Kurt Vonnegut Influence On War

Kurt Vonnegut was an outstanding author in the second half of the 20th century. He is a staple writer in regards to satire and dark humor. Many of his novels and stories were influenced by his experiences as a soldier during the second world war. I believe that Kurt Vonnegut is a prominent author because of how he grew up in the Great Depression, his most famous novel Slaughterhouse-Five, and the controversy surrounding his works.
Kurt Vonnegut got much of his influence from his young life. He was born on November 11th, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana (Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of American Literature 1609). His family was very privileged, for his father was a successful architect, and his mother was from a wealthy family. Because the Germans
were enemies of the United States in World War II, people in the United States at that time didn’t like people of German descent. As a result, his parents didn’t teach him very many German cultural traditions or the language that had been running in his family, in order to protect him from the animosity of people around them. The Great Depression began in 1929, when he was seven. His father lost his job because there weren’t any new buildings being built. His mother tried to write short stories to try and earn some money, but none of them were published. Vonnegut also went from an elitist private school to a public school. His sense of humor most likely came from having to make jokes when he was younger in order to get into conversations. He was the youngest one in his family. When he became older, he joined the Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After that, a day before Mother’s Day, his mother committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. She had been struggling with depression (1609). These events in his young life heavily influenced his writing.
His novel Slaughterhouse-Five is regarded as his greatest and most famous work.
It was published in 1969, and is based on his experiences as a prisoner of war in Dresden (“Slaughterhouse-Five” 258). It also talks about the Dresden firebombing, which killed about 25,000 people (Authors and Artists for Young Adults 202), but was commonly published to exaggerate to “...135,000 German civilians killed in the Allied firebombing of Dresden” (“Slaughterhouse-Five” 265). The story is about a man named Billy Pilgrim, who is “unstuck in time” (“Slaughterhouse-Five” 266). The theory in the story is that all moments, past, present, and future, have always existed and always will exist. Normal people like us are stuck seeing the moments in order, but he travels unexpectedly to random points in his life. Like the book’s author, he is captured by the Germans and witnessed the bombing of Dresden. Later in his life, he is abducted by aliens called the Tralfamadorians (“Slaughterhouse-Five” 261). They are the ones who introduce him to the time theory, and how life and death are ultimately meaningless because of it. This novel is also interesting because of how Vonnegut is a character that appears in his own book (264). Themes that appear in the book include alienation, loneliness, free will, apathy, passivity, death, and patriotism (264). There is symbolism that highlights issues in society and war. Lastly, the book uses black humor to highlight the absurdity and the inexplicability of war’s
tragedies. This story with these elements led to a variety of feedback. Vonnegut’s sort of writing made for a few different controversies. In Slaughterhouse-Five, there are things such as the meaninglessness of death as explained by the Tralfamadorians (265), and the absurdity of the human condition, this condition being how all of us are the playthings of something much larger than we are, and there isn’t anything we will ever be able to do about it. This novel, like many of his other novels, features characters that search for meaning in a meaningless and disorderly world, somewhat like real life. He mocks government and religion, saying they offer harmful and ill-founded belief systems as solutions to problems. Vonnegut is also very pessimistic about humanity, calling it a “plight.” Lastly, he says that war is futile, technology is destructive, and humans are irrational and evil. This is the controversy that surrounds Vonnegut’s works, and while not everyone likes it, it is what makes his works stand out, and gives them impact. In conclusion, Kurt Vonnegut is a prominent author because of how he grew up in the Great Depression, his most famous novel Slaughterhouse-Five, and the controversy surrounding his works. His unusual yet highly intriguing style of writing makes his books enjoyable but also very meaningful. He will stand the test of time as one of the greatest satirical writers ever.