Dissertations / Theses: 'Kurt Vonnegut'

1

Heath, Alexander. "Humanisms in Kurt Vonnegut." Tallahassee, Fla. : Florida State University, 2008. http://purl.fcla.edu/fsu/lib/digcoll/undergraduate/honors-theses/341782.

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2

Saggers, Emma Louise. "Carnivalesque inversion : the subversive fiction of Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, University of Essex, 2016. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/19697/.

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This thesis considers the novels of Kurt Vonnegut, focusing on Cat’s Cradle (1963), Player Piano (1952), and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), through the literary theories of Mikhail Bakhtin. It concentrates on Bakhtin’s carnivalesque inversion from Rabelais and his World (1965), his theoretical perspectives on the text as a site of struggle from The Dialogic Imagination (1975), and the practical application of his theories with the novel as polyphonic from Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1963). The thesis concentrates on three main themes: religion, technology, and war. Chapter One will examine the theme of religion in Cat’s Cradle. It will consider how religion is presented in society and how fundamental opinion can become embedded in our social and cultural structures. It will further consider the cultural shift in belief from religion to science, juxtaposing the two ideals and highlighting the destructive forces of absolute belief and fundamental opinion. Chapter Two will concentrate on Player Piano, and how technology could have a detrimental effect on the progress of human civilisation. It considers how valuable technology is to the human experience, and what happens to civilisation if humans are forced to surrender everything that gives their lives meaning. Chapter Three will analyse Slaughterhouse-Five, looking closely at the representation of war, and its effects on the mental state of those that are forced to encounter it. It will engage with the ‘ideals’ of war presented in society juxtaposed with the experience of actually taking part in war. Vonnegut critiqued the American social, political and religious structures prevalent throughout his life. To Vonnegut, America had the possibility to become a blueprint for the rest of the world, a role model for the liberation and equality of all human beings, but it needed work.

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3

Mayerchak, Justin Philip. "Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Confronts the Death of the Author." FIU Digital Commons, 2016. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2440.

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Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s literary style transforms from his first novel, "Player’s Piano" (1952), to his final book, "Timequake" (1997). Most of his novels adhere to a similar style – the narrators face a puzzling societal fault that is exaggerated in their dystopian societies, which hides Vonnegut’s humanistic leanings. This thesis, however, focuses on Vonnegut’s authorial identity, his use of the alter ego, and eventual entrance into the novel. His authorial role challenges the literary theory expressed in “The Death of the Author”(1967) by Roland Barthes and further discussed in “What is an Author”(1969) by Michel Foucault. Barthes explains an author metaphorically dies after his book is published and Foucault questions the author’s role and importance to his novel. Vonnegut juxtaposes fictional and nonfictional material whereby his character is paramount to his work. Therefore, Vonnegut challenges Barthes and Foucault’s notion that an author restricts his work; rather, Vonnegut’s identity empowers his novels.

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4

Teo, Ling Eileen. "Sculpting a human artefact : a study of Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.270499.

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5

Robinson, Katie Elizabeth. "Symptomatic of excess apocalypse in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut /." Lynchburg, Va. : Liberty University, 2009. http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu.

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Dye, Scott Allen. "The Concept of Dignity in the Early Science Fiction Novels of Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2003. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4155/.

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Kurt Vonnegut's early science fiction novels depict societies and characters that, as in the real world, have become callous and downtrodden. These works use supercomputers, aliens, and space travel, often in a comical manner, to demonstrate that the future, unless people change their concepts of humanity, will not be the paradise of advanced technology and human harmony that some may expect. In fact, Vonnegut suggests that the human condition may gradually worsen if people continue to look further and further into the universe for happiness and purpose. To Vonnegut, the key to happiness is dignity, and this key is to be found within ourselves, not without.

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Weißhampel, Stefan. "The role of science fiction : Asimov & Vonnegut - a comparison /." Hamburg : Diplomica-Verl, 2007. http://d-nb.info/989566374/04.

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8

O'Brien, John Philip. "Occasional Writing as Life Writing : Norman Mailer, Grace Paley, Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.515553.

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9

Psenicka, Carly. ""An Unwavering Band of Light": Kurt Vonnegut and the Psychedelic Revolution." Youngstown State University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ysu1433433145.

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10

Pettersson, Bo. "The world according to Kurt Vonnegut moral paradox and narrative form /." Åbo [Finland] : Åbo Akademi University Press, 1994. http://books.google.com/books?id=lXlbAAAAMAAJ.

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11

Leeper, Jill M. "Preacher for the age of absurdity : morality in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut." Virtual Press, 1987. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/482743.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the moral imagination of Kurt Vonnegut and attempt to determine its philosophical basis. This topic was previously only mentioned briefly in the course of other studies, and no one had ever attempted to examine the scope of Vonnegut’s moral vision. This moral vision was examined within the categories of government, technology, violence, economics, and religion. It was concluded that Vonnegut’s vision is based upon the philosophy of humanism: Man is sacred and must be preserved. To this end, Vonnegut advocates a more democratic and selfless form of government, the deemphasis of technology, a more moral scientific responsibility, global pacifism, a socialist economic system, a new religion based on humanism which emphasizes love for all people, and, finally, a return to large extended families. Although Vonnegut acknowledges that this moral vision is unlikely to be instituted on a large enough scale to really change anything due to complexity of an absurd, mechanized, and dehumanized society, he believes it is the moral responsibility of every individual to attempt it. He concludes that the future of mankind depends upon a return to humanistic values.

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12

Engström, Alexis. "En osäker framtid : Om hot mot planeten i Kurt Vonneguts författarskap." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Avdelningen för litteratursociologi, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-190876.

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Uppsatsen har som mål att se hur läsningen av Kurt Vonnegut kan kompletteras med ekokritiska perspektiv. Som ämne valdes hot mot planeten och det undersökta materialet var fyra av Vonneguts böcker: Player Piano (1954), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Slapstick (1976) samt A Man without a Country (2005). Böckerna undersöktes utifrån frågorna: Har det tidigare i Vonneguts författarskap förekommit hot mot planeten? Vilka är i sådana fall dessa hot och vilka är aktörerna bakom hoten? samt Hur framställs hoten och hur har hoten och framställningen förändrats från Vonneguts debut till hans avslutande roman? Undersökningen visade att det genom hela Vonneguts författarskap har funnits ett tema som säger att livet som levs är ohållbart. Det tar sig form i olika hotbilder mot planeten. Dessa hot består fram för allt i konsumtion av fossila bränslen, västerländsk kultur och människans natur. Den primära förändringen mellan böckerna är att Vonnegut skiftar mellan att lägga skulden på människans natur och västerländsk kultur. Framställningen går också från att vara processdriven till att domineras av direkt anföring. Vonnegut går även från ett extra-heterodiegetiskt berättande till ett intra-homodiegetiskt. Samtidigt blir stoffet allt mer personligt.

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Libeg, Nicholas R. "Thus Spoke Billy Pilgrim: Kurt Vonnegut's Nietzschean Thought." Youngstown State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ysu1391773726.

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Sirbu-Ghiram, Dolores Carmencita. "Le jeu des masques dans les romans de John Barth et de Kurt Vonnegut." Angers, 1999. http://www.theses.fr/1999ANGE0002.

