1983 Vonnegut

Addiction (1983 New York) Sitting watching the news channel or hearing my family and friends (the ones in the military) talk about the war they have been in or the ones that they still in, I never realized that we are, as a country, addicts to war preparations, “If Western Civilizations were a person, we should be directing it to the nearest meeting of War-Preparers Anonymous, ” Writes Kurt Vonnegut in “1983 New York” (298) Vonnegut’s point is that we should be standing up and admitting that we have a problem, we have lost everything we cared about and should have come a long time ago; we hit rock bottom back in 1914. Although short, Vonnegut’s essay has a lot to say. He starts out by explaining alcoholics and going to AA and then going into a compulsive gambler. The real point of the essay starts when he talks about the Western Civilization as a whole being War-Preparer’s addicts and how much money is spent on war preparations and how we entrusted power into people throughout history that we didn’t know that were addicts. (298). Vonnegut goes on to explain that we are addicted to war preparation and not addicted to war itself, we are like any other addicts, such as, alcoholics or gamblers. Vonnegut makes the reader feel like he would be the first to stand up and admit that he was an addicted alcoholic, when he states, “If I were, I would go before the nearest A.A. meeting and say, “My name is Kurt Vonnegut”. I am an alcoholic.” I think it really adds to the essay and it makes the reader believe that he is a responsible person and sets up the reader to pretty believe what Vonnegut has to say in the rest of the essay. He also leans the essay towards if we had a war preparers anonymous that it would be the first step to fixing this enormous problem that is not getting the attention it needs to help cure the addiction as a whole. As for me, I didn’t know the severity of our country’s problem. I was oblivious to the situation, I watched the news and heard

Cited: Vonnegut, Kurt. “1983:New York.” Other Words: A Writer’s Reader. Eds. David Fleming Et Al. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, 2009. 297-299. Print.