Richard Todd, in his 1973 review of Breakfast of Champions, which appeared in The Atlantic, refers to the “banality, the Kiwanian subtlety of [its] social criticisms” (106). A 1974 review appearing in Newsweek spoke at length of Kurt Vonnegut’s “gratuitous digressions” within the novel (114). Earl Rovit, in a 1974 article entitled “Some Shapes in Recent American Fiction,” mocks Breakfast of Champions, claiming that all anyone needs to write fashionable fiction is “sufficient stylistic verse and a typewriter that skips a little” (543). This certainly must have saddened Vonnegut to some extent. Not because his work was trashed—he probably could have cared less about what critics thought. But those critics missed the point. He had to have shed tears inside, maybe a little, just as his narrator does for Kilgore Trout at the end of Breakfast of Champions: They had an opportunity to understand, to help turn things around, and they missed it. Throughout his work, to those who took the opportunity to understand, one thing is clear: Kurt Vonnegut has a heart for the human race. No example is more prevailing in this respect than Breakfast of Champions.
Unfortunately, not only has Breakfast of Champions been misunderstood by critics, but by scholars as well. Most scholarship about the novel constantly refers to Vonnegut as the narrator. The first thing that must be established is that the narrator is not Vonnegut. Normally, a discussion of this distinction would not be necessary, even elementary, but because of the vast number of misreadings, it is necessary. The author/narrator distinction becomes confusing with many of Vonnegut’s texts, particularly this novel, because the narrator claims to be the author of the story. Yes, Vonnegut was unhappy and tentative about finishing Breakfast of Champions; the narrator also expresses his dissatisfaction with the book. Yes, there are obvious parallels between the lives of both the narrator and Vonnegut: Both were approaching their fiftieth birthdays during the writing of the novel; both of their mothers committed suicide; both have strong opinions about the state of humanity. Yet, the novel must be read the same way one reads any novel with a first person narrator.
Vonnegut’s narrator has a name: Philboyd Studge (Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 6). This is only mentioned once, at the end of the preface as a signature. The confusion arises because Philboyd Studge references someone named in the epigraph, leading the reader to wrongly believe, right from the beginning, that the preface is the voice of the author, not the narrator. It is Studge’s narration, however, that makes up the preface. This is made even more confusing, because Studge, as a self-conscious narrator, makes reference to the actual authoring of the book by his hand, referring to himself as “the author” and “a novelist” (224, 299) further blurring the line between self-conscious narrator and author for many critics. In the preface to his collection of essays, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, Vonnegut calls himself “a work of fiction” (xxi). The self-conscious narrator in Breakfast can be read as a fictionalized version of Vonnegut, but his name is Philboyd Studge, as indicated at the end of the preface. Again, in the preface to his collection of essays, Vonnegut asserts that “works of the imagination themselves have the power to create” (Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons xxvi). Based on Vonnegut’s own assertion, it makes the most sense to read the narrator as a fictional character who creates the story but is not the author himself.
Vonnegut leaves the reader multiple clues that the narrator is not actually himself. The first, of course, is the narrator’s name, which critics either completely ignore or write off as the use of a ridiculous pen name. But there is further evidence. The narrator, toward the end of the novel, has entered his own story and demonstrates his power as creator of the story, contributing heavily to the author/narrator confusion. But the narrator also mentions he has a ludicrous physical attribute: his “penis [is] three inches long and five inches in diameter” (Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 292). The dimensions of his anatomy are not only ridiculous but impossible, pointing to the narrator being separate from the real Kurt Vonnegut. As Loree Rackstraw, a student of Vonnegut’s at he Iowa Writer’s Workshop, states in one of her many essays on Vonnegut’s work, “The writer may invent a story as a way of looking at the world [. . .] [I]maginative literature distills the experience of a culture into images that can shape its identity and transform its future” (51). Vonnegut uses Philboyd Studge to do exactly this.
One of Studge’s primary aims is to make the reader aware of the social construction of American culture and the impact it has had on humanity. The culture of Midland City, its people, its values, and the events that befall it throughout the course of the novel suggest the world is “[a] collaboration between reality and social construction” (Rackshaw 59). It is this concept of social construction that the narrator is most concerned with. We live in a reality which we have both control and yet no control of at the same time. This point is made throughout Breakfast in a variety of instances, particularly through Studge’s drawings and Studge entering the text itself as a character. Through these devices, the narrator attempts to describe the problem of language and how American culture’s pragmatic use of language is not only devaluing human life, but it is bringing humanity to the brink of disaster. Studge uses the semiotic nature of language to defamiliarize the American audience with its own pragmatic interpretations of language and thus encourage a rethinking of American reality.
