Analysis Of The Telegram By Kurt Vonnegut

234 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: What caused World War 2

My telegram was on page 89, which started with “There were other…” and ended with “So it goes.” I had a significantly short telegram to read, but despite the fact of it being short, it had a lot of meaning behind it. In the telegram it talks about the marvelous grand canyon, which can give you memories that will last a lifetime. As I was observing the Earthling I noticed that a Frenchman asked about how many suicides happened every year, to which the ranger responded with, “About three folks a year.” I believe Kurt Vonnegut was trying to give hints of France’s involvement in WWII, by using this Frenchman. This also led me thinking about the topic of suicide. Whether intentional or an accident, it all can end in a few moments. Now how the Tralfamadorians

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of The Novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

    646 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and went to Stanford University. He volunteered to be used for an experiment in the hospital because he would get paid. In the book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Kesey brings up the past memories to show how Bromden is trying to be more confident by using those thoughts to make him be himself. He uses Bromden’s hallucinations, Nurse Ratched’s authority, and symbolism to reveal how he’s weak, but he builds up more courage after each memory.

    Read More

  • Reality And Fictionism In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

    762 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slaughterhouse-Five is a story of Billy Pilgrim 's capture by the Nazi Germans during the last years of World War II. Throughout the narrative, excerpts of Billy’s life are portrayed from his pre-war self to his post-war insanity. Billy is able to move both forward and backwards through his life in a random cycle of events. Living the dull life of a 1950s optometrist in Ilium, New York, he is the lover of a provocative woman on the planet Tralfamadore, and simultaneously an American prisoner of war in Nazi Germany. While I agree with Christopher Lehmann-Haupt that Slaughterhouse-Five effectively combines fact and fiction, I argue that the book is more centralized around coping.

    Read More

  • Slaughterhouse-Five and the Psychological Consequences of War

    1382 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five the main character Billy Pilgrim experiences few emotions during his time in World War II. His responses to people and events lack intensity or passion. Throughout the novel Billy describes his time travel to different moments in his life, including his experience with the creatures of Tralfamadore and the bombing of Dresden. He wishes to die during most of the novel and is unable to connect with almost anyone on Earth. The fictional planet Tralfamadore appears to be Billy’s only way of escaping the horrors of war, and acts as coping mechanism. Billy seems to be a soldier with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as he struggles to express feelings and live in his reality. At the beginning of the novel the narrator proposes his reason for writing the book is to explain what happened in the Dresden fire bombing, yet he focuses on Billy’s psyche more than the bombing itself. PTSD prevents Billy from living a healthy life, which shows readers that the war does not stop after the fighting is over and the aftermath is ongoing. Billy Pilgrim’s story portrays the bombing and war in a negative light to readers, as Vonnegut shows the damaging effects of war on an individual, such as misperception of time, disconnect from peers, and inability to feel strong emotions, to overall create a stronger message.

    Read More

  • Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron: Equality, Fairness, And Freedom

    1028 Words  | 3 Pages

    ……………Most of the numerous and very disparate urban utopias imagined since antiquity, claim more or less a social justice combining equality, fairness, and freedom. However the methods invented to reach this social justice often lead to more binding law, sometimes up to the absurd, that limited the abilities and capacities of the citizens. Thus, behind the mask of an ideal equality, is concealed in fact, a tremendous social injustice. In “Harrison Bergeron”, Kurt Vonnegut’s shows us the consequences of sacrificing freedom for perfect equality by using the story of an excessive utopia to demonstrate that a society in which total equality exists, is not only oppressive, but also static and inefficient. Vonnegut exemplifies the image of fairness

    Read More

  • Catch 22 And Vonnegut Analysis

    248 Words  | 1 Pages

    Known today as two of the most prominent American satirists, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut both served time as soldiers during World War II, Heller serving as a bombardier in Italy (Scoggins) and Vonnegut as a soldier and prisoner of war in Germany (Parr). Not coincidentally, both Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22 and Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death follow the journeys of young men in combat during the Second World War – Captain John Yossarian of the US Army Air Forces and soldier Billy Pilgrim, respectively. While it is evident that these fictional novels are both set during the World War II era and convey bleak images of war, closer inspection of both texts brings to light the common

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Reading To Write By Stephen King

    925 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many people think that reading more can help them to think and develop before writing something. Others might think that they don’t need to read and or write that it can really help them to brainstorm things a lot quicker and to develop their own ideas immediately (right away). The author’s purpose of Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, is to understand the concepts, strategies and understandings of how to always read first and then start something. The importance of this essay is to understand and comprehend our reading and writing skills by brainstorming our ideas and thoughts a lot quicker. In other words, we must always try to read first before we can brainstorm some ideas and to think before we write something. There are many reasons why I chose Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, by many ways that reading can help you to comprehend, writing, can help you to evaluate and summarize things after reading a passage, if you read, it can help you to write things better and as you read, it can help you to think and evaluate of what to write about.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Kurt Vonnegut And June Casagrande

    1186 Words  | 3 Pages

    What does Kurt Vonnegut and June CasaGrande have in common? Both authors don’t have anything in common other than they both are authors, and may disagree. In Vonnegut writing, he states “No one is smarter than anybody else” (Vonnegut) while CasaGrande discuss that “the human brain approaches the task of writing and reading differently” (CasaGrande). Vonnegut and Casagrande reach a concurrence in their writings Harrison Bergeron and A Word, Please: Why is it so difficult to catch or own errors? and share a similar message that brains are different, have different task levels, and thinking levels.

