Mother Night Essays -- Literary Analysis, Kurt Vonnegut

Life is a Snake which Bites its TailVonnegut uses the cyclical temper of bread and butter to counteract the perceived definitive nature of it. Vonnegut believes that all current life events, history, and time are circular they have no discoverable beginning or end. Each of Vonneguts novels stresses the nonion that life is cyclical. In Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut states that time, Is a serpent which eats its tail (205). This imagery shows Vonneguts depiction of time as a circle. According to Vonnegut time has no beginning, middle, or end, thus it is impossible to depict it in any analogue form. In Slaughter House Five, Vonnegut introduces the Tralfamadorians concept of time, which emphasizes the cyclical return corporeal in Billys time travels (Wayne D. McGinnis, 118). Vonnegut believes that people perceive life in terms of an old fashion story book, With leading characters, claw characters and a beginning, middle, and an end (215). However Vonnegut proves in his novel, Breakfast of Champions, that this is certainly not the case. He states, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write most life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. Nothing would be left out (215) and that is exactly what he does. Vonnegut believes that People have this illusion that when beginning, middle, and end are strung unneurotic in one story, a causal and teleological development is implied, and the naming of the cause driving events is what gives meaning to the story (Daniel Cordle). Vonneguts goal is to turn over this illusion and attempt to prove to his readers that it is not the structure of time or events which gives meaning to the story, it is all the moments combined which give the story its meaning.Just as Von... ...ally rescued by his blue fairy god mother set when he finally accepts his fate as a war criminal. Vonneguts use of irony, exaggeration and ridicule in Mother Night is invariant throughout the book, from beginning to end, thi s novel is told in Vonneguts unique satiric tone, which he uses to expose and dilettanteize peoples stupidity and willingness to adjust and throw their ideas out the window for the sake of survival and acceptance.Literary critic Peter J. Reeds states that Vonneguts painful comic rendering of the form acknowledges not just the suffering that existence may impose, but the essential absurdness of the situation in which its randomness and incomprehensibility frequently place us (37). The prank in Vonneguts fiction is meant to express the depths and tragedies of the world in a way which is bearable enough for the reader to comprehend.