Kurt Vonnegut: Journalist, Novelist, Satirist (1922-2007)

    Photo: Scrapsfromtheloft.com

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." (Kurt Vonnegut)

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1922. It was his midwestern birthplace that would provide the inspiration for much of his literary work. However, it was the impact of the Great Depression on his parents that some critics observe as the source for his "lifelong pessimism." By the time the Depression hit in the 1930s, his architect father had lost everything; his mother, whose father was a prominent brewer, sank into a depression. As he grew up into a teenager, he discovered a love of writing--first journalistic writing, as he wrote for the high school newspaper. Later he would follow this path into college at Cornell, where he was managing editor of their paper, The Sun. Here he would hone the credo of the journalist: "Get the facts right, compose straightforward declarative sentences, know the audience". Nevertheless, Vonnegut dropped out of college to enlist in the army. 

Shortly after enlisting, however, he was captured and made prisoner by German troops at the Battle of the Bulge (1). One biographer explains that his time in Dresden during the second world war was further traumatizing for Vonnegut, as, in 1945, Allied troops dropped "explosives followed by incendiary bombs" onto the city of Dresden, which resulted in a "firestorm" that "turned the militarized city into an inferno that killed up to 60,000 civilians". It was pure chance that Vonnegut survived the bombing: he had been housed in an underground slaughterhouse with other prisoners of war. Afterward, young Vonnegut was set to the task of collecting and incinerating the remains of the deceased. This event would become the framework for his novel, Slaughterhouse Five (1). Slaughterhouse Five was his first successful novel, though it was not his first: he published Cats Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, among them, to mediocre success. Vonnegut has been called a postmodernist, and his work is aligned generically with the Science Fictionand Satire.

Emerging as the literary voice of the 1960s, Vonnegut became a polarizing topic for many. His social satire may have made some uncomfortable--as satire often does--however, he was heralded for his outspokenness, particularly on the topics of war and religion. Though Slaughterhouse Five certainly contains anti-war themes, Vonnegut was quoted as having observed that "war is inevitable," but if it is, it "must be a just war." On matters religious, at times he referred to himself as a "Christ-worshiping agnostic"; yet in later years, he was clear that he was, in fact, Atheist and Humanist (2).

Satire and "Harrison Bergeron"

Like Science Fiction, satire has a way of using absurd themes, symbol, situations--and humor--to invert reality so that we can see its own absurdities. Satire is nothing new, as it has been around for many centuries. One of the most successful satirists was Jonathan Swift, who, in 17  wrote "A Modest Proposal," an essay suggesting that the problem of starvation in England in the 18th century was to simply eat children! Obviously Swift made an outlandish suggestion for an expressly critical purpose. Often such outrageous absurdity shocks the audience--but in a way that forces them to confront the absurdity of their own actions. 

Hence, we have "Harrison Bergeron," perhaps one of Vonnegut's most anthologized short story, proposes a future world in which "everyone is equal." What might Vonnegut's story be poking fun at? Is the concept of total equality a plausible one?