    Read More

  • Slaughterhouse-Five Essay: Irony, Dark Humor, and Satire

    671 Words  | 2 Pages

    In any case, the reader encounters much dark humor in the novel. There is a sense of an embittered humor with the Tralfamadorian phrase, "So it goes," which is repeated over 100 times in the novel. John May says that Vonnegut's purpose in repeating the phrase after each statement of death is to build its meaning with each incremental refrain (Contemporary Literary Criticism 8: 530). At first, the saying can be looked upon as funny in an ironic way. However, as one reads further, the phrase becomes irritating and irreverent. The reader cannot fathom so many deaths meaning so little. According t o Wayne McGinnis, it is most likely Vonnegut's intent to cause such feelings from the reader (Contemporary Literary Criticism 5: 468). This punctuating phrase forces the reader to look at the novel's deaths one after the other.

    Read More

  • Dysfunctional Society In Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron

    248 Words  | 1 Pages

    Science fiction writers like Kurt Vonnegut Jr. envisioned the future of humanity to be controlled to a high degree by technology and the government, shown specifically in his short story “Harrison Bergeron”; resulting in control that seems comforting but in reality makes for a dysfunctional society and hurts everyone in the end. In the futuristic society in the story, everyone is made equal by the government’s Handicapper General so nobody can feel inadequate. “ ...their faces [the dancers] were masked so that no one...would feel like something the cat drug in” (Vonnegut 1). Members of the society are comforted by the idea that all are equal. The society is dysfunctional because everyone is supposedly “equal” but not everyone can function at

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

    527 Words  | 2 Pages

    In J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield struggles to avoid "falling down" into the corrupt adult world. Holden views adulthood as a dishonest world while children are blameless and sincere. Corrupted with this mindset, he wants to act as the "catcher in the rye", to "catch" innocent children before they "fall" down the path of adulthood. In Holden's attempt to do so, he realizes that everyone must eventually take the "fall", even himself.

    Read More

  • Kurt Vonnegut: A Literary Analysis

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    Is it not on the normal we hear about PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from former veterans go through. They struggle to keep calm and collected visiting through flashbacks from war and maybe other memories that may not be true. Facing trying to have a normal life after being a prisoner of war (POW). Kurt Vonnegut writes using the setting he seen in his life, making a war drama from a first person experience making it fictional at the same time an autobiography. Being free from war is just illusive according to Kurt Vonnegut. Even though I never been to war I see him trying to show that war hinders us mentally through encounters in war.

    Read More

  • Competition In Harrison Bergeron, By Kurt Vonnegut Junior

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    Abraham Lincoln once stated “These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This is, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have it.” It is widely believed that fairness cannot be achieved without placing parameters upon others. This idea destroys our differing perceptions of what it means to shape a “fair” community. Equality and fairness often coincide, and with that, their respective definitions are commonly misinterpreted. In “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut Junior, it is essential for the reader to acknowledge that one 's perspective of an ideal society reflects their measure of self-worth, because it affects the way we interpret events in our daily lives, resulting in insecurities, restricted freedoms,

    Read More

  • Teddy By J. D. Salinger: An Analysis

    820 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most people would think a child of ten years old is simply crazy if they were told that the child can predict their own death. Surely an average ten-year-old would not be thinking about death, however in his story, “Teddy”, J.D. Salinger creates a character that just so happens to be totally accepting of it. A child that does predict their death might be thought of as morbid and perhaps even suicidal, however there is reason to believe that in this case, Teddy is not a morbid little boy. Although it may seem as if Teddy could be considered just a morbid little boy, J.D. Salinger provides a plethora of examples that provide evidence to believe that Teddy is in fact a true mystic.

    Read More

  • Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle

    1195 Words  | 3 Pages

    Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle I believe that Vonnegut uses Cat's Cradle as an allegorical tale about what will happen to the world if we are not careful with technology that has the ability to end life on this planet. He points out one of the qualities of humanity: that people make mistakes, thus poisoning our minds and encouraging a better world. One of the obvious ways that Vonnegut uses this book to "encourage a better world" would be by showing that the end of the world may come from an accidental release of technology. At the time when this book was written, nuclear war seemed to be almost a certainty.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos

    1188 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos tells the tale of shipwrecked humans stranded on an island called Saint Rosalia in the Galapagos archipelago. Meanwhile, in the other parts of the world, a virus wipes away humanity. The castaways, supposedly the only human beings to not have contracted the virus eventually evolve into furry beings resembling seals which took million years. The narrator, Leon Trout is a ghost that silently observed and documented the human evolution. The narrator often interjects with a contrast between the humans of today to the primitive aquatic version of humans of a million years later. This interjection along with the characterization provides the readers with a satirical albeit somewhat cynical view of the human intelligence.

    Read More

More about Analysis Of The Telegram By Kurt Vonnegut

Open Document