Kurt Vonnegut Mentality Analysis

The Kurt Vonnegut Mentality

Kurt Vonnegut is an author that isn’t afraid to question and critique major establishments. Vonnegut question those intentions of religion, whether they are in reality working in good faith or in dehumanizing people and taking away from their ability to grow and have their own opinions. In his works, Vonnegut doesn’t steer clear from examining the pointlessness of warfare, the ability to escape your current reality, religion and the immoral aspects of science. Vonnegut’s short story Harrison Bergeron and his novels, Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle were all works that were inspired and reflected off events in his life. The decline of his mental health, his wife turning to Christianity, the growing political and

The danger and the risk that comes with enforcing something, like total equality, is an idea Vonnegut presents as a picture-perfect proposition not worth striving for. Peter Reed, author of The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut claims the time era in which Vonnegut wrote Harrison Bergeron was the time of the cold war,

“where Sino-Soviet Communist (and, for that matter, European democratic socialist) claims of egalitarianism were ranged against Western ideals of capitalism and individualism. And on the other hand, it was the pre-dawn of the Age of Aquarius, an era in which competitiveness and superiority were scorned, and where incidents occurred such as forcing a former beauty queen to wear granny-glasses, shear off her hair, and dress shapelessly before she could be accepted into a commune (The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut, 81-82).”

The government in this story were tortures of citizen, they stripped people of of their ability to grow and and achieve their goals. He presents the persistence of the government wanting their society to achieve total equality, Vonnegut uses irony to mock the behaviors and attitude people tend to have when becoming accustomed to oppression and failing to rebel against it and find their own voice, and although presented in a satirical manner, there is truth in