Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is an American writer who blended complex sci-fi with satire to address important social problems. Having experienced the horrors of WWII, Vonnegut used his short stories and novels to explore the dangers of war and the dehumanizing impact of technology. During the height of the Cold War, Vonnegut used Cat's Cradle (1963) to warn about the apocalyptic potential of nuclear weapons. His most famous work, the satirical antiwar novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) displays his ability to question important social constructs like religion and patriotism. Keep on reading for Kurt Vonnegut's biography and his most important books.

Kurt Vonnegut: Biography

Kurt Vonnegut lived a life marked by both tragedy and success. He was able to draw from both in his writing.

Early Life and Education

Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on November 11, 1922. He enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in a German-American family as the youngest of three children. His parents spoke German fluently, but they renounced their cultural roots after anti-German sentiments swept through America during World War I. After the family's financial security was ruined by The Great Depression, Vonnegut was unable to receive the same private school education as his elder siblings.

While the family's fall from economic safety would have a damaging effect on both of his parents, young Vonnegut flourished in the public school system. He became the co-editor of his high school newspaper and contributed articles that showcased his class-clown humor and connected with his fellow students.

After graduating high school, Vonnegut entered Cornell University in 1940. Although he intended to study humanities, his father pressured Vonnegut into the more practical major of biochemistry. Vonnegut continued to write and won a position as a staff writer for the university's newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun. During his time at the paper, he penned an essay entitled "Well all Right" (1942), which argued for a pacifist position in response to the rising threat of war in Europe.

Service in WWII

Vonnegut struggled at Cornell. Worsening grades and poor attendance due to a bought of pneumonia led to academic probation. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. officially entered WWII. Vonnegut enlisted in the Army in November 1942 before officially dropping out of Cornell in January 1943.

Chosen for a specialized training program, he studied military engineering at the Carnegie Technical Institute (now Carnegie Mellon University) before being stationed at an army base near his family home. He was able to visit his family regularly. During one of these visits, on Mother's Day 1944, Vonnegut was informed that his mother had taken her own life the previous night. Having never recovered from the family's financial fall, his mother was also extremely anxious about Kurt's upcoming deployment to the European war front.

Vonnegut arrived in Europe later that year and was immediately sent to the frontline to fight the German counter-attack during the Battle of the Bulge. He was amongst a group of 50 American soldiers captured by the Germans on December 22. Taken to a prisoner of war camp near the German city of Dresden, Vonnegut worked in a factory making high-vitamin malt syrup supplements for pregnant women.

The Allied bombing of Dresden would have a formative impact on Vonnegut. Pixabay.

On February 13, 1945, Vonnegut witnessed the devastating Allied bombing of Dresden, which resulted in 25,000 civilian deaths. The city was reduced to rubble, and his unit was charged with retrieving bodies from the ruins. This harrowing task and Vonnegut's time in the prisoner of war camp had a formative impact on the young man. For the rest of his life, Vonnegut was staunchly anti-war and used many of his works to warn people about the dangers of conflict. His WWII experiences would also form the basis of his most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

In 1951 Vonnegut quit his job and moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to pursue writing. His first novel, Player Piano (1952), satirized his experience of working in corporate America and explored the exploitation of developing nations. The Vonnegut family continued to grow throughout the 1950s with the arrival of two more children. Vonnegut also adopted three of his sister's sons after her death from cancer in 1958.

Struggling financially, Vonnegut produced the novels Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1961), and the short story "Harrison Bergensen" (1961) with little critical or commercial success. With the 1963 novel Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut began to find his voice as a writer. The satirical sci-fi work about a writer trying to produce a book on the dangers of nuclear weapons and discovering a world-ending weapon called ice-nine created and used many elements which would become conventions in his works. Though the novel was not a finical success, it received positive reviews and a cult following.

Success

Flat broke and struggling to feed his family, Vonnegut almost quit his writing career during this period but received a lifeline when the Iowa Writers Workshop offered him a teaching position. After two years of teaching, he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and used the money to travel to Germany, where he researched the bombing of Dresden.

