Analysis Of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast Of Champions

The United States of America is a country born into the idea that all men are created equal. Its laws and philosophy build around this idea, and yet, its citizens feel as though some sort of mistake had been made. Perhaps they are in the wrong county, because the country that is so obsessed with proclaiming its equality for all is by no means just. It is clear that for certain people, life is easier than for others. These people are the able-bodied white men whose quality of life greatly outshines the lives of people of color and those with mental illnesses. In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut identifies the irony in America’s unjust treatment of its citizens while emphasizing the neglect of those with mental illness in a consumeristic
In reality, people were already living in America, and the people who “discovered” it were liars and murderers. Calling them “sea pirates,” he draws attention to the obvious racial motivation by stating, “[They] were white. The people who were already on the continent when the sea pirates arrived were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the continent, the slaves were black. Color was everything” (Vonnegut 11). Vonnegut claims that since the natives were of different color than the conquistadores, the Native American people were persecuted based on prejudice. Slavery being fueled by color also added to the claim that America has never been equal for people of color. Additionally, after Trout was robbed and assaulted on his way to the Arts Festival, the police questioned about the identity of his attackers. Trout replies innocently, "For all I know, they may not even have been Earthlings. For all I know, that car may have been occupied by an intelligent gas from Pluto." (Vonnegut 76). This is the first time in the novel that the race of a person was not made explicitly clear. By intentionally not mentioning the color of the bandits, Vonnegut suggests that everyone is just as likely to commit crimes, not just those of a specific racial background. People mistreat black people specifically because
Vonnegut is aware of the destruction of the world and how American culture is causing it; his novel is rich with satire criticizing the country’s values. The original cover of the book is designed to resemble a cereal box, and this is obviously a reference to how Vonnegut sees marketing and how it captures an audience. Vonnegut believes that humans are destroying the planet, and one author points out that The narrator, Kilgore Trout, observes the people around him as if looking at people from a different galaxy. He sees the people around him manufacturing poisons and other actions to destroy the earth (“Black” 43). Trout’s satirical novels and stories also criticize American values and how they destroy the environment. One of his novels, Plague on Wheels (Vonnegut 26), describes a planet where the dominant organism is a race of humanoid cars. The cars polluted the planet to the point that all other life on the planet had gone extinct. After realizing their fate, they beg extraterrestrial visitors to carry their eggs to their own planet, but the aliens refuse, as the extra weight would be too much. They leave the dying planet assuring the cars that they will be “gone, but not forgotten.” This idea of a dying planet is Trout’s view of how the Earth currently is, and he believes humans worship automobiles as they worship gods. With human’s continued use of cars, the