Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was an American novelist and essayist whose darkly comic fiction examined war, technology, free will, and human folly.

Slaughterhouse-Five: Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel follows Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier who becomes “unstuck in time” after surviving the bombing of Dresden. Its fractured chronology and Dresden setting make it Vonnegut’s defining treatment of war and trauma.
Black humor: Black humor uses comedy to address death, suffering, violence, or other grim subjects. Vonnegut makes jokes about catastrophe without making its human costs disappear.
Dresden bombing: The Dresden bombing was a large Allied air raid on the German city of Dresden in February 1945. Vonnegut survived the raid as a prisoner of war, an experience central to Slaughterhouse-Five.
Bernard V. O'Hare: Bernard V. O’Hare was an American soldier captured with Kurt Vonnegut during World War II. Vonnegut’s reunion with O’Hare helped inspire Slaughterhouse-Five and its dedication.
Dresden in literature: Dresden in literature is the body of writing that represents the city and its destruction in World War II. Slaughterhouse-Five made the raid a central subject of American antiwar fiction.
Cat’s Cradle: Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 novel satirizes science, religion, and the prospect of humanity’s destruction by ice-nine. Its invented religion and apocalyptic technology show his satirical method beyond wartime fiction.
Metafiction: Metafiction draws attention to its own status as an invented work. His narrators and author-like characters expose how stories are constructed.
World War II: World War II was a global conflict fought from 1939 to 1945 between the Allied and Axis powers. Vonnegut’s military service and imprisonment shaped his lifelong writing about war.
Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky: Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky was Kurt Vonnegut’s first wife and a fellow student at Cornell University. Their marriage and family life spanned his early career and the years before his fame.
Antiwar literature: Antiwar literature depicts or criticizes the causes, conduct, and consequences of war. Vonnegut’s fiction joins personal testimony to satire in challenging heroic accounts of combat.

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