Our very best writers will produce any essay or term paper you are looking for! We offer reasonable prices and deliver top quality papers on virtually any topic. Our service is available 24/7. Be sure that we are reliable and consistent.
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in Indianapolis in 1922. His father was an architect, his mother a noted beauty. Both spoke German, but wouldn’t teach Kurt the language because of all the anti-German sentiment following the first World War.
While in high school, Vonnegut edited the school's daily newspaper. He attended Cornell for a little over two years and wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun. In 1942, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. In 1944, his mother committed suicide and he was taken prisoner following the Battle of the Bulge.
After the war, Vonnegut entered a Masters program in anthropology at the University of Chicago. His thesis, titled Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales, was not accepted, but eventually he was awarded his MA for his writings in Cat’s Cradle.
Throughout the 1950s Vonnegut published numerous short stories in national magazines. Player Piano, his first novel, appeared in 1952. This was followed by Sirens of Titan in 1959, Mother Night (1962), Cat's Cradle (1963), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), and his most highly-praised book, Slaughterhouse Five in 1969. Vonnegut has been prolific in the subsequent years, too. His most recent novel Timequake was published in 1997.
On February 13, 1945, while Vonnegut was still a POW in Dresden, the city was bombed killing 135,000 citizens. Vonnegut and other Allied POW’s took shelter in an underground meat locker. This was the basis for one of Vonnegut’s most famous works, Slaughterhouse-Five.
All of this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.1 So begins Slaughterhouse-Five. In the book an American POW named Billy Pilgrim witnesses and survives the firebombing of Dresden. Later, after he makes it home from the war, Pilgrim is kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. They explain to him their concept of time and space and that we exist solely for them.
Vonnegut has said that he always intended to write about his experience, but was unable to do so for more than twenty years. He wanted to simply describe what happened through a narrative, but it never worked. The novel is a response to war. It is so short and jumbled and jangled, says Vonnegut, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.2
It’s easy to see how Vonnegut’s war time experience had an influence on Slaughterhouse-Five but, his knowledge of war also had some influence on Cat’s Cradle.
Cat’s Cradle displays Vonnegut’s concern for technology and the belief that it will one day lead to the destruction of our society and our world. Many of his own beliefs come out through the narrator in the story, John.
Published in the wake of the Cold War, Cat’s Cradle tells about man’s ability of destroying life on earth. The narrator is trying to write a book entitled The Day the Earth Ended about the Hiroshima bombing.
He researches the life of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the inventors of the atomic bomb. The Hoenikker family closely resembles Vonnegut’s own family. Both have a son who is a scientist, a tall middle daughter, and a younger son.
In Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut concocts a new religion called Bokononism for the people of San Lorenzo. Bokononism’s purpose is to “provide people with better and better lies.”3 However the basis of this religion, The Books of Bokonon, explain upfront that it is false. In fact the first line in them is “Don’t be a fool! Close this book at once! It is nothing but foma!”
As you can see many of Vonnegut’s writings stem from his experiences of war and destruction, and his concern for society itself.
Our very best writers will produce any essay or term paper you are looking for! We offer reasonable prices and deliver top quality papers on virtually any topic. Our service is available 24/7. Be sure that we are reliable and consistent.
In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, there is a lot of superstition. Some examples of superstition in the novel are Huck killing a spider which is bad luck, the hair-ball used to tell fortunes, and the rattle-snake skin Huck touches that brings Huck and Jim good and bad luck. Superstition plays an important role in the novel Huck Finn. In Chapter one Huck sees a spider crawling up his shoulder, so he flipped it off and it went into the flame of the candle. Before he could get it out, it was already shriveled up. Huck didn't need anyone to tell him that it was an bad sign and would give him bad luck. Huck got scared and shook his clothes off, and turned in his tracks three times. He then tied a lock of his hair with a thread to keep the witches away. You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep of bad luck when you'd killed a spider.(Twain 5). In chapter four Huck sees Pap's footprints in the snow. So Huck goes to Jim to ask him why Pap is here. Jim gets a hair-ball that is the size of a fist that he took from an ox's stomach. Jim asks the hair-ball; Why is Pap here? But the hair-ball won't answer. Jim says it needs money, so Huck gives Jim a counterfeit quarter. Jim puts the quarter under the hair-ball. The hair-ball talks to Jim and Jim tells Huck that it says. Yo'ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den ag'in he spec he'll stay. De bes' way is tores' easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey's two angles hoverin' roun' 'bout him. One uv'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black. De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sil in en gust it all up. A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las'. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well ag'in. Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout yo' in yo' life. One uv 'em's light en t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung. (Twain 19). Huck goes home and goes up to his room that night and Pap is there. In Chapter ten, Huck and Jim run into good luck and bad luck. The good luck was Huck and Jim finds eight dollars in the pocket of an overcoat. After dinner on Friday, they are lying in the grass, then Huck ran out of tobacco, so he went to the craven to get some, and finds a rattlesnake. Huck kills it and curled it up and put it on the foot of Jim's blanket. Night came and Jim flung himself on the blanket and the snake's mate was there, and it bit Jim on the heel. Jim tells Huck to chop off the snake's head, then skin the body of the snake and roast a peice of it. He took the rattles off and tied them to Jim wrist. Jim said it would help him. Huck says I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it. (Twain 52). As one can see Superstition plays an important role in the novel Huck Finn. Huck killing the spider which is bad luck, the hair-ball that tells fortunes, and the rattle-snake skin that Huck touched are examples that brought bad luck to Huck and Jim in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Word Count: 710
Copyright 1999-2004 Wow Essays, All Rights
Reserved
Design by Dream Net Studio
