Kurt Vonnegut's Nineteen Eighty-Four And Brave New World

Kurt Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922 and is well known for his works in literature such as Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions. Vonnegut was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana with his older brother, Bernard, and his older sister, Alice. His father was a well known architect and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy brewer, however, when Kurt Sr. suddenly lost his business, the family was forced to move and Kurt had to be taken out of private school by his parents. (CITE 1) Vonnegut’s father suffered from depression afterwards and Vonnegut’s mother became addicted to drugs and overdosed on sleeping pills. (CITE 2) As Vonnegut grew up he appeared to take a liking to journalism, becoming the managing editor of
The novel showcases the role of technology in human life when the characters in the novel begin to praise a computer named EPICAC. Vonnegut later stated that the novel was heavily influenced by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. He also called playwright George Bernard Shaw, “a hero of his” and attempted to mimic Robert Louis Stevenson’s stories . Throughout the 1900’s, the world of literature noticed an influx in postmodern literature. Vonnegut attempted to experiment with more literary techniques which essentially led him to be a great writer. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut writes about a soldier who recalls the events of his life and somehow becomes abducted by aliens. His usage of fragmentation through the sequencing of the novel and intertextuality through his various references to other texts shape the novel to become a prime example of postmodernism literature. Similarly in Breakfast of Champions, reader’s find a man who believes a fictional novel is not fiction and believes that everyone other than him is a robot. Vonnegut uses the element of paranoia to establish the effect of postmodernism throughout the novel. He also uses characters from his past work and even includes himself in the novel, which is very rare to see from any author. Vonnegut’s experiments in literature served as a method to clear his head “of all the junk in there,” as he stated himself. Many of Vonnegut’s works were about or included war and were heavily influenced by the time that Vonnegut had spent in Dresden. Writing seemed to be Vonnegut’s only way of expressing certain of his feelings towards the events the occurred throughout his life, especially during World War