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It's really amazing to me that I never read Kurt Vonnegut before this summer. I knew who he was, of course, but never got around to reading any of his novels. Dark comedies, especially ones with strong anti-war themes, are totally my cup of tea. I grew up on M*A*S*H and one of my favorite books of all time is Catch 22. Vonnegut's two most famous novels, Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five definitely fit that genre.
Slaughterhouse-Five is a semi-autobiographical account of a POW's experience in WWII. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, has a lot in common with Vonnegut himself, who also occasionally appears in the novel as a first-person narrator. Billy is captured by the Nazis and is taken to Dresden, where he survives the Allied fire-bombing that decimated the city (just like Vonnegut himself did in real life).
The story-telling in Slaughterhouse-Five is very disjointed, jumping from all over the place in space and time (Billy Pilgrim is "unstuck in time"), with elements of sci-fi and fantasy combining with Vonnegut's actual experiences. It reminded me a lot of the similarly disjointed flashbacks in Catch 22. While Catch 22's story-telling is much more linear, Yossarian, the protagonist, suffers from strange, random flashbacks; at first they are very abstract, but later become more detailed to reveal the trauma in Yossarian's past. Similarly, Billy Pilgrim seems to escape his trauma by means of fantasy as well- such as the fantasy that he has been abducted by aliens.
The story-telling in Slaughterhouse-Five is very disjointed, jumping from all over the place in space and time (Billy Pilgrim is "unstuck in time"), with elements of sci-fi and fantasy combining with Vonnegut's actual experiences. It reminded me a lot of the similarly disjointed flashbacks in Catch 22. While Catch 22's story-telling is much more linear, Yossarian, the protagonist, suffers from strange, random flashbacks; at first they are very abstract, but later become more detailed to reveal the trauma in Yossarian's past. Similarly, Billy Pilgrim seems to escape his trauma by means of fantasy as well- such as the fantasy that he has been abducted by aliens.
It's clear that Vonnegut himself still had difficulty dealing with the trauma he experienced as well and that Slaughterhouse-Five was a way of processing some of what happened to him. But in the end, there are some tragedies that just cannot be accepted - I think this is the message we have to take from characters like Billy Pilgrim and Yossarian.
Cat's Cradle was the first book I read by Vonnegut. Like Slaughterhouse-Five, it has strong anti-war themes and while they are both powerful books I enjoyed Cat's Cradle more. As a work of fiction, I think it's better written than Slaughterhouse-Five which is more auto-biographical. It's the story of a journalist who is researching one of the (fictitious) scientists who created the A-bomb and in the process discovers that the man left behind an even greater weapon, called Ice-nine, with his three strange children.
Cat's Cradle is a novel warning about the dangers of developing weapons of mass destruction and calls into question the morality of those willing to create them. The fictional scientist, Felix Hoenikker, who created ice-nine, is described as a scientific genius completely lacking in conscience and empathy toward other human beings. This is most strongly shown through the recollections of his children, who are all damaged by their cold, unloving father. Vonnegut based the character Felix Hoenikker off of Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Irving Langmuir, who worked for the General Electric company in New York (which Vonnegut also worked for). Vonnegut described Langmuir as being completely uninterested in the consequences of his research and willing to sell it to anybody.
Needless to say, I absolutely loved both novels. They're intelligent, witty and sometimes scary looks at our world post-WWII, with important messages to deliver. Despite the dark subject matter, both books were fast, interesting reads that kept me fascinated from start to finish. Vonnegut belongs on everyone's must-read list.
Cat's Cradle is a novel warning about the dangers of developing weapons of mass destruction and calls into question the morality of those willing to create them. The fictional scientist, Felix Hoenikker, who created ice-nine, is described as a scientific genius completely lacking in conscience and empathy toward other human beings. This is most strongly shown through the recollections of his children, who are all damaged by their cold, unloving father. Vonnegut based the character Felix Hoenikker off of Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Irving Langmuir, who worked for the General Electric company in New York (which Vonnegut also worked for). Vonnegut described Langmuir as being completely uninterested in the consequences of his research and willing to sell it to anybody.
Needless to say, I absolutely loved both novels. They're intelligent, witty and sometimes scary looks at our world post-WWII, with important messages to deliver. Despite the dark subject matter, both books were fast, interesting reads that kept me fascinated from start to finish. Vonnegut belongs on everyone's must-read list.
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