Essay/Term paper: Kurt vonnegut's portrayal of society in breakfast of champion

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Argumentative Essays

Outline

Thesis: In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut portrays a prepackaged, robotic society, and

an American culture plagued with despair, greed, and apathy.

I. Introduction

II. Social problems

A. Racism

B. Commercialism and materialism

C. Violence

D. Lack of culture

E. Greed

III. Destruction of America

A. Pollution

B. Destruction for wealth

IV. Conclusion






Vonnegut's portrayal of society in Breakfast of Champions

"The country Vonnegut takes us through has been plasticized, prepackaged, and

brainwashed beyond redemption. The poor are sinking into oblivion and the rich are choking

on the fruits of their wealth." This quote is a very adequate discription of the literary journey

through the current scene of America. At one point or another, Vonnegut discusses nearly

every social, political, or cultural problem afflicting America. Racism, violence, greed, and

commercialism are a few among the many problems prevalent in this country ("Briefly"

146). Vonnegut's novel is an exhibit of the flaws of a robotic, self-destructive society (Allen

107). In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut portrays a prefabricated, unfeeling society

and an American culture plagued with despair, greed, and apathy.

The issue of society's flaws is a major concern of Breakfast of Champions. Such

problems arise and are dealt with as failure to communicate, ecological destruction, a

contempt for art, and the government's inattention to important problems (Merrill 157). The

experiences and trials of Kilgore Trout, an unknown science fiction writer from New York,

and Dwayne Hoover, a Pontiac dealer from Indiana, show the suffering and unintelligibility

of daily living (Giannone 107).

Dwayne Hoover suffers greatly despite his apparent wealth and prosperity, being

burdened with the problems of himself and his family (Merrill 158). Hoover's mother killed

herself by drinking Drano (130), and his son is a homosexual (131). Although Dwayne owns

a Pontiac Dealership, a fast food restaurant, a Holiday Inn, and a large part of the most

successful corporation in all of Midland City, he is mentally disturbed and suffering from

psycological disillusion (84).

Kilgore Trout, poor and humbled by a troublesome life, is a struggling science fiction

writer with only one fan (17). His books, mostly metaphorically representing American

society, are rarely published. The few published works of Trout's appear in unsavory

magazines and are changed and surrounded with pornographic pictures and suggestions (19).

Sometimes he is not even given credit for writing his material. He encounters several of the

problems in today's society on a trip to Midland City's arts festival (48). Trout goes to the

arts festival, not as a mentor of budding young writers, or a representation of the

succuessful writing guild, but as a surveyor and an example of the writing community that

has failed miserably in the search for popularity and reverence.

One of the most severe and common social problems in America is racism. Vonnegut

criticizes the glorification of European colonization of North America. He describes how

children are taught that 1492 is a sacred year in which this continent was discovered by

human beings. Actually, people were already living here, 1492 is simply the year that

foreigners began to cheat, rob, and kill them (10). The natives were perfectly happy with the

way things were and so was the land. The natives did not spoil or pollute the beautiful land

that had been given to them by their creator, and murder the lesser animals for sport, for the

thrill of the hunt. They merely lived off the land being kind to all things.

"The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent were

copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the continent, the slaves were black.

Color was everything" (11). Vonnegut's basic description of early America is sadly true.

The newcoming Europeans thought that they were a superior race of beings, and that they

had the right to enslave others and force them to do their bidding or be punished. Even after

slavery was eliminated, whites looked down on other races, referring to them as unfeeling,

ignorant, labor machines (11).

According to Vonnegut, the United States is the core of a materialistic race of beings.

Efficiency is rewarded more than honesty or integrity by a culture with a tendency to accept

commercialized versions of reality. Wall Street and Hollywood have replaced family and

self as the center of focus for many Americans (Brucker 1427,1429). "Money is the root of

all evil" is no longer a widely accepted belief; the adage has been replaced with phrases such

as "cash or charge," and "forty-eight hour super sale."

Breakfast of Champions "shows how universal destruction fulfills the rapacity hiding

within the American search for prosperity and pursuit of happiness" (Giannone 109). The

citizens of this country bicker and argue about trivial financial matters and lose all sense of

brotherhood and hospitality. No one seems to care anymore that we should be grateful to our

creator for all the wonderful things he has given to us: a magnificent, divine planet complete

with peaceful creatures and elegant plants.

The trucks that carry Trout across the barren and wasted countryside scream out the

names of their companies such as "Pyramid" and "Ajax" (90). Landscapes and roadsides are

disfigured by signs and billboards (Allen 108). Anything and everything is advertised from

encouragements to visit landmarks and tourist attractions to cheesy plugs for the upcoming

arts festival in Midland City to famous people tempting passers-by to drink alcohol or smoke

cigarettes (114). Trout and Hoover are the children of materialism. Hoover embraces it

while Trout is rejected by it.

Another problem rampant in today's American society is violence. Violence shows

itself in many forms. Guns are the animate tools of violence. People use guns for one reason

and one reason only: to put holes in other human beings. Policemen have guns, criminals

have guns, and the people caught in-between usually have guns. People use guns to kill for

many reasons. Some use them to rob from and cheat others, some use them to oppose

criminals, some even use them out of hatred or contempt. Vonnegut describes a situation in

which a young boy shoots and kills both of his parents because he does not want to show

them the bad report card he has brought home (49,50).

Violence is steadily becoming more common in society. The rate of murders in this

country is frighteningly on the rise. More and more people have weapons and less and less

people have a conscience to bug them about killing someone. People will now kill others

that are widely known just to get attention and so that they can be at least partially famous as

well.