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Le paradoxe des écrivains américains est qu'en établissant une identité pour le personnage, ils lui dessinent un contour qui est une limite à ses possibilités de comportement. Le personnage ne peut sortir de cet enfermement que par la fluidité de ses attitudes, ce qui entraine une perte de son moi réel. Cela se révèle particulièrement vrai chez John Barth et Kurt Vonnegut, dont l'oeuvre est analysée ici à travers deux de leurs romans. La structure décentrée postmoderniste qui les caractérise implique une acceptation de la fragmentation et de la dissolution des frontières du moi et impose aux personnages un effort permanent afin de trouver une solution de défense face aux agressions potentielles. Le pouvoir des masques leur permet de maitriser les comportements des autres et de les manipuler selon leurs intentions. L'étude présentée porte donc sur le jeu des masques et sur leur rôle dans les romans The floating opera et The end of the road de John Barth et Mother night et Deadeye dick de Kurt Vonnegut. Elle traite également des conséquences sur les protagonistes qui les adoptent et sur leurs relations avec les autres. Mais lorsqu'ils abandonnent leurs masques, apparait alors leur caractère vulnérable, leurs difficultés a s'intégrer dans la réalité concrète. Ces destins qui suivent des itinéraires sinusoïdaux déroutent le lecteur dans ses efforts pour démêler la part du moi et du masque dans l'action. Le jeu des personnages devient ainsi un jeu de l'auteur avec le lecteur et se reflète au niveau de la narration par une multitude de masques narratifs. . . Procédés qu'il s'agit justement de démasquer
A paradox in contemporary american fiction is that writers, in trying to outline an identity for their characters, limit the possible developement of their behaviour. On the other hand, the way out of this enclosure means fluidity and thus, a loss of identity. This is true for the works of john barth and kurt vonnegut, analysed here through two of their novels. The decentered postmodern structure that characterizes them implies the acceptance of the fragmentation and dissolution of the frontiers of the self and requires a permanent effort from the protagonists to find a solution to defend themselves from potential aggressions. The power of masks enables them to control the others and to manipulate them as they like. This study deals with masks and role playing in the novels the floating opera and the end of the road by john barth and mother night and deadeye dick by kurt vonnegut. It also analyzes their consequences on the protagonists who wear them and on their relationships with those around them. When they abandon their masks, their vulnerable selves hinder them from a complete envolvement. Their destinies puzzle the reader in his efforts to understand the roles of the self and of the mask in action. Thus, the relationship between the characters becomes a game between the author and the reader, which mirrors itself at the level of the narration through a multitude of narrative masks

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15

Ward, Joseph J. "The Accidental Practitioner: Principles of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in the Works of Kurt Vonnegut." Scholar Commons, 2010. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/1802.

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Just as psychology and philosophy have influenced the field of literary studies, literature provides insight about the theories and practices of its sister disciplines. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate how literary works of Kurt Vonnegut illuminate principles of the influential branch of psychotherapy known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). This thesis traces the similar philosophies and shared beliefs of Vonnegut and REBT's founder, Albert Ellis, and details how Ellis's REBT is illustrated in selected works of Vonnegut, specifically, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Galapagos, and Timequake. The thesis concludes by suggesting that Vonnegut's works -- and the principles of REBT that they illuminate - provide a much needed guide for living in an irrational, often absurd world.

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Baker, Brian. "The automatic eye : mechanization of the self in postwar American dystopias." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.366701.

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Dennett, Steven. "The return of the author in the work of Milan Kundera, Martin Amis, and Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.282614.

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18

Langdon, Gareth. "A self-conscious Kurt Vonnegut: an analysis of Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/6802.

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The works of Kurt Vonnegut stand as seminal in the American literary canon. Looking at three of his most influential novels, namely Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions, this study aims to better understand the mechanisms which inform his fiction. Working chronologically through the novels, the study examines historical context, narrative technique, theoretical underpinnings and the social critique of each novel. Guided by an idea of the postmodern novel the study examines how these elements interact, concluding that by way of what may be considered "simple" yet self-conscious metafiction and prose as well as variations in narrative technique, Vonnegut is able to more accurately convey his opinions on the American situation as well as demonstrate his stance on the role of fiction and the writer in contemporary society. The study also considers closely the role of the reader and the author/reader/text relationship.

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19

Azzopardi, Mark. "Saul Bellow and Kurt Vonnegut: history, politics, and American fiction in the cold war, 1944-1970." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/13057.

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This is a comparative study of Saul Bellow and Kurt Vonnegut, arguing that both writers’ engagements with the emerging historical and political dynamics of the Cold War need to be taken seriously if we are to understand how their careers began, developed, and have been read and canonized. I base my claim on detailed readings of four novels by Bellow (Dangling Man, The Victim, Herzog, Mr. Sammler’s Planet) and three novels by Vonnegut (Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five), demonstrating that formal innovation in the work of both writers remains marked by tensions in national and international life. Specifically, Bellow and Vonnegut are understood in the context of Cold War debates about the relationship between aesthetics and politics, the most decisive and contentious of which involve the question of literary realism and its legacies. I trace the evolution of debates about realism across the work of Erich Auerbach, Georg Lukács, Lionel Trilling, Diana Trilling, John Hersey, Tom Wolfe, Robert Scholes, and Reinhold Niebuhr, suggesting that for all their obvious differences these critics similarly interrogate and recast realism as a set of literary conventions and an ambiguously oriented political enterprise, whose realignment in American literature and national culture between 1944 and 1970 had everything to do with the global expansion of the superpower conflict. At stake across various strands of the realism debate were nothing less than the political possibilities of the American novel, and it is with these debates in mind this study offers its interpretations of Bellow and Vonnegut. In four chapters, Bellow’s engagement with the Cold War is shown to depend on his representations of private life, positioned as the fraught formal centre of his fiction as well as the key to its political resonances. The first two chapters approach Dangling Man (1944) and The Victim (1947) according to how private life intersects with the recent history of the Second World War and its aftermath. Dangling Man makes use of journal entries written by a civilian and former Communist awaiting induction into the army, while The Victim situates its representation of contemporary anti-Semitism in reference to the Holocaust. Herzog (1964) complicates Bellow’s fictional rendering of private life in its selective recourse to epistolary conventions, with the title character’s interminable letter-writing an expression of psychological crisis as well as a self-conscious rebuke against contemporary apocalypticism. Herzog’s juxtaposition of private life and public history is linked with Bellow’s emerging status as an essayist and public intellectual, using his newfound prominence as a bestselling author to voice a polemical criticism against the American 1960s that would become directly albeit reluctantly entangled in the growing controversy about the Vietnam War. Bellow’s dual roles as novelist and public intellectual appear most pronounced and contentious in Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970), a novel whose savage renderings of New York City at the end of the 1960s can only be read as a bitter political critique of that decade. Mr. Sammler’s Planet calls for a rethinking of Bellow’s career up to this point, a task begun in this study in relation to the novel’s fascination with the Apollo missions and imminent moon landing. In contrast, Vonnegut’s fiction lacks all semblance of psychologically and morally complex private life, without which Bellow’s novels would be unthinkable in every sense. The point is not to reclaim Vonnegut as a realist in the manner of Bellow, but instead to demonstrate how his eclectic and self-conscious combinations of satire, science fiction, and metafiction engage with realism’s most basic forms and assumptions. In three chapters, Vonnegut’s fiction is shown to delight in its methods of imaginative contrivance, presenting readers with a series of historical and political alternatives in recognizable yet unfamiliar form. Vonnegut’s engagement with the Cold War is initially considered in relation to his work as a freelance short story writer for the popular weekly magazines Collier’s and Saturday Evening Post, read alongside his employment as a public relations writer for General Electric between September 1947 and December 1950. Vonnegut’s proximity to mass culture during the earliest period of his career is understood as highly significant to his sense of authorship as a form of popular entertainment, his amiable self-satire in his prefaces and the short story ‘Deer in the Works’ (1955) taking on more formally elaborate configurations in the science fiction of his first novel Player Piano (1952). Vonnegut’s self-conscious negotiation of authorship in the context of the Cold War is further understood in relation to his lifelong opposition to America’s nuclear program. His magazine short stories ‘Report on the Barnhouse Effect’ (1950), ‘Thanasphere’ (1950), and ‘The Manned Missiles’ (1958) adopt an earnest style of moral satire targeting the military industrial complex, before giving way to a more peculiar combination of playfulness and pessimism in the end of the world scenario of Cat’s Cradle (1963). Like Bellow, the political resonance of Vonnegut’s fiction is associated with changes in his authorial self-image as it took on an increasingly public role from the mid-1960s, what for Vonnegut was his status as what Edward Said calls an ‘amateur’ in the public sphere, taking on the largest social questions using comedy, playfulness, anecdotes, and personal sentiment. Vonnegut’s passionate albeit idiosyncratic sense of the writer’s political responsibility culminates in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), a novel whose formal eclecticism interrogates the ability of the realist novel to represent disaster. Slaughterhouse-Five tempts readers with a series of highly contrived and ultimately unacceptable alternatives to the catastrophic history of the twentieth-century, giving the impression of history as a fundamental yet largely incomprehensible aspect of human life and understanding. Vonnegut’s reinvention of Cold War history is completed in his satirical essay on the Apollo missions, ‘Excelsior! We’re Going to the Moon! Excelsior!’ (1969), divesting the iconography of the space age of its symbolic power in the superpower narrative.

