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Kurt Vonnegut

Kym Ninos Brittany Morrison. Kurt Vonnegut. What event in his life was the base of Slaughterhouse-Five? What college did he attend? How many children did he have? When did he die? Who was his wife? (both of them). Chapter 1. November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007 German-American

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Kurt Vonnegut

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  1. Kym Ninos Brittany Morrison Kurt Vonnegut

  2. What event in his life was the base of Slaughterhouse-Five? • What college did he attend? • How many children did he have? • When did he die? • Who was his wife? (both of them)

  3. Chapter 1 • November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007 • German-American • Lived in Indianapolis • Attended Cornell University

  4. Army Experience • 106th infantry division • Captured with 5 others • Prisoner of Dresden • Sparked Slaughterhouse Five • Purple Heart for case of frostbite

  5. Post-war • Attended University of Chicago – Antropology • Published Cat’s Cradle as thesis • Began Slaughterhouse Five in University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop • Moved to Massachusetts

  6. Personal Life • Mother committed suicide on Mother’s Day • Father died 1957 • Married Jane Marie Cox, later divorced with three children • Married Jill Krementz with past three children, three born to his sister, one adopted by Jill

  7. Kurt Vonnegut died April 22, 2007 after a fall Suffered previous head trauma combined with the fall “When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetic it would be if the earth could say, in a voice floating up, perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon… “It is done.” People did not like it here.”

  8. Works • Slaughterhouse Five • Timequake • Cat’s Cradle • Piano Player • Jailbird • Bagombo Snuff Box • Harrison Bergeron • The Sirens of Titan

  9. Vonnegut Characteristics • 1st Person • Involves flashbacks • No distinguishable plot • Loosely written • Main character is male • Sexual and offensive content • Involves something futuristic or historical • Satirical

  10. Harrison Bergeron- Short Story • the theme of this satire is that attempts to achieve equality are absurd • Harrison Bergeron is about a futuristic utopia where everyone is 100% equal. Weights are upon the strong, cosmetic changes are made to the beautiful and distractions for the intelligent. Harrison Bergeron is intelligent, handsome and strong but handicapped because he must be equal. He escapes from prison and goes live on television, he claims a ballet dancer as his bride while his parents watch from their living room. They both discard their handicaps and are shot dead. The parents don’t remember what happened because their intelligence-handicaps erase it.

  11. Critic • Joseph Alvarez • Most readers of “Harrison Bergeron” fasten on the first paragraph’s announcement that everybody was “equal every which way,” which piques interest since perceptive readers know that people, in fact, are unequal. The story quickly clarifies both the origin of this equality (Amendments to the Constitution) and the ways people have become “equal”: everybody above normal in any way has been required to bear handicaps of astonishingly low technology for such a futuristic story. So, Vonnegut clearly decries the kind of competition related to social Darwinism. Vonnegut has championed a free market of ideas and has fought censorship against his own books, and for writers in other countries whose works are suppressed by their governments. As a writer competing in the marketplace of ideas, he has done fairly well, even though he does not believe he has received fair critical treatment during his later years. In essence, he has complained that critics expect writers always to write their best; they cannot be allowed to write a bad or even mediocre book. http://www.answers.com/topic/harrison-bergeron-story-8

  12. Sources • Wikipedia.org/wiki/kurt_vonnegut • Vonnegut.com

  13. Vonnegut’s 8 rules for a Short Story • Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. • Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. • Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. • Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. • Start as close to the end as possible. • Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of. • Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia • Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

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