English Language and Literature ETDs

Publication Date

8-11-1971

Abstract

This study is a close rhetorical analysis of the satire in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It attempts to clarify the underlying art of structure and style which distinguish his work. The novels show Vonnegut's concern for the role of the individual in society by dramatizing ironically passive comic characters comparable to Voltaire's Candide. The rhetorical devices and stylistic techniques through which Vonnegut achieves his satiric effects are closely analyzed. The study reveals that the effect of his blend of fantasy and fiction is a stimulation of concern for human values in his reader. This effect distinguishes him from the black humorists, who present more nihilistic pictures of the world. In the first part of the study, the reasons for the study and its rationale are discussed. Its scope and limitations are explained and its terms defined in light of the major critical studies. Thus, Part I sets the theoretical stage for the practical rhetorical analysis which follows in Part II. In Chapter Three, selected themes and tones are traced through the novels to investigate the subjects and attitudes of Vonnegut's satire. The themes traced are sex, "grex" (Robert Frost's word for the gregarious instinct in man), and the role of fiction in creating values. These themes represent, on an ascending scale of abstraction, the major subject matter of the novels. In Chapter Four, the novelistic devices of character, plot, and time scales are analyzed to see how the growing fragmentation in the novels contributes to the irony of subject and tone. By contrasting the real and the fantastic in the same novels, Vonnegut creates a perspective from which human actions can be dramatized without direct commentary from the author. The narrator's function in story development is also studied. In Part III of the study, the modern and traditional elements in Vonnegut's work are brought together so as to summarize his techniques and make some critical judgment of them. It is demonstrated that the novels manage, largely through indirection, to create a concern in the reader for values and for humane treatment of human beings. That the novels are able to do so without positing moral absolutes makes them particularly apt as satire in an age of relativism. It is the art of Vonnegut's satire rather than its intellectual content which is truly remarkable; Vonnegut's subject matter has not changed substantially over the years, nor his attitude toward it. He is a very readable writer with a vivid comic imagination who has created novels which are both entertaining and thought-provoking.

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

James Llewellyn Thorson

Second Committee Member

Robert E. Fleming

Third Committee Member

Ernest Warren Baughman

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

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