How Kurt Vonneguts Life Efected his Work :: essays papers

How Kurt Vonneguts Life Efected his WorkKurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in Indianapolis in 1922. His father was an architect, his mother a noted beauty. Both spoke German, still wouldnt teach Kurt the language because of all the anti-German sen cadencent following the origin World War. While in high school, Vonnegut edited the schools daily newspaper. He attended Cornell for a little over two years and wrote for the Cornell routine Sun. In 1942, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. In 1944, his mother committed suicide and he was taken prisoner following the Battle of the Bulge.After the war, Vonnegut entered a get the hang program in anthropology at the University of Chicago. His thesis, titled Fluctuations Between Good and villainy in Simple Tales, was not accepted, but eventually he was awarded his MA for his writings in Cats Cradle. Throughout the 1950s Vonnegut make numerous short-change stories in national magazines. Player Piano, his first novel, appeared in 19 52. This was followed by Sirens of Titan in 1959, Mother Night (1962), Cats Cradle (1963), beau ideal Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), and his most highly-praised book, Slaughterhouse Five in 1969. Vonnegut has been prolific in the subsequent years, too. His most recent novel Timequake was published in 1997.On February 13, 1945, while Vonnegut was still a POW in Dresden, the city was bombed kill 135,000 citizens. Vonnegut and other eachied POWs took shelter in an subway system meat locker. This was the basis for one of Vonneguts most famous works, Slaughterhouse-Five. All of this happened, to a greater extent or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.1 So begins Slaughterhouse-Five. In the book an American POW named Billy Pilgrim witnesses and survives the firebombing of Dresden. Later, subsequently he makes it home from the war, Pilgrim is kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. They explain to him their concept of time and space and that we exist solely f or them. Vonnegut has said that he always intend to write about his scram, but was unable to do so for more than twenty years. He wanted to simply describe what happened through a narrative, but it never worked. The novel is a response to war. It is so short and jumbled and jangled, says Vonnegut, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Its easy to see how Vonneguts war time experience had an lure on Slaughterhouse-Five but, his knowledge of war also had some influence on Cats Cradle.