attacks of the
villain character, that is - God; a hero character that can never
win. However, Vonnegut seems to find a way for humans to conquer
the villain.
Without a deeper understanding of Christianity, you may find
Vonnegut's arguments to make perfect sense. I had been reading
Vonnegut's books without this understanding for several years.
I became a Christan and I realized that I was misled by these
arguments. However, this essay is not going to ridicule
Vonnegut's opinion and show how wrong he is about God. The focus
of this essay should be different. First, the paper will attempt
to illustrate the images of humanity and divinity and demonstrate
these with quotations from numerous novels and stories by the
author. Second, the essay will show what kind of relation there
is between people (mankind in general and Vonnegut's characters)
and God (or gods). It will also attempt to compare this relation
with the relationship between Vonnegut's characters and Vonnegut
himself. Furthermore, this paper will explore the obvious reasons
for such attitude and, finally, it will present a brief
comparison of Vonnegut's 'faith' with Christian faith.
Humanity and Divinity as characters
In this essay I will treat Humanity and Divinity as any
literary critique would treat literary characters. It is true
that there are individual human characters in Vonnegut's books,
but I would like to generalize a little and deal with Humanity as
one literary character (hence the capitalization of the two
words). Vonnegut himself indirectly hints at the fact that all
human beings behave the same way and can, therefore, be
considered as one entity. I am referring to the possibly most
often used phrase or word in Vonnegut's books, which is "And so
on," or "Etc." It is typical of Vonnegut that he describes
something and then suddenly stops and concludes the paragraph by
a simple "and so on" sentence. Let me present just one small
example out of many:
In some places people would actually try to eat mud
or suck on gravel while babies were being born just
a few feet away. And so on. (BOC:13)
In Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut explains himself and his
almost obsessive usage of and-so-on's and et-cetera's. On page
227 of this novel he draws a part of a structure of a plastic
molecule with numerous "etc." endings. "The molecule went on and
on and on, repeating itself forever to a form of a sheet both
tough and poreless." He says that the abbreviation "etc." means
"sameness without end" and that "the proper ending for any story
about people, . . . , since life is a polymer in which the Earth
is wrapped so tightly, should be that same abbreviation." After
a large drawing of an "etc." Vonnegut continues, "And it is in
order to acknowledge the continuity of this polymer that I begin
so many sentences with 'And' and 'So' and end so many paragraphs
with '...and so on." (BOC:227-228) "It's all like celophane!"
Vonnegut cries out. (BOC:228) This obviously implies, that
Vonnegut considers all human beings, without exception
("poreless"), to be of the same nature. Let me, therefore, treat
Humanity like this tough and poreless chunk of plastic, like
a roll of celophane -- like one literary character.
I would like to do the same thing with Divinity in his books.
It will be a much easier job, since I will not have to generalize
that much. When talking about God, Vonnegut seems in most cases
to have in mind one "entity". Of course, there are several
exceptions, but these are not obstacles from creating another
literary character -- Divinity.
So, I have two literary characters at hand to analyze:
Humanity and Divinity. These two characters, without exception,
appear in each novel Vonnegut has written and majority of his
short stories.
Get your own Free Home Page