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Jenkins, Jordan. "Living in Truth in the Age of Automatization." Thesis, Boston College, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/3045.

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Thesis advisor: Gerald Easter
"Living in Truth in the Age of Automatization" is a discussion of dehumanization in the period of technological and bureaucratic supremacy. The article uses the writings of former Czech president Václav Havel and American novelist Kurt Vonnegut to argue that neither the automatization inherent within the Eastern Communist Model nor the mass consumer culture of the Western Capitalist Model are ideal, and to discuss the possibility of a third way, a way called "living in truth" which protects human dignity and the right of every man to pursue meaningful work in a society
Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2013
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Political Science

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Nelson, James A. "The Right Thing to Say." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1338561128.

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22

Cook, Joshua D. "Navigating through "a nightmare of meaninglessness without end" a semi-structural reading of Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan /." Connect to resource online, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/1888.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009.
Title from screen (viewed on August 26, 2009). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Jonathan Eller, John Rudy, Thomas Marvin. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-68).

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23

Knippel, Mark Jacob 1983. "The Amber of the Moment." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/11486.

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1 score (vii, 56 p.) Includes one sound recording in AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format)
The Amber of the Moment is a thirteen-minute composition for orchestra. Inspiration for this piece is drawn from two sources: the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and my desire to utilize techniques derived from various musical cultures, including Balinese gamelan and African drumming and marimba playing. Although not directly narrative, much of the imagery portrayed in Slaughterhouse Five informed the emotional landscape of the piece. As to the use of techniques from other cultures, my aim is not to merely imitate them, but to utilize them in a manner appropriate to the tradition of orchestral concert music.
Committee in charge: Dr. David Crumb, Chairperson; Dr. Robert Kyr, Member; Dr. Stephen Rodgers, Member

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24

Hinchcliffe, Richard. "Empty heroics, low comedy and pointless death : structures of melancholy in the early novels of Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, University of Central Lancashire, 2000. http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/20770/.

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This thesis explores structures of melancholy in five of Kurt Vonnegut's early novels, Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions. The thesis attempts to give new readings to each of the novels by drawing on critical approaches to melancholy and by viewing each text as being subject to contemporary cultural influences. In particular, the thesis maps how each of the novels comments on human progress through a combination of historical, scientific, cultural, social and political paradigms. In the chapters on The Sirens of Titan and Mother Night the protagonist is seen as suffering from a number of melancholic complaints that are closely related to schizophrenia, while the narratives as a whole exploit this splintering of the self to suggest a variety of allegorical readings. The chapters on Player Piano, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions discuss how the Puritan foundations of American culture play a major part in the construction of the self through the establishment of the Protestant work ethic. These chapters also attempt to expose how many of the ideological concepts that adhere to work, progress and capitalism have melancholic consequences for all involved. Throughout the thesis the relationship between reality and representation, language and authority is seen as being crucial to understanding the depth of Vonnegut's early novels and the way in which each novel deconstructs established values and subverts readers' expectations. Occasionally, the thesis discusses the novels' poststructural concerns as appearing to precipitate melancholy within both readers and characters. However, the thesis also explores how melancholy has been seen historically to galvanise the soul and build up, from the depths of depression, a renewal of spirit. Overall, the thesis shows how melancholy is a constituent part of Vonnegut's novels, connecting his work to the tradition in American melancholic writing created by the founders of the nation. This thesis traces the persistence of this melancholic note within selected Vonnegut novels and its connections with other themes identified within his work.

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Moore, Erica Brown. "Practising the Posthumanities : evolutionary animals, machines and the posthuman in the fiction of J.G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2011. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/23442/.

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This thesis demonstrates how selected texts by J.G. Ballard—Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974) and High‐Rise 1975)—and Kurt Vonnegut—Player Piano (1952), Slaughterhouse‐Five(1969) and Galápagos (1985)—can be considered in terms of theoretical stances derived from posthumanism. By analysing representations of the ‘human’ in relation to both the ‘machine’ and the ‘evolutionary human animal’, this thesis illustrates the emergence of the posthuman subject. In addition, by recognising the intersection between posthumanism and evolutionary theory, a wider project of this thesis involves demonstrating how the use of various theoretical approaches, from the ‘humanities’ and the ‘sciences’, contributes to the formation of a ‘posthumanities’ approach to literature. J.G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut consistently present fictional scenarios in which the lines between ‘human’, ‘machine’ and ‘evolutionary animal’ are disrupted and blurred. Depictions assume various triangulations and configurations: from the protagonist Ballard’s auto‐eroticism, to the characters of High‐Rise conflating boundaries between the ‘human’ and the evolutionary animal that is conveyed as a constituent of human identity, as well as between the machinic environment and the human inhabitant. Further,comparable configurations characterise Vonnegut’s texts: Player Piano’s Paul Proteus’ war against the machine is superimposed by human affiliation with the machine, and the castaway characters of Galápagos are stranded by evolutionary forces that displace human authority and control to the uttermost limit. Each of these instances contributes to the effective intervention of posthumanist thinking when reading the texts. In addition, the utilisation of evolutionary concepts derived from contemporaneous publications circulating in the cultural and scientific sphere highlights the usefulness of acknowledging sources from beyond the remit of traditional literary studies’ methodologies when reading texts. The triangulation between literature, posthumanism and evolutionary theory results in a reconfigured methodological approach to fictional texts: the posthumanities.