Combining his research with his own experiences of the war, Vonnegut produced his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, in 1969. The novel tells the story of an American soldier, Billy Pilgrim, as he becomes unstuck from time. Time-traveling back and forth from important life events, Billy grapples with the meaning of life and the necessity of war and suffering. The book was a huge success and made Vonnegut a household name.

Slaughterhouse-Five's anti-war message resonated with the growing protests against the war in Vietnam, and Vonnegut began to give lectures and public appearances on college campuses. In the early 1970s, he taught writing classes at Harvard University and the City College of New York, published several short stories and articles, and received honorary degrees.

Despite this professional success, Vonnegut's personal life was in turmoil. His wife became devoutly Christian, which clashed with Vonnegut's staunch atheism, leading to their divorce. One of his sons suffered a nervous breakdown, leading Vonnegut to deep depression. He would process this trauma through his novels Breakfast of Champions (1973) and Slapstick (1976). Both works were critical flops.

Vonnegut met photographer and journalist Jill Kremenez in the late 1970s, the pair were married in 1979. While Vonnegut continued to write prolifically, his struggle with depression continued. He attempted suicide in 1984 but was able to seek help and became public about his struggles and recovery.

Later Life and Death

Vonnegut's final novel, Timequake, was published in 1997. As with many of his most successful works, it blended sci-fi elements with autobiographical passages. A vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, Vonnegut was introduced to a new generation of readers through television appearances where he spoke out against America's intervention in the Middle East. His collection of essays and opinions entitled A Man Without a Country (2005) became a national bestseller.

Weeks after suffering a fall at his home in New York City, Vonnegut died on April 11, 2007, at 84.

Kurt Vonnegut: Themes

Vonnegut used a range of genres and styles as well as his lived experiences to explore important social themes. Many of his works deal with the dangers of war. Deeply affected by his service in WWII and the bombing of Dresden, Vonnegut used humor and satire in many of his works to point out the foolishness of conflict. This anti-war message continued throughout his life as he publicly spoke out against America's involvement in Vietnam and the Middle East. Vonnegut viewed his country's participation in the foreign war as motivated by imperialistic greed rather than a desire for peace.

After the horrors of WWII and the first use of atomic bombs in Japan, Vonnegut became skeptical about aspects of the scientific progress and use of technology. His stories and novels often feature scientists as lead characters and revolve around complex scientific theories. Still, Vonnegut warned against the dehumanizing effects of a society that focused only on factual learning and ignored the arts.

Vonnegut feared the rapid development of technology could devalue human life. Pixabay.

Most major social institutions of American life in the twentieth century were targets for Vonnegut's satire. He often pointed out the hypocrisy and corruption of governments, politicians, and organized religion. By using absurdity, Vonnegut highlighted how powerful organizations often destroy individuality and become tangled up in their bureaucratic mess. While most people dreamed of a job in corporate America and a house in the suburbs, Vonnegut used his short stories to point out the boredom and emptiness of this lifestyle.

As an atheist, Vonnegut rejected traditional religious beliefs and placed his faith in people rather than institutions. Religious figures are presented as dishonest or idiotic in his works. Vonnegut was a committed humanist, meaning he put his faith in people and humanity rather than a deity. This belief in humanity's inherent goodness shines through in many of his most famous works as characters attempt to stand against the world's evil.

Kurt Vonnegut: Books

Vonnegut produced fourteen novels during his career. While they often featured sci-fi themes and settings, they were also heavily autobiographical.

Player Piano (1952)

Vonnegut's first novel explores the dangers of automation and America's exploitation of developing nations. In this dystopian society, most jobs are done by robots, and engineers hold the highest social ranking. Dr. Paul Proetus, a successful engineer in Upstate New York, is disillusioned by the shallowness and cruelty of his surroundings and wants to change the system. The Shah of Bratpuhr is the leader of a developing nation that American companies want to exploit. When Dr. Paul is approached by a revolutionary group called the Ghost Shirt Society, he sees his chance to make a difference.