When I use the term pragmatism, I am referring strictly to it as a philosophical school. H. Heath Bawdin, in his article “What is Pragmatism?” gives a helpful definition, particularly in dealing with Breakfast. Bawdin states that in pragmatism:
The test of truth is utility: it's true if it works. Hence the final philosophic wisdom: if you can't have what you want, don't want it. [. . .] The universe ultimately is a joint-stock affair: we participate in the evolution of reality. Our action is a real factor in the course of events. In the search for truth, we must run the risk of error. Lies are false only if they are found out: a perfectly successful lie would be tantamount to absolute truth. We must 'will to believe.' (421)
Pragmatism’s concern with the cash value of language, the “utility” (421) of truth, must be understood in order to grasp what Vonnegut’s text accomplishes. The idea that one constructs reality based on the meaning of language that has the highest value to the individual or culture is what Studge seeks to defamiliarize: We have discontinued our participation in “the evolution of reality” (421). America has settled on what it deems are the most valuable truths. In a sense, Studge’s defamiliarization questions the cash value of pragmatism itself. Semiotics is important to pragmatic thinking because pragmatism recognizes a certain relativity regarding language. There is no one, true definition afforded to any word or concept. A definition becomes true when it holds the most value for the person or culture that perceives that truth. Bawdin even points out that what is true could actually just be “successful lies” (421). Studge is tired of lies. It is these highest valued signifieds that Studge defamiliarizes beginning with the very first pages of the novel. Studge embarks with reader on a journey to the limits of our understanding regarding language.
The act of describing the limits of language, however, is inherently paradoxical. Studge must use language to describe its limits. The Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, pointed out at the turn of the 20th century that words are defined not by the specific things they refer to, but by all the objects they do not signify. Semiotics, especially the use of signifiers and their assumed signifieds, is central to Breakfast of Champions. The Saussurean concept of language as arbitrary is also central. If language itself, the actual system of sounds (according to Sassure), is arbitrary and “meanings float free of the world we normally think they’re anchored to” (Melchert 706), then Studge has ample ground to stand on in defamiliarizing these pragmatic definitions of standard and revered American symbols. But Saussure’s theory is problematic for more contemporary philosophers, primarily Derrida, because Saussure
specified that sound itself does not belong to the linguistic system, and though he has used the example of writing to illustrate the nature of linguistic units, he adamantly denies that writing is an object of linguistic enquiry ("spoken forms alone constitute its object") and treats writing as a parasitic form, the representation of a representation. (Culler 139)
Jacques Derrida’s continuation of Saussure in order to overturn Western binary oppositions is important because Saussare’s principle of difference, according to Derrida, “affects the totality of the sign, that is the sign as both signified and signifier” (10). Writing is a part of this system, so it cannot be ignored or considered dead. This is important to what Studge is trying to accomplish, first and foremost because Breakfast of Champions is a written text, but also because Studge not only examines spoken language, but written as well. Our pragmatic culture has put certain meanings and values to words and concepts, which have, in Studge’s view, brought about a steady decline in morality and are leading humanity to its end. The events of the novel take place “on a planet which [is] dying fast” (Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 7). Studge wants to show the reader why it is dying.
It is vital to note that Vonnegut was one of the first American authors to attempt to use language to explain the paradoxical and semiotic nature of language in his writing. Rackstraw points out that:
While an emphasis upon the artifice of language and life is now an important focus in contemporary literary criticism, it was not in academic vogue in American universities when Vonnegut was making his way into literary history [. . .] Vonnegut was one of the first American writers to make explicit through his self-reflective fiction the irony that he was using language to explore the curious and powerful and sometimes even dangerous nature of language itself. (53)
Vonnegut’s narrator not only explores the nature of language in Breakfast but actually demonstrates what happens when people become trapped by it.
