User:Thesoilandtheswans/sandbox

In Vonnegut novels a main theme associated with existentialism, the philosophical doctrine concerning finding self and the meaning of life through free will,choice and personal responsibility can be found. Characters in Vonnegut novels often deal with the problems associated with free will and with finding one’s meaning. These characters also deal the Absurd nature of the world.

Breakfast of Champions
In Breakfast of Champions, the character of Dwayne Hoover, reads a book in which the Creator of the Universe has created every being as a robot except one, the reader itself, and takes it upon himself to exercise his free will on those who he believes has wronged him. In Breakfast of Champions, the theme shown in the novel is that freedom is no good for the people who believe they are free, and that people who experience true freedom do not enjoy it. This is shown by the ending of Breakfast of Champions, where the character of Kilgore Trout is “set free” by the author of the novel, which does not bring relief to Trout but rather despair as it is an “exile to emptiness”, as the giving of his freedom results in his character feeling lost and exclaiming at the end of the novel for the author to make him young again. This belief ties in with the doctrine of Absurdism, wherein people look for meaning in a meaningless world, and where people such as Trout, before gaining his freedom learned to cope with the Absurd. Shown earlier in the novel, when questioned by a stall in the men’s room, “What is the purpose of life”, Trout writes, “To be the eyes, the ears and the conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool” Trout is shown to cope with the Absurd by believing this statement in humanity and the freeing of him in the end of the novel by the author does not free him, but only makes him spiteful.

Slaughterhouse Five
The novel Slaughterhouse Five also deals with the Absurd life of protagonist Billy Pilgrim, based upon Vonnegut himself. Vonnegut uses his own experiences with the firebombing of Dresden to serve as a backdrop in the novel by exploring the physical limitations of man. Vonnegut uses the phrase “so it goes” to illustrate this in the novel as the novel shows death and the inevitability of death, saying “so it goes” after each death in the novel. The repeating nature of this statement underscores the fact that death is a certainty human beings cannot escape, but can learn to cope with. The Absurdism within Slaughterhouse Five comes when Pilgrim is transported to another planet, and meets with the Tralfamadorians, who tell Pilgrim that the universe will be blown up by a Tralfamadorian test pilot, where Pilgrim learns no one can prevent it, being advised that it would be best to “ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones”. This follows the Absurdist principle of dealing with the Absurd, and that is to simply accept the Absurd, spitefully. In the novel, Billy learns to cope with this by a prescription he finds on the porn star Montana Wildhack’s locket, that says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to always tell the difference.” Billy, however cannot change the past, present or future, which makes the prescription meaningless; a falsehood of life. This coincides with Vonnegut's own feeling towards Dresden, as he felt responsibility for his complicity in the bombing, stating in his autobiographical collection Palm Sunday, "The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously panned, was so meaningless, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in." In an interview with Vonnegut for Playboy Magazine, he addresses this: “There is that implication that if you just have a little more fight, the problem can always be solved. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry-or laugh”

Mother Night
In Vonnegut’s 1962 novel, Mother Night, the absurdity of the novel comes through the character Howard W. Campbell Jr’s analysis of his self and its relations in the world. Campbell’s character represents the “ultimate figure of divided selfhood”, as he is a playwright recruited as a double agent during World War II, creating an existentialist dilemma; that of authenticity. The existentialist principle of Jean-Paul Satre that “existence precedes essence” deals with authenticity as a person has to “create oneself” and live in accordance with one’s self so as to live an authentic life. The dilemma Campbell faces in Mother Night stems from this, as Campbell, who is effectively a double agent for the United States and Nazi Germany is in the crisis of authenticity by wearing so many masks so often. Shown by the first words of the novel: “I am an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation, and a nationless person by inclination”, Campbell is shown to not a have a sense of homeland and he feels mild disgust towards those who do. Campbell’s only country he truly loves is his Reich der Zwei, or “Nation of Two” that he founded with his wife Helga. In creating this country only between himself and his wife, Campbell tries to alienate himself from the rest of the world. By the end of the novel Campbell struggles with the moral Vonnegut presents for the protagonist, that being that “we are what we pretend to be”. Campbell meets with the U.S. agent, Frank Wirtanen, who had recruited him before the war, and asks how many people knew that he was really “good” during those times. Wirtanen answers that only three people actually knew. Campbell states: “You think I was a Nazi?”, to which Wirtanen replies, “Certainly you were. How else could a responsible historian classify you?” Leading to the dilemma of Campbell becoming, in the end, what he pretends to be. The ending sees Campbell free of the prison he was in the whole novel. Campbell can not accept such freedom with the dilemma he faces, so he chooses to hang himself, as he puts, “for crimes against himself”. This fits with the existentialist philosophy as Campbell’s world is one built on the essence of something Campbell is not, and the authentic acts Campbell created were only pretending in the end.