In Player Piano, Vonnegut employs humor and satire to critique exploitive capitalism. Partially based on his experiences working in General Motors, Vonnegut presents a dystopian world where the corporate drive for efficiency and earnings has run amok. Against this, he proposes a more equal and united world where nations use technology to help fight the world's problems rather than increase profits.

Cat's Cradle (1963)

Cat's Cradle tells the story of John, a freelance journalist who wants to write a nonfiction book about the dangers of the nuclear arms race. His research leads him to the family of one of the atom bomb's creators. After discovering the creator's children each have a piece of a world-ending device called "ice-nine", John must race to save the world from destruction.

Written during the height of the Cold War, Vonnegut uses the novel to explore the potential danger in man's scientific discoveries. If humans merely chase scientific progress, they risk losing a fundamental element of humanity. Similarly, Vonnegut uses the fictional religion of Bokononism to satirize the dangers of organized religion. In this belief system, followers are entirely powerless and feel no push to make their own decisions or judgments. In what would become one of Vonnegut's trademarks, he mixes absurd humor with bleak tragedy to create a story that amuses and profoundly affects the reader.

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Vonnegut's most successful and personal novel is a unique work that blends many genres. Just like Vonnegut, the novel's protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is an American soldier in a German prisoner of war camp who witnesses the bombing of Dresden. Billy becomes unstuck in time and is launched from one important life event to the next as he desperately tries to make meaning of life, death, war, and his kidnapping by aliens.

Unstuck in time, Billy Pilgrim launches uncontrollably through his major life events. So it goes. Pixabay.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a prime example of Vonnegut's ability to blend absurd humor with brutal truths. In this novel, he uses the combination to undermine the idea that war is necessary and noble. As well as using his own experience, Vonnegut employs elements of sci-fi to explore important philosophical questions about meaning and free will. The alien race that kidnaps Billy introduces him to their philosophy, which is summed up by the simple phrase "So it goes." This phrase reoccurs throughout the novel to show the belief that all events are predetermined and that in a vast universe, only humans worry about the idea of free will.

Kurt Vonnegut: Short Stories

Kurt Vonnegut began his writing career by selling short stories to magazines. He produced three collections of short stories during his career, most of them in the sci-fi genre.

"2 B R 0 2 B" (1962)

In a dystopian society, population numbers are strictly controlled by the government. Science has solved most diseases, and with advanced medical treatment, humans can live forever. A volunteer must die for someone to be born, so births usually occur after accidental deaths. Outside a hospital delivery, a man anxiously waits as his wife who is in labor with triplets. Having only found one volunteer to sacrifice themself, the man desperately tries to ensure the birth of his remaining children.

This dark and disturbing story warns about the dangers of over-population, government over-reach, and scientific progress. The title is the phrase of a government hotline that people call to request professional assistance with their suicide. In a world where progress has ensured immortality, both life and death have become cheap.

"Harrison Bergensen" (1961)

One of Vonnegut's most famous short stories, "Harrison Bergensen" is a satirical dystopian tale about the dangers of totalitarian governments. In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution declare that all Americans must be equal. No citizen is allowed to be more intellectual, attractive, or physically fit than anyone else. The government forces people to wear masks to cover their beauty or carry heavyweights to slow down the physically fit. Everyone has their thought interrupted by a loud radio signal every twenty seconds, so they can't think deeply about any subject.

There is a variety of interpretations of this dark satire. Some literary critics see the story as a critique of the socialist and communist struggle for complete social equality. While an equal society is a noble goal, Vonnegut argues that government will inevitably use its power to hold back the potential of some to ensure everyone is treated equally. Others see it as Vonnegut's satire on the limited understanding of what equality and egalitarianism actually mean.

Kurt Vonnegut: Quotes

Vonnegut's works often dealt with characters facing an existential crisis and discovering core truths of reality. Here are a few quotes from his most famous novels.

In Mother Night, a German-American operates as a double agent in Germany, broadcasting anti-American propaganda while he collects information on the inner workings of the Third Reich. The novel explores the idea that most people spend their lives pretending in some way and that this act can ultimately be corrosive and dangerous.