"I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can't live without a culture

anymore" (16). As Vonnegut expresses, the abscence of culture is one of the major

indications that America is on the brink of anhilation (Giannone 110). The degredation of

American culture causes problems and conflicts between Kilgore Trout, Dwayne Hoover,

Vonnegut himself, and society as a whole. After the arts festival, a cocktail waitress and an

impressionist artist get into an argument about whether the what the artist has created

qualifies as art. The simple orange stripe across a dark background is to the artist, Rabo

Karabekian, a representation of the inner soul, the sacred awareness in every living thing. He

believes that it is this that makes a difference and that all else is insignificant. The waitress

sees the painting as a basic line, a worthless drawing of a simple mind, something any five-

year-old could recreate (221).

According to Vonnegut, the greed of the average United States citizen is tremendous.

Capitalism is based on the idea that people who have a lot of personal property are not forced

to share their good fortune with other people who have less. Every person in America is

supposed to grab whatever he or she can, however he or she can, and tightly hold onto it,

disregarding the needs and wants of other people or causes (13,14). The most meaningful

part of American life is one's posessions, or it would seem so after a breif look into the daily

life of a character in one of Vonnegut's novels. The same conclusion would probably be

reached by looking into the home life or professional life of any average capitalist. Lust for

money is overrunning society and taking over what is an effective and popular economic

system.

"Breakfast of Champions is set in an America stripped of physical and spiritual

beauty" (Brucker 1427). The ecological and aesthetic destruction of the country is another

seeming obsession of Americans. The countryside has been laid waste and utterly destroyed

under the guise of expansion and progress (Giannone 109). Americans continue to pollute

and destroy the resources of this planet, failing to heed the warnings of environmentalists and

others who care about nature and the earth we live on.

The characters in the novel travel through a landscape that has been polluted, strip-

mined, and disfigured by various advertisements, instructions, and notices (Allen 107). All

of America has been infested with billboards and metal instructors yelling at us to buy this

and do that and go here.

Trout's travels take him through lands of great ecological destruction and pollution.

His trip through New Jersey is dominated by views of poisoned marshes and meadows seen

through the soot covered window of an eighteen-wheeler (107).

As Trout enters Philadelphia, he describes the welcoming sign as being posted on the

rim of a bomb crater. Smog fills the rancid air, stumps of once tall and beautiful trees lay

scattered about, and flashing lights and wailing sirens surround factories and refineries.

Supposedly the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia seems more akin to a Pennsylvanian

landfill (103).

As Trout travels through West Virginia, he is aghast at the complete and total

ecological destruction. The entire state had been stripped of its beauty and resources, all with

government approval, and was left "rearranging what was left of itself in conformity with

the laws of gravity" (119).

In Midland City, Barrytron Ltd., the most successful corporation in the city, is

building an anti-personnel missile for use on large numbers of opposing soldiers. The

missile is supposed to be cheaper, lighter, and more reliable because it uses small plastic

projectiles instead of steel projectiles. When the bomb explodes, theoretically, the plastic

balls will be scattered all around entering anything in their path, including people. The city's

water supply is being contaminated by the wastes of the manufacturing process of the plastic

pellets. The plastic dissolves in the water and then either forms impenetrable bubbles on the

surface or coats any thing in the water with an airtight layer of laminate. This is killing a

great amount of the area wildlife and damaging property of anyone living near a stream or

pond (87,88).

The eventual effect of this large-scale pollution and destruction of the planet will be

total depletion of mineral resources and the end of all things that are beautiful and good

(Horwitz 1311).

Kilgore Trout believes that humanity deserves to die because they have behaved so

cruelly and wastefully on a planet that was once so beautiful and sweet (18). The apathy that

people feel toward the depletion of the earth's resources and the pollution of nature is

abominable. Americans seem not to care that in just a few years the country will be as

desolate as the moon due to the urbanizing and bulldozing that has been brought on by a

thirst for wealth that rivals in intensity the mideval search for the Holy Grail.

Americans are indifferent about what happens to their country as long as they come

out ahead financially. Earth's natural resources are being systematically destroyed by

industrial greed (Giannone 109). While this is going on everyone sits at home on their

couch, watching television in their homely suburban cottage, daydreaming of a new car or

perhaps the soon-to-arrive mini-mall that will make everyone's life easier and solve the

problems of the world.

The scenes of ecological and human destruction shown through the experiences and

journeys of Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover provide a bleak outlook on the philosophical

landscape of America ("Crunch" 106). Vonnegut's novel addresses concern over the

pollution of the country, cutural despair, the social conflicts of America, and the overall

ruining of the entire planet (Schatt 101). The grim vision Vonnegut depicts in Breakfast of

Champions is one of a country steadily moving towards complete self-anhilation (Broer 107).






Works Cited

Allen, William R. Understanding Kurt Vonnegut. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1991.

"Briefly Noted: Fiction." New Yorker 12 May 1973: 146.

Broer, Lawrence R. Sanity Plea: Schizophrenia in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut. Tuscaloosa: U

of Alabama P, 1989.

Brucker, Carl. "Breakfast of Champions." Beacham's Popular Fiction in America. Ed. Walton

Beacham. 4 vols. Washington, D.C.: Beacham, 1986. 4: 1423-32.

Giannone, Richard. Vonnegut: A Preface to His Novels. Port Washington: Kennikat, 1977.

Horwitz, Carey. "An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut." Library Journal 98 (1973): 1311.

Merrill, Robert. "Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions: The Conversion of Heliogabalus."

Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut. Ed. Robert Merrill. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1990. 153-

62.

"Naked Crunch." The Economist 28 July 1973: 106-07.

Schatt, Stanley. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Boston: Twayne, 1976.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of Champions. New York: Dell, 1973.