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.
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