Happy Birthday, 1951 by Kurt Vonnegut
Happy Birthday
A father figure is an important part of the childhood for a little boy. At some point the boy will need someone to protect him and teach him the value of life’s true beauty. Otherwise he simply won’t understand, and won’t appreciate it. What is much worse is that he might end up looking up to the wrong people. This is what happens in the short story Happy Birthday, 1951 by Kurt Vonnegut. On the day the war ended, a refugee woman left a little baby in the arms of an old man. Since then this man has been trying to be a father for the child.
Happy Birthday, 1951 takes place in an unknown country. It is seven years after World War II, but the country is still filled with soldiers. Our main characters live in ruins, which tells us that even though it is seven years after the war, it has not quite ended yet. During the story the setting changes into the complete opposite. The main characters goes to some place in the woods. Here there is absolute peace, and the nature is described thoroughly. Therefore you truly feel the contrast, which makes the ruins they live in seem even worse.
The first person we meet in the story is an old man. We don’t know neither his name nor his age. As told in the previous part, he lives in some ruins. When he was handed the little boy, this is where he brings him. He sees himself as the father of the child, but he doesn’t think he has ‘’…been a very good father, letting you go without a birthday this long’’ (l. 40). This could suggest that the old man feels some kind of guilt towards the boy due to the lack of gifts for the boy’s birthday. In the end what is a childhood without any birthday at all? The old man genuinely cares for the boy. We see this when the man feels guilt as mentioned before, but also in the end. In the end the boy disappears when the man is sleeping out in the woods, and when he realizes this, the panic wells up in him.
The old man does definitely not like the soldiers. He is actually scared of them.
A father figure is an important part of the childhood for a little boy. At some point the boy will need someone to protect him and teach him the value of life’s true beauty. Otherwise he simply won’t understand, and won’t appreciate it. What is much worse is that he might end up looking up to the wrong people. This is what happens in the short story Happy Birthday, 1951 by Kurt Vonnegut. On the day the war ended, a refugee woman left a little baby in the arms of an old man. Since then this man has been trying to be a father for the child.
Happy Birthday, 1951 takes place in an unknown country. It is seven years after World War II, but the country is still filled with soldiers. Our main characters live in ruins, which tells us that even though it is seven years after the war, it has not quite ended yet. During the story the setting changes into the complete opposite. The main characters goes to some place in the woods. Here there is absolute peace, and the nature is described thoroughly. Therefore you truly feel the contrast, which makes the ruins they live in seem even worse.
The first person we meet in the story is an old man. We don’t know neither his name nor his age. As told in the previous part, he lives in some ruins. When he was handed the little boy, this is where he brings him. He sees himself as the father of the child, but he doesn’t think he has ‘’…been a very good father, letting you go without a birthday this long’’ (l. 40). This could suggest that the old man feels some kind of guilt towards the boy due to the lack of gifts for the boy’s birthday. In the end what is a childhood without any birthday at all? The old man genuinely cares for the boy. We see this when the man feels guilt as mentioned before, but also in the end. In the end the boy disappears when the man is sleeping out in the woods, and when he realizes this, the panic wells up in him.
The old man does definitely not like the soldiers. He is actually scared of them.