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Birgersson, Jonas. "Masculinities in Player Piano : Hegemonic Masculinity as a Totalitarian State." Thesis, Halmstad University, School of Humanities (HUM), 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-4220.

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Vonnegut envisions a plutocratic America where the

aforementioned periphery has been made obsolete, where a corporate

oligarchy supersedes the presidency in authority. An example of

this structure is the absent father of the main character Paul

Proteus, George Proteus, who was before his death the National

Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs and Resources

Director, a position which might have been below the presidency at

that time , but the scales have tilted towards total domination by

those who fuel the economy, i.e. the corporations. The

‘unenlightened’ Shah, spiritual leader of Bratpuhr who is visiting

America to learn about the great American society, shakes his head

and calls it “Communism” (21), which it is, with the exception that

there is no Communist Party. In its place is the oligarchy of the

corporations which the government allows to prevent inefficiency.

I argue that the hegemonic masculinity, or the masculinity of the

patriarchy, provides both motivation and justification for the men

who are constructing the totalitarian state of Player Piano. I will

furthermore look at the effects, on both society and the

individual, of a hegemonic masculinity.

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Keegan, Diana Morna Gerrard Dickson. "A study of Camus' notion of the absurd and its mythology in "Catch-22" and "Slaughterhouse-Five"." Access to citation, abstract and download form provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company; downloadable PDF file, 139 p, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1460433511&sid=5&Fmt=2&clientId=8331&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Doherty, John E. "SNAFU reconsidered the evolution of writing a true war story from Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse five" to Tim O'Brien's "How to tell a true war story", and the blogs of "The sandbox" /." Click here for download, 2009. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1697854261&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=3260&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Conklin, Robert Brian. "A fools' parade through three modern American novels : Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-five, and the World according to Garp /." Connect to resource, 1986. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view.cgi?acc%5Fnum=osu1243521288.

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30

Gray, Nigel. "His story, a novel memoir (novel) ; and Fish out of water (thesis)." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2009. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2009.0095.

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His Story takes the form of a fictive but autobiographically based investigation into the child and young adult I used to be, and follows that protagonist into early adulthood. It tries to show the damage done to that character and the way in which he damaged others in turn. As Hemingway said, We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. More importantly, the main protagonist is somebody who became concerned with, and cognizant of the main political and social events of his day. His life is set in its social context, and reaches out to the larger issues. That is to say, the personal events of the protagonist's life are recorded alongside and set in the context of the major events taking place on the world stage. The manuscript is some sort of hybrid of novel, autobiography, and historical and social document. As Isaac Bashevis Singer said, The serious writer of our time must be deeply concerned about the problems of his generation. In order to make His Story effective in sharing my ideas and beliefs, and, of course, in order to protect the innocent and more particularly, the guilty, it is created in the colourful area that is the overlap between memory and fiction. When we tell the stories of our lives to others, and indeed, to ourselves, we prise them out of memory's fingers and transform them into fiction. To write autobiography well, as E.L. Doctorow said, you have to invent everything, even memory.

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Garvey, Brian T. "Literature of utopia and dystopia. Technological influences shaping the form and content of utopian visions." Thesis, University of Bradford, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/5026.

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We live in an age of rapid change. The advance of science and technology, throughout history, has culminated in periods of transition when social values have had to adapt to a changed environment. Such times have proved fertile ground for the expansion of the imagination. Utopian literature offers a vast archive of information concerning the relationship between scientific and technological progress and social change. Alterations in the most basic machinery of society inspired utopian authors to write of distant and future worlds which had achieved a state of harmony and plenty. The dilemmas which writers faced were particular to their era, but there also emerged certain universal themes and questions: What is the best organisation of society? What tools would be adequate to the task? What does it mean to be human? The dividing line on these issues revolves around two opposed beliefs. Some perceived the power inherent in technology to effect the greatest improvement in the human condition. Others were convinced that the organisation of the social order must come first so as to create an environment sympathetic to perceived human needs. There are, necessarily, contradictions in such a division. They can be seen plainly in More's Utopia itself. More wanted to see new science and technique developed. But he also condemned the social consequences which inevitably flowed from the process of discovery. These consequences led More to create a utopia based on social reorganisation. In the main, the utopias of Francis Bacon, Edward Bellamy and the later H. G. Wells accepted science, while the work of William Morris, Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut rejected science in preference for a different social order. More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis were written at a time when feudal, agricultural society was being transformed by new discoveries and techniques. In a later age, Bellamy's Looking Backward and Morris's News From Nowhere offer contrary responses to society at the height of the Industrial evolution. These four authors serve as a prelude to the main area of the thesis which centres on the twentieth century. Wells, though his first novel appeared in 1895, produced the vast bulk of his work in the current century. Huxley acts as an appropriate balance to Wells and also exemplifies the shift from utopia to dystopia. The last section of the thesis deals with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and includes an interview with that author. The twentieth century has seen the proliferation of dystopias, portraits of the disastrous consequences of the headlong pursuit of science and technology, unallied to human values. Huxley and Vonnegut crystallised the fears of a modern generation: that we create a soulless, mechanised, urban nightmare. The contemporary fascination with science in literature is merely an extension of a process with a long tradition and underlying theme. The advance of science and technology created the physical and intellectual environment for utopian authors which determined the form and content of their visions.

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Fevyer, David. "Reading the Anthropocene through science and apocalypse in the selected contemporary fiction of J.G. Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy and Ian McEwan." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2016. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/400663/.

