Summary of Happy Birthday, 1951
The short story is written by Kurt Vonnegut, and it is about an woman who left her small child to the old man and never came back again. This boy and the old man are the two characters the whole story is mostly about. The man doesn’t know anything about the small boy, so he decides to celebrate his birthday and is then seen choosing a day. The old man wants to give the boy a home without as his birthday present. On the way to the safe place, they talk about different things as uniforms when they see a couple of soldiers. When they arrive, they eat supper and then take a nap. When the man wakes up, he sees that the boy has gone missing. The man starts thinking about all kinds of scenarios and then the little boy surprises him and says: ”Gotcha!”.

Characterization of the boy and the man
The old man: The old man is one of the main characters of the Short story, according to the story it doesn’t seem like he likes the war or the environment that he lives in. It can been seen in the text as every time the little boy starts talking about the war he gets upset and sad. (Side 9 af 10, spalte 80).
Another thing is that the old man worries about the boy, and has feelings for him. He thinks a lot about what present to give to the boy as a birthday present, and he has great affection for the little boy (Side 8 af 10, spalte 35)
The old man is also in addition to that he doesn’t like war, also a bit philosophical he doesn’t relate peace to war. The war is not in his eyes an attempt to make peace, and it is not something that he wants any part of. He also wants to take the boy away from the war and protect him and take him to a place which he thinks of as paradise. This again shows that he wants to help this boy have a better future. (Side 9 af 10, spalte 100)

The boy
There isn’t a lot about the boy, because he is unknown because his