Many of Vonnegut’s novels have impacted our lives today, even though one might not realize it. Numerous musicians and bands that we listen to now, make references to Vonnegut’s writings. The Dave Matthew’s Band borrows a line (“…eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die…”) from Cat’s Cradle, one of Vonnegut’s most successful and well known novels. In addition to music; television and movies also make reference to Vonnegut and his writing. Movies such as Can’t Hardly Wait, Varsity Blues, Footlo

Well, at least I found the novels enjoyable. What’s more, after reading and researching the author and his writings, I found Kurt Vonnegut to be even more mesmerizing. Learning about his life and discovering the connections between his books and his life were even more interesting. A biography on just Kurt Vonnegut’s life, and not his novels, is a book in itself. In his novels, Slapstick and Slaughter House Five, both protagonists either were from or had family living in Indianapolis, Indiana, where Vonnegut was born on Armistice Day in 1922 and grew up. In Cat’s Cradle, one of the characters is thrown out of Cornell University. This is interesting because Kurt Vonnegut attended Cornell and because of lack of interest in his majors (chemistry and biology), the university was planning to kick him out. Vonnegut, however, beat the university to the punch by enlisting in the army. (Biography)

In addition to Slapstick, I also read the novel Cat’s Cradle. Although I found Cat’s Cradle to be fascinating and very interesting, I did appreciate Slapstick more. Nevertheless, Cat’s Cradle is another novel where the main character is the narrator (most if not all of Vonnegut’s works are). The novel is very satirical. The Magill Book Reviews says that Vonnegut uses Cat’s Cradle to make fun of how “…mankind continually refuses to acknowledge what may be called its terminal stupidity and therefore perpetually threatens its own existence…”. (Vonnegut web) This novel was in fact very funny. Vonnegut uses dark humor and strange characters to express his views of the stupidity of humans.

Since he was thirty years old, Kurt Vonnegut has written some eighteen novels, more than two dozen short stories and many plays and essays. (The Vonnegut Web) Nonetheless, there is much more to Kurt Vonnegut than statistics and numbers. He explores science fiction unlike any other author. He also uniquely explores humans and the meaning of their existence. The most interesting side to Vonnegut is that he does it all ever so humorously. While his characters make the reader question life, one can usually not help laughing at the way he does it. It is sometimes so absurd, so ‘out-of-the-blue’, so strange, that it becomes very enjoyable.

Slapstick, also entitled Lonesome No More, is narrated by the character named, Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain. In the story Wilbur is writing a memoir on his life. He is near the age of one hundred and lives on the island of Manhattan, which has at that time had been abandoned because of the disease called “The Green Death” that has taken over island. Wilbur writes of his life when he was growing up with his twin sister Eliza, who eventually dies. He and his sister were born ‘monsters’ and were thought of as idiots. However, secretly they were one sole genius mind. When they were together physically, they have the mind of an Einstein, but apart they were merely dumb. During their youth they wrote many essays including an argument against Darwin’s theory of evolution, a method for squaring circles, an essay on the nature of gravity, and the most important one, an essay proposing the idea

Some topics in this essay:
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, Felix Hoenikker, Green Death”, Eliza Eliza, Daffoid-11 Daffodil-11, University Chicago, Slapstick Wilbur, Daffodil-11 Vonnegut, Vonnegut Jr, cat’s cradle, kurt vonnegut, main character, middle name, ‘i love, atomic bomb, short stories, love you’, ‘i love you’, artificial families, atomic bomb dropped, “common decency”, slaughter house five, novel main character, government-given middle name,