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This thesis examines how six contemporary novels variously intervene in the current crisis of climate change. Through close readings of J G Ballard’s The Drowned World (1962) and Hello America (1981); Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006); Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (1963) and Galapagos (1985); and Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010), the thesis aims to identify how the narrative and generic resources of contemporary fiction might help readers to think through and beyond the consequences of anthropocentric ways of thinking about the biosphere. Drawing upon the concept of the Anthropocene – and in particular the account of this concept provided by the historian Dipesh Chakrabarty – the thesis suggests that these novels raise profound questions about how climate change is represented and understood. If accounts of the human history of modernity have until recently overlooked the complex ways in which both the human species and its contemporary fossil fuel cultures are intertwined with the geologic history of the planet, how has contemporary fiction attended to this oversight? What light can imaginative apocalyptic future histories of the biosphere, such as those presented in the fiction of Ballard, Vonnegut and McCarthy, shed on predominant understandings of climate change? How has fiction highlighted the ways in which the insights offered by the Anthropocene complicate the promises of scientific ‘reason’ to explain and provide solutions to anthropogenic climate change? How do fictions such as those of Vonnegut and McEwan contribute to a more nuanced account of the limits of such reasoning? To address these questions, the thesis draws upon Martin Heidegger’s account of the anthropocentric enframing of nature through technology, and suggests a re-thinking of Louis Althusser’s account of ideology through which we can begin to understand how anthropocentric perspectives are naturalised in ways that illuminate some of the difficulties identified by Chakrabarty. By bringing these three perspectives together, the thesis seeks to develop a distinct critical approach to reading the responses of these literary fictions to climate change. The first section of the thesis examines how the generic resources of apocalyptic fiction defamiliarise assumed relationships between the human subjects and societies of industrial modernity and the biosphere. Chapter 1 suggests that J G Ballard’s novel The Drowned World (1962) imaginatively connects geologic and human history in order to disrupt key anthropocentric assumptions concerning the relationship between humanity and the biosphere, whilst his later novel Hello America (1981) foregrounds the anthropocentric inscription of industrial modernity through a self-consciously hallucinatory re-imagining of American history. Chapter 2 examines Cormac McCarthy’s recent novel The Road (2006), and suggests that the text presents a particular form of apocalyptic narrative that complicates the anthropocentric sub-text of traditional apocalyptic narratives. The second section of the thesis examines how the fictional representation of science and scientists can help to illuminate the ways in which an anthropocentric faith in the technoscientific promise of human power over nature serves to legitimate an illusion of human mastery over the biosphere. Chapter 3 considers how Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle (1963) offers a counterpoint to this faith by ironically depicting scientist characters whose assumptions of beneficial technoscientific progress are undermined by complex interconnections between individuals and the biosphere – connections that have apocalyptic consequences. Such complex interactions are also a feature of the insights offered by ecology and evolutionary science. Reading Vonnegut’s fiction after the Anthropocene underlines the ways in which Vonnegut’s literary techniques can help readers to think through and beyond the complex connections between natural and human history that these scientific disciplines begin to elucidate. As chapter 3 suggests, Vonnegut’s later novel Galapagos (1985) provides a particularly imaginative account of this complexity through its fictional narrative of an evolutionary future history across the longue durée of geologic time. Building on the insights developed in chapter 3, chapter 4 considers the significance of Ian McEwan’s ironic depiction of a fictional scientist who is unable to restrain his own overconsumption of resources in his novel Solar (2010). In my reading, McEwan’s scientist figure functions as an allegory for the paradoxes of a technoscientific culture that seems unable to apply scientific reason in meaningful responses to the dangers of the Anthropocene. In so doing, the chapter illustrates how the use of allegorical codes and irony in Solar draw attention to the ways in which a faith in technoscientific reason to provide solutions to anthropogenic climate change is misplaced. This misplaced faith also naturalises the on-going enframing of nature as a resource, with potentially apocalyptic consequences. The apocalyptic narratives of the Ballard and McCarthy novels can be understood as quasi-scientific literary speculations, which disrupt anthropocentric assumptions through the experimental futures they depict. Similarly, the ironic depictions of scientists and scientific thinking in the Vonnegut and McEwan novels draw attention to the anthropocentric limitations of conventional scientific thinking for fully understanding and productively responding to the apocalyptic implications of climate change. In bringing these readings together, the thesis attempts to provide valuable and timely insights into the techniques through which the literary fiction of Ballard, Vonnegut, McCarthy and McEwan can help readers to think differently about the complex relationship between human life and the biosphere. These readings also trace how such fiction can draw attention to the ways in which anthropocentric patterns of thought contribute to the catastrophic climatic implications of technoscientific culture.

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Tuttle, Kerstin. ""I Could Carve a Better Man out of a Banana" Masculinity, the Dominant Fiction, and Historical Trauma in the Works of Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, University of South Dakota, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10930795.

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This project analyzes historical trauma, the dominant fiction, and male subjectivity as theorized by Kaja Silverman in selected Kurt Vonnegut novels.

Chapter one examines Billy Pilgrim, the focal character of Slaughterhouse-Five , as well as Vonnegut-as-narrator by analyzing the way these two men exhibit Kaja Silverman’s notions of historical trauma, characterized by their failures to embody proper hegemonic masculinity as exhibited in popular culture and the dominant fiction. Despite Billy’s comically absurd failures as a soldier and a civilian man, he survives the war and lives a financially successful civilian life, though he’s seen by nearly all as a laughingstock of a man. Billy is a male subject whose very existence calls into question the penis/phallus equation: the symbolically and psychoanalytically significant linkage of the male sex organ with the signifier of sexual difference and, perhaps more importantly, power. His survival refuses to endorse the violent assumption that war turns boys into men, a belief in the regenerative properties of violence, a popular American mythology, especially during the WWII and Vietnam war eras.

In chapter two, I examine John, the protagonist of Cat’s Cradle. While John does not experience combat traumas as Billy and Vonnegut-as-narrator do, John experiences a loss of belief in society’s organizing principles and narratives, in turn causing him to doubt his own power as a male subject.

Chapter three details Howard W. Campbell, Jr., of Mother Night , a former Nazi propagandist awaiting trial for war crimes. Campbell’s character is Vonnegut’s attempt to work through Hanna Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil, while also dealing with the loss of social and phallic power. As Campbell loses everything he once found joy in during his life as a Nazi, he also loses his belief in the commensurability of the penis and the phallus, unable to exist as the man he once was.

While my selections of Vonnegut’s texts all delve into World War II either explicitly or at the margins, I argue that Vonnegut is primarily concerned with the events of the 1960s, the decade in which Slaughterhouse-Five , Cat’s Cradle, and Mother Night were published. All of these characters’ experiences are analogous to several cultural anxieties of the American 1960s: the Eichmann trial, the Vietnam war, the spread of communism, the Cuban missile crisis, and changing notions of acceptable masculinity. As such, I hope to establish that the penis/phallus equation upon which our society’s reality is maintained is continually in danger of rupture, though through cultural binding, the equation and its organizing principles continue to shape male subjectivity and American culture as a whole.

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Twa, Garth Andrew. "Listening to writing : a sociolinguistic enquiry into the creation of meaning and effect in modern American literature, focusing on the work of Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2011. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/7578/.

