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Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champion: Free Will

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Submitted By pandaheero
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Pages 10
Yoan Nurbudhiati
Gindho Rizano, M.Hum
Literary Criticism
December 20th 2013

The Rise of Unwavering Band of Light Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was born on November 11th 1922 and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is known as American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. His funny, somewhat slang and imaginative writing style of fiction has been well-known especially among scholars, collage students and young people for more than 50 years. Through his works which usually involving dark humor, comical drawings, flying saucers and time travel, Vonnegut expresses social criticism about the suffering and atrocities human beings experienced in the 20th century—from the effects of war and atomic weaponry, to racism, social injustice, and environmental destruction. His remarkable novel Slaughterhouse-five (1969) is acknowledged as his masterpiece and has successfully catapulted his name to international fame. It recounts the story about the come-unstuck-in-time Dresden War ex-serviceman Billy Pilgrim who was abducted by extraterrestrial creature from Planet Tralfamadore. This novel is also a piece of Vonnegut’s memoir as an eyewitness when the tragedy happened. While in his seventh novel, Breakfast of Champions (1973) he stated at the preface “This book is my fiftieth-birthday present to myself. I feel as though I am crossing the spine of a roof—having ascended one slope” (4). The story revolves around a well-to-do Pontiac dealer Dwyne Hoover who was stepping into madness after reading a novel from an insecure yet talented science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout. What special about these two of Vonnegut’s works is the red string of Free will versus Determinism outlook contained in the books. As already pointed out that “Much of Vonnegut's work ... has thumbed its nose at conventional form. But what really matters here, at least philosophically, is free will”

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