Breakfast of Champions as Social Commentary
Matthew Choma
English 101
Prof. J. Douglas
4/9/11
Breakfast of Champions: Science Fiction as Social Commentary
Vonnegut’s symbolic and satirical representation of humans as robots in his novel: Breakfast of Champions is representative of the authors interpretation of world events and conflicting nature of human beings. The renowned author often hits on significant and worrisome themes such as destruction of the planet and overpopulation. His unique and unparallel style includes outrageous and often unrealistic chain of event that are obviously symbolic and relevant to the story as well as the author’s attitude on a particular subject matter. For instance in describing when Kilgore Trout writes his stories, he does not save them or make more copies, instead sends them to magazine publishers, mainly those of ‘adult’ content, who publish his stories often changing their titles in the process. This is symbolic of his attitude on writers who don’t bother to write in order to present stories that exclusively are those which they wanted to write about, but instead write whatever will get them published, not paying attention to the impact such selfishness has with it. I will argue that Kurt Vonnegut’s specific style of writing, mainly the pattern and trends we see throughout in the novel: Breakfast of Champions is a purposeful critique of world events and the effect of science fiction have on the reader as to make the ordinary seen strange in order to have the reader rethink his or her on already well ground and seemingly universal beliefs.
At first the effect of describing ordinary things with overly specific details, usually has the effect of utter annoyance of the reader. The narrator from the beginning has a knack of describing what seem to be like completely ordinary things with too much detail and even adds illustrations to what he describes. This is certainly different in comparison to other novels, especially since most novels have much longer
English 101
Prof. J. Douglas
4/9/11
Breakfast of Champions: Science Fiction as Social Commentary
Vonnegut’s symbolic and satirical representation of humans as robots in his novel: Breakfast of Champions is representative of the authors interpretation of world events and conflicting nature of human beings. The renowned author often hits on significant and worrisome themes such as destruction of the planet and overpopulation. His unique and unparallel style includes outrageous and often unrealistic chain of event that are obviously symbolic and relevant to the story as well as the author’s attitude on a particular subject matter. For instance in describing when Kilgore Trout writes his stories, he does not save them or make more copies, instead sends them to magazine publishers, mainly those of ‘adult’ content, who publish his stories often changing their titles in the process. This is symbolic of his attitude on writers who don’t bother to write in order to present stories that exclusively are those which they wanted to write about, but instead write whatever will get them published, not paying attention to the impact such selfishness has with it. I will argue that Kurt Vonnegut’s specific style of writing, mainly the pattern and trends we see throughout in the novel: Breakfast of Champions is a purposeful critique of world events and the effect of science fiction have on the reader as to make the ordinary seen strange in order to have the reader rethink his or her on already well ground and seemingly universal beliefs.
At first the effect of describing ordinary things with overly specific details, usually has the effect of utter annoyance of the reader. The narrator from the beginning has a knack of describing what seem to be like completely ordinary things with too much detail and even adds illustrations to what he describes. This is certainly different in comparison to other novels, especially since most novels have much longer