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This thesis proceeds in two modes, utilizing both a critical and a creative lens to think about the use of simple language in formal writing. It examines the production of a register that categorizes insider/outsider status (the mechanics) as well as interrogating the (un)conscious attempts of authors seeking to prise into or remain removed from established cultural identity (the intention). It investigates the use of the vernacular and the informal in American writing in general and how it is ultimately reflected and reworked through an autobiographical channel: an examination of voice, register, and code-switching in my own writing. The first section, ‘Listening to Writing,' is a forensic analysis of Vonnegut and Saunders, two exemplars of literary informality in American writing. It seeks—employing the work of Sarangi, Milroy, Hunston & Thompson and others to pinpoint, at a microanalytical level, what makes the conversational conversational, and the sociolinguistic work of Austin (performativity), Giles, Coupland, and Gumperz (accommodation and identity), and Auer (code switching)—to investigate the authors' specific manipulation of pitch and register to create effect. It also appraises the historical and cultural imperative of the American abhorrence of intellectualism and hence the disdain for high-flown language and how that is reflected in not only the literature but also the very social self-positioning of the authors. The second section, ‘My Ice Age,' is an autobiographical foray into outsider/insider, normal/abnormal categories and boundaries, extending the investigation of voice and register as examined above to explore the complex nature of belonging and alienation, of community and identity, from being a white boy in an Inuit settlement to being from an Inuit settlement in Los Angeles to the complexities of belonging and alienation that arise from being gay. The juxtaposition of two different tones in ‘My Ice Age' is used to reflect the juxtapositions of geographic and temporal otherness, the distance (formality) and increased vernacular in the Los Angeles sections reflecting a need to fit in, to forge a place for myself both geographically and socially through the use of voice and register. Both the critical and the creative lenses elucidate use of simple language and variations of registers to create sociological bonds/alienation. Simple language—and humour—forges communion with reader. The adoption of the vernacular, therefore, has a purpose beyond mere stylistics, in that it also is used in a social and community building (or razing) way. In other words, the use of informality becomes a performative speech act.

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Simes, Peter A. "Literature in the Age of Science: Technology and Scientists in the Mid-Twentieth Century Works of Isaac Asimov, John Barth, Arthur C. Clarke, Thomas Pynchon, and Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2010. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30511/.

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This study explores the depictions of technology and scientists in the literature of five writers during the 1960s. Scientists and technology associated with nuclear, computer, and space science are examined, focusing on their respective treatments by the following writers: John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Despite the close connections between the abovementioned sciences, space science is largely spared from negative critiques during the sixties. Through an analysis of Barth's Giles Goat-boy, Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Asimov's short stories "Key Item," "The Last Question," "The Machine That Won the War," "My Son, the Physicist," and Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is argued that altruistic goals of space science during the 1960s protect it from the satirical treatments that surround the other sciences.

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Mills, Mark Spencer. "Interrogating History or Making History? Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, DeLillo's Libra, and the Shaping of Collective Memory." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2006. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd1524.pdf.

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Worden, Joel Daniel. "The Galapagos in American consciousness American fiction writers' responses to Darwinism /." Access to citation, abstract and download form provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company; downloadable PDF file, 225 p, 2005. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=954001621&sid=9&Fmt=2&clientId=8331&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Marceau, Catherine. "Socio-sonic control, deviant musicality, and countercultural resistance in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Player Piano, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Master's thesis, Université Laval, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11794/69914.

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Ce mémoire considère trois œuvres littéraires des décennies d'après-guerre dans lesquelles le contrôle social est omniprésent, soit Nineteen Eighty-Four de George Orwell, Player Piano de Kurt Vonnegut, et One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest de Ken Kesey. L'analyse propose que ces auteurs examinent les réponses individuelles et collectives possibles face au contrôle socio-sonique, incluant le conformisme et la déviance, à travers la musicalité de leurs personnages. Mon approche repose sur des théories reliées à la sociologie, la musicologie et les études sonores afin d'élaborer une perspective holistique des paysages sonores de la modernité qui caractérisent les romans. Ce cadre théorique permet de traiter deux idées centrales, soit le contrôle social par l'institutionnalisation de cultures sonores et la musicalité sous forme de carrière déviante. Mon argument principal est qu'Orwell, Vonnegut, et Kesey présentent la réception sonore de leurs personnages comme étant doublement liée à leurs réactions face à la répression. D'une part, les auteurs représentent la musique et le son en tant qu'outils de contrôle produits et utilisés par des pouvoirs autoritaires. Dans les romans, ces pouvoirs établissent des normes socio-soniques qui supportent un système social basé sur la subjugation de la population sous une idéologie hégémonique. D'autre part, les auteurs présentent la musicalité en tant que moyen de résistance : ils établissent un parallèle entre les réactions déviantes de leurs protagonistes envers le son et les postures contre-culturelles de ceux-ci. La musique et le son font partie intégrante de la prose d'Orwell, Vonnegut, et Kesey; je soutiens que leurs représentations de musicalité traduisent une évaluation des notions d'agentivité et d'opposition contre-culturelle à l'autoritarisme. Ce mémoire offre une approche innovatrice à l'analyse des œuvres de par son interdisciplinarité, qui mène à de nouvelles considérations illuminant la relation entre le contrôle socio-sonique et la musicalité déviante dans les dystopies antiautoritaires d'après-guerre.
This thesis considers three literary works from the postwar decades in which social control is omnipresent: George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The analysis posits that these authors depict potential individual and collective responses to socio-sonic control, including conformism and deviance, through the musicality of their characters. My approach, grounded in theorizations related to sociology, musicology, and sound studies, develops a holistic perspective of the soundscapes of modernity that characterize the novels. This theoretical framework allows for an examination of two central notions in the narratives; namely, the institutionalization of sonic cultures for purposes of social control, and the concept of musicality as part of a deviant career. My main argument is that Orwell, Vonnegut, and Kesey present their characters' reception of sound as being doubly tied to their reactions to repression. On one hand, the authors represent music and sound as tools of control produced and used by authoritarian powers. In the novels, such powers enforce socio-sonic norms that support a social system based on the subjugation of the population under a hegemonic ideology. On the other hand, the authors present musicality as means of resistance: they interlink their protagonists' deviant reactions vis-à-vis sound and their countercultural postures. Music and sound are an integral part of Orwell's, Vonnegut's, and Kesey's prose; I argue that, through their portrayals of musicality, they foreground the possibility for individual agency and countercultural resistance to oppose authoritarianism. The thesis offers an innovative approach to the narratives, as its theoretical interdisciplinarity leads to new considerations illuminating the relationship between socio-sonic control and deviant musicality in postwar anti-authoritarian dystopias.

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Kall, Filip. "”There is no why” : A Psychoanalytic Approach to Trauma and Delusion in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-31429.

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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut provides a profound discussion on how the many traumas of war affect the human psyche. The novel’s protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is a direct witness of many horrific events in World War II, which causes certain life-changing symptoms later in his life. This essay examines the psychological processes of Billy Pilgrim in relation to the traumatic events he experiences in the war. More specifically, Billy’s delusions of supernatural nature are discussed in an attempt to find a connection to the war-trauma. In doing this, the analysis utilizes a psychoanalytic approach to explore the theoretical concepts of trauma and delusion. The essay then identifies certain key moments that are of significance to the development of Billy Pilgrim’s psychological processes and investigates how the different events affect his psyche. Furthermore, Billy’s delusions are discussed to identify their cognitive functions. The analysis finds a clear connection between Billy’s delusions and his trauma, and the essay finds that several of his psychological mechanisms are supported by the corresponding ideas within the psychoanalytic framework. Moreover, a progression of his symptoms is identified and discussed in relation to his experiences in World War II.

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Dahl, Eric N. "A comparative study of secular accounts ot the apocalypse in four contemporary novels : -- Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, The Road by Cormac McCarthy -- Nicolas Dickner's Tarmac, and Les larmes de saint Laurent by Dominique Fortier." Mémoire, Université de Sherbrooke, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/11143/6501.

