Existentialism in Kurt Vonnegut Novels

---

Kurt Vonnegut novels share a main theme associated with existentialism. Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse Five deal with the problems associated with free will and with finding one’s meaning, while other Vonnegut novels such as Mother Night are concerned with existentialist concepts such as authenticity. Vonnegut's protagonist also deal the Absurd nature of the world, coping in separate ways.

Breakfast of Champions

In Breakfast of Champions, The main theme of the novel deals with the problems given to people by free will, a major tenant of the philosophy of Existentialism. The character of Dwayne Hoover reads a book given to him by main character Kilgore Trout, 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; Hoover does this by severely beating his wife, lover and nine others before being taken into custody. Vonnegut addresses why people with free will acted this way this earlier in the novel, saying: " I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books." The experience of the character Dwayne Hoover is used as an example of human beings' attempt to live authentic lives, a tenant of the existentialist philosophy. The character of Kilgore Trout shows a different side of the existentialist philosophy, the side which decides to cope with The Absurd nature of reality, Trout's character coping optimistically. While in a restroom he reads on the stall, "What is the purpose of life?", and he looks to answer "To be the eyes, the ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool", believing this tenant he made for himself. The novel also deals with the idea of human beings as Biological Machines, beings with no real meaning other than the meaning we give to the world, an idea associated with the existentialist concept of The Absurd.

Slaughterhouse Five

The novel Slaughterhouse Five deals with the Absurd life of protagonist Billy Pilgrim, who becomes "unstuck in time", once again focusing on issues of free will. Basing the character of Pilgrim upon 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, for example, using the phrase “so it goes” after each death in the novel to illustrate the inevitability of death. When Pilgrim is transported to another planet, he meets with the Tralfamadorians, who tell Pilgrim that the universe will be blown up by a Tralfamadorian test pilot. Pilgrim learns this cannot be prevented being advised that it would be best to “ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones”. The Tralfamadorian philosophy follows closely to the Absurdist principle of dealing with the Absurd, and that is to simply accept the Absurd. 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 planned, 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, protagonist Howard 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 main theme of the novel deals with the problem of Campbell's authenticity. The existentialist principle of Jean-Paul Sartre 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 cannot 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.

References

This article "Existentialism in Kurt Vonnegut Novels" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Existentialism in Kurt Vonnegut Novels. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---