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Abstract: This thesis is a comparative analysis of the apocalypse as a theme in four novels, two American and two Quebecois. Originally a biblical myth, apocalyptic tales are comprised of three narrative aspects defined Bertrand Gervais as Crisis, Time, Meaning / Sense. The four novels are analyzed individually according to these three elements. The American novels correspond to the more traditional pattern of the myth in which the world faces mass destruction followed by the survival of of the chosen-ones who will experience redemption. Contrarily, the two others demonstrate the conceptualization and representation of the traditional myth of the apocalypse towards a modern analogy of transformation of individuals within a profane world; one in which the mythical becomes farcical.||Résumé : Cette étude porte sur l’analyse comparée du thème de 1’apocalypse dans quatre romans, deux Américains et deux Québécois. Mythe biblique a 1’origine, le récit de I ’Apocalypse comporte trois éléments narratifs bien définis par Bertrand Gervais soient la Crise, le Temps et le Sens. Les quatre romans sont envisages, l’un a la suite de l’autre, en fonction de ces trois éléments. II en ressort que deux d’entre eux correspondent au schéma plus traditionnel du mythe avec sa destruction massive du monde suivi du choix d’élus qui auront la chance de connaitre la rédemption. Les deux autres, par contre, démontrent 1’evolution du mythe traditionnel de l’Apocalypse vers une analogie moderne de la transformation des individus dans un monde profane, ou le mythique devient même risible.

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Skorobogatov, Yana. "Kurt Vonnegut in the U.S.S.R." 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/19910.

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Since the mid-twentieth century, Kurt Vonnegut has enjoyed a permanent spot on the list of history’s most widely read and beloved American authors. Science fiction classics like Cat’s Cradle (1963) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) turned Vonnegut into a domestic counter-cultural literary sensation in the United States at mid-century. The presence of a loyal Vonnegut fan base in America, and in the west more broadly, is a well-documented fact. What is less well known among scholars and those familiar with Vonnegut’s work is his popularity in a far more distant place: the Soviet Union. Beginning in the late 1960s, Soviet citizens developed a voracious appetite for Vonnegut’s. Translations of his novels appeared regularly in daily newspapers and highbrow literary journals alike; a play adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five enjoyed a multi-season run in the Moscow Army Theater; average citizens competed for membership in Vonnegut’s karass. These examples are suggestive of the ways that Kurt Vonnegut’s science fiction literature can serve as a gateway for scholars seeking to understand the Soviet Union during the 1970s. This report contends that Soviet interest in Vonnegut’s dystopian science fiction reflected larger shifts in Soviet attitudes towards pacifism, technology, individual wellbeing, human rights, and past and present wars. It situates these ideas in the context of domestic and global events to illustrate how the peculiar political conditions of the 1970s made this ideological convergence possible. It employs original American and Russian language sources, including Russian newspapers and journals, letters written by Vonnegut’s Russian translator, and Kurt Vonnegut’s own fan mail. At its core, this report challenges the assumption that political and ideological differences precluded Soviet and American citizens from identifying the conditions necessary for ensuring social and technological progress and a future without war.
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Ho, Ching-Fang, and 何景芳. "Kurt Vonnegut And Mirrored Me." Thesis, 2006. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/42098128777273113648.

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碩士
國立臺南藝術大學
音像藝術管理研究所
94
The thesis is based on Jacques Lacan’s theory of Mirror Stage. Combining the works of Kurt Vonnegut, the context of World War Ⅱ and the my rumination over these topics , I tried to construct Jacques Lacan, the author, and deconstruct me, the reader. The research puts focus on： 1. Analyzing Kurt Vonnegut and me with the theory of Mirror Stage. 2. Compressing the connection between Kurt Vonnegut and me, then creating a new text, the script of〝The Mirror〞. 3. Constructing Kurt Vonnegut and deconstructing me with my script, 〝The Mirror〞. Key Words： Jacques Lacan,The Mirror Stage,Kurt Vonnegut Construction,Deconstruction.

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Wu, Shu-Fen, and 吳淑芬. "Three Metafictional Novels of Kurt Vonnegut." Thesis, 1994. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/32735106789691721393.

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Chen, Jolene Lipu, and 陳笠菩. "Fatalism in Kurt Vonnegut''s Slaughterhouse-Five." Thesis, 2002. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/60919552480947708970.

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碩士
國立中正大學
外國語文研究所
90
Abstract Fatalistic perspective assertions permeate throughout Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction Most of the commentators and readers seem to treat Vonnegut as a believer of fatalism. He seems to advocate “resigned acceptance” and encourage “passive behaviors” of his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, in his Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut even describes human condition as “bugs trapped in amber,” for he had seen too many dark sides in human nature. But this thought still leave to be controversial. And yet I prefer taking him as a fighter to seeing him a fatalist from my observation in the novel. Although, we could see many fatalistic assertions such as “So it goes,” “There is no why,” and “The moment is structured that way” to emphasize the thought that Vonnegut seems to approve such fatalistic attitude of his protagonist. However, like his protagonist, Billy, Vonnegut could have withdrawn from the reality into a personal illusionary fantasy and pretended there was nothing bad at all after witnessing the firestorm in Dresden. Instead, he took twenty-three years to collect enough information to finish his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut seemed to be sad and affected by war deeply for it seemed that he imprisoned himself into his fiction when the subject was concerned with the bombing at Dresden. In Slaughterhouse-Five, the author, Vonnegut, describes Billy seems to be imprisoned into his fate; but the author also offers his protagonist free will to start his preaching about the futility of free will after surviving from the plane crash. When we inspect this anecdote carefully enough, we would see that Vonnegut seems to satirize the humanity here instead of promoting the fatalistic concepts in the novel. This thesis is an attempt to explore a possibility that Vonnegut’s employing fatalistic perspective assertions in Slaughterhouse-Five aim to offer a protest and further to satirize the injustice and inhumanity to this world. Therefore, Vonnegut acts more like a fighter than a fatalist. Thus, chapter one focuses on Vonnegut’s life and war experiences. From his negative view to human nature, I attempt to reinforce the impression that Vonnegut believes there is a possibility that this universe runs by fate, chance, and necessity. And yet, from the fact that this book also took him twenty-three years to gather information and compose, implying a message that Vonnegut tends to arouse people’s attention to notice the devastation of Dresden really happened. And also through his satirical attacks to suggest Vonnegut’s very message of this novel seems to indicate human should surpass human limitation to uphold the inherited good nature. In chapter two, the focus is put on how Vonnegut employs the frame of aliens’ abducting Billy, and infuses the author’s personal philosophy from these aliens, and thus creates a fatalistic world in the novel. He introduces the aliens’ concepts of time and death and integrates them to bring in a world full of fatalistic phrases in Slaughterhouse-Five. As to chapter three, it mainly discusses how Vonnegut presents his protagonist is intervened by fate during his war time and postwar lives; and how Billy under his unmet psychological need creates a fanatical alien world, the Tralfamadore, to escape and survive. In conclusion, I conclude that besides fatalism acts as a writing technique in Slaughterhouse-Five to let his unspeakable story to be told, Vonnegut’s true message or spirit of the book is to convey that the past cannot be changed but we can change the future through making a good use of present despite fate’s intervention. Also, we should fear no death but learn the true meaning of life. Although, wars come like glaciers, we still could sustain our inherited goodness and learn to live with love and compassion, and hope no war again. Just break the amber, which symbolizes the bondage of human nature, if we dare to try we would turn the inevitability into possibility of daily events. Thus, Fatalism in Slaughterhouse-Five should act like a writing tool for Vonnegut to offer his subtle protest to the world’s inhumanity and injustice instead of advocating the concept of fatalism here.

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Chiang, Kung-shan, and 江坤山. "Messages from Tralfamadore: Writing Strategies in Kurt Vonnegut'' s ." Thesis, 1996. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/12373558433755041314.

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碩士
淡江大學
西洋語文研究所
84
Though often labeled as an anti-war novel, Kurt Vonnegut''s is also a metafictional writing which shows the author''s self-conscious attitude toward the act of writing and his role as an author. Looking at the text through theories of metafiction, this thesis aims to examine how Vonnegut narrates the past self-consciously. In the first chapter, I discuss why Vonnegut decided to write his book about the Dresden bombing using metafictional writing strategies, which, in a sense, correspond to the cultural and philosophical developments in the modern time. By discussing those metafictional writing strategies, we may find that suggests to us the notion of fiction, history or even reality as human constructs, and therefore leads us to understand how reality (or history) is shaped, and thus how it can be challenged and changed. The second chapter is mainly about the metafictional writing strategy "frame-breaking." Through framing and frame- breaking, the author self-consciously exposes the process of his writing the past. In other words, when offering the reader one of the discourses about the past, he also warns the reader about the fact that it is a version of history, never authoritative nor exclusive, making the reader clearly understand the material he is reading. Also, the use of transworld identity helps the author narrate the past multi-dimensionally and self-consciously. The third chapter, which contains a study of the use of popular form in metafictional writing, discusses how Vonnegut fictionalizes the past with the help of science ficiton. Through the assimilation of science fiction into the narration, Vonnegut suggests to us that the fact of war is almost as strange as fiction, and helps the reader see how absurd, insane, irrational and cruel war is.

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46

Engle, Patricia McCloskey. "The Silko-Vonnegut Factor : Literary strategies that re-map temporal instincts /." Diss., 2006. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3215834.

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47

Desharnais, Isabelle. "Figuration et imaginaire scientifique chez William Gaddis, John Updike et Kurt Vonnegut." Mémoire, 2006. http://www.archipel.uqam.ca/2869/1/M9357.pdf.

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La pensée provenant du monde scientifique et celle représentée dans le cadre narratif du roman sont toutes deux issues d'une même volonté de révéler les objets de ces pensées, même si leur articulation est indubitablement différente. La science utilise le langage pour décrire le monde et aspire à des avancées techniques, alors que le langage du roman est l'expression d'une expérience. Les trois romans de notre étude intègrent certains aspects de la pensée scientifique et permettent ainsi de rendre compte des chassés-croisés entre la science et le littéraire. L'étude propose de faire état de l'appréhension du monde représentée dans Carpenter 's Gothic de William Gaddis, Roger 's Version de John Updike et Cat's Cradle de Kurt Vonnegut; à ce titre, nous serons en mesure de mettre en lumière les incidences de la pensée scientifique, épistémologique et philosophique dans ces romans. Nous articulerons comment les tensions entre les deux disciplines sont intimement liées aux processus langagiers dans ces fictions. Une réflexion sur la nature des savoirs et de la vérité est également au coeur de la dynamique de ces romans. L'imaginaire de la science permet d'anticiper un questionnement sur le rapport au monde de l'homme contemporain. Le présent mémoire tente globalement, en analysant comment la pensée scientifique se manifeste dans l'espace des romans, d'exposer comment les différents discours sur la science dans ces fictions caractérisent une pensée trouble essayant de faire sens d'un monde complexe et contradictoire. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : William Gaddis, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Littérature, Science, Société, Culture.

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48

Wu, Hsin-lun, and 吳欣倫. "Postmodernist Writing Strategies & Deterritorialization in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65951891097344717896.

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碩士
世新大學
英語學研究所(含碩專班)
100
The thesis is divided into four chapters. It explores the subversive characteristics which aim to destabilize, deconstruct, and deterritorialize the conventional writing models that place authors in an active position and dominate literary works and discourses in the Western world. The first chapter introduces theories employed in the textual analysis and offers a brief introduction of both the text and context of Breakfast of Champions. In the second chapter, I attempt to discuss how Vonnegut manages his post-modernist writing strategies and deterritorialization discourse to subvert the canon with cynical observation. In third chapter, I focus on crucial aspects of the post-modernist concerns toward language, history/national mottos, science/technology, racism, human subjectivity, and capitalist society, and elaborate how the post-modernist thinking is revealed in Breakfast of Champions. Finally, the concluding chapter examines how the adopted theories are applied to the novel in post-modernist perspectives. By adopting the subversive writing techniques, postmodernist writers such as Vonnegut probably can effectively reexamine and reevaluate the literary model through his exclusive and cynical observations. Therefore, my exploration of KurtVonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions develops on the basis of my assumption that postmodernist strategies can be used in a parodic or cynical way as a mean to inspire the reader to seek alternative interpretation.

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49

Hardin, Miriam. "Absurd America in the novels of Vonnegut, Pynchon, and Boyle /." Diss., 2001. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3036258.

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Rauber, Romina Victoria. "Matadero Cinco de Kurt Vonnegut: Estructura antropológico-mítica de iniciación y novela de autoformación." Bachelor's thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11086/407.

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Trabajo final (Tesis) de la carrera de Licenciatura en Letras Modernas, elaborada en el año 2011, en el área temática de Literatura de Habla Inglesa y bajo la dirección del Lic. Hernán Peirotti. "La problemática del proceso de iniciación constituye un tema central en la novela Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade de Kurt Vonnegut y la inscribe en el género de la novela de autoformación. Los personajes de Billy Pilgrim, Kilgore Trout y el autor-narrador funcionan, desde el recurso del desdoblamiento, como los ejes para representar en tres modos y niveles diferentes la evolución del aprendizaje que se centra en la figura del autor-narrador. A partir de la técnica metaficcional, se recrea en la narración el espacio de reflexión del proceso creativo y se proyecta la importancia de la introspección al proceso de lectura. Dicho aprendizaje está centrado en la relación con la vida y la muerte, el tiempo y la realidad a partir de la experiencia de la guerra y la reinserción del veterano en la sociedad. El tiempo y el espacio son experimentados de un modo sumamente conflictivo por personajes perturbados (Pilgrim, Weary), sumidos en la locura, la pesadilla o la visión distorsionada de la realidad a partir de la lectura. La sátira de la sociedad contemporánea norteamericana le permite a Vonnegut tocar estos temas tan profundamente humanos y serios con un humor que se contrapone a su dramatismo. En el marco de la narrativa posmoderna, su novela “esquizofrénica”, como él mismo la llamó, puede dar cuenta de las dificultades del aprendizaje, los procesos de maduración y el sentido de trascendencia en el ser humano, en un ambiente que se le vuelve hostil y a menudo absurdo".

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Kurt Vonnegut'

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