What new understanding should readers garner from a demolition of their most revered symbols? – a question that doubtless many have asked of Vonnegut’s work. The understanding is not that of a new definition for these symbols, but rather an understanding that what they symbolize is not absolute. He is questioning them as “successful lies” (Bawdin 421). In Studge’s view, America has been based on these lies, products of Pragmatism, and they will bring about its demise if left ignored. Bill Gholson points out that “the self is never disembodied from the community, the history, and the discourses of which it is a part” (135). This is true of the narrator. In the first few pages of the novel, Studge does not try to hide his contempt for these symbols of his country’s history and the discourse it is based on. He begins with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” calling it “pure balderdash,” and “gibberish sprinkled with question marks” (Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 8). He continues on to the Flag and then to the Eye of Providence, which appears on the back of one dollar bills, stating, “Not even the President of the United States Knew what that was all about. It was as though the country were saying to its citizens, “In nonsense is strength” (9). The narrator explicitly states his purpose and feelings about these sacred American symbols and their pragmatic value: They are all utter nonsense. In these instances, it is very clear how Vonnegut “states matters with a painful simplicity,” so that the reader will “see freshly what they too often dismiss as the overly familiar” (Klinkowitz 106). Studge begins with the most familiar, important symbols to indicate just how serious he is. These irreverent commentaries on familiar, sacred symbols are meant to jolt and awaken the reader. They are meant to anger, to frustrate, but also to put the reader in a position where he or she may be able to grasp the rest of Studge’s lesson: If these most revered symbols of America and the pragmatic value placed on them can be seen as utter nonsense based on the semiotic nature of language, what else could I be missing?
The narrator not only attacks American symbols, but history itself in order to achieve the same effect. The first symbols are written off as harmless nonsense, whereas symbols that are supposedly part of American history such as the date 1492 are considered, “evil, since [they] concealed great crimes” (Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 10). He includes a visual representation of how the date would be written on the board, first to remind the reader of how “teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy” (10), but also to remind the reader that those numbers in that order are just that: numbers. They are given a value because they represent a year. That year symbolizes something important to America. The reader is given a short history lesson that is very different from what was being taught in history classes across the country. The narrator reminds the reader: “The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492” (10). This is a fact that all Americans are already familiar with, yet most do not realize the implications. The notion that Europeans discovered this land and rightfully settled it should seem outrageous. Yet it isn’t. It is far from outrageous to the majority of Americans. 1492 is meant to symbolize a major turning point, the biggest turning point in human history. Studge then lets the reader know that it “was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill” (10). As bluntly as possible, the narrator dismisses the pragmatic signified meaning of 1492.
Similarly, he calls the torch held by The Statue of Liberty which is supposed to be “a beacon of freedom to human beings everywhere” a “sort of ice-cream cone on fire” (10). He again includes his own visual representation of this image. The drawing itself does not have any meaning attributed to it. It is separated from the statue and reduced to the status of a fiery ice-cream cone, again to allow the reader to rethink the overly familiar. The irony of this beacon of freedom juxtaposed with the truth that “the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery” (11) makes it impossible for the hypocrisy of these symbols to be ignored.
The narrator moves on from these symbols into the plot of the novel in the next chapter: a plot that can be summarized in one sentence. The novel is about the events leading up to a meeting between Kilgore Trout, Dwayne Hoover, and their creator, Studge, who narrates their story. Dwayne is a man who’s “body was manufacturing certain chemicals which unbalanced his mind,” but he “needed some bad ideas, too, so that his craziness could have shape and direction” (13-14). Trout delivers these ideas to Dwayne in the form of a novel that tells Dwayne everyone on Earth but him is a robot. The narrator tells us that both Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover are his literary creation, and he has come into his own story to “watch a confrontation between two human beings [he] had created” (197). This concept of “bad ideas” is central to the plot and becomes the target of the narrator’s overturning of American pragmatism through defamiliarization, as seen with America’s sacred symbols. Trout is the harbinger of bad ideas, but the reader is told right at the beginning that Trout fought inexorably against bad ideas based on the drawing of Trout’s tombstone, which reads: “WE ARE HEALTHY ONLY TO THE EXTENT THAT OUR IDEAS ARE HUMANE” (16). This is the mantra that is repeated subtly throughout the events of the novel. The plot is deceptively simple. Oversimplification is being used again, on the scale of the entire book, to draw the reader’s attention to what is being achieved through it.
Studge explains that Kilgore Trout can only publish his writing in porno magazines. He tells the reader that Trout’s name and the title of his “most widely-distributed book” has been “obliterated” by a “lurid banner which made this promise: Wide-open Beavers Inside!” (22). The crude banner is written out in felt-tip pen, and the word “Beavers” is underlined twice. This is the first instance where Studge makes reference to the semiotic nature of individual words and the way it is used pragmatically. He describes the magazine banner thus: “A wide-open beaver was a photograph of a woman not wearing underpants, and with her legs far apart, so that the mouth of her vagina could be seen” (22). He then explains how that particular use of the word developed. Yet, he does not use complex, sociological concepts or terminology to explain it; he simply tells how news photographers “needed a code word to yell to other newsmen and friendly policemen and firemen and so on, to let them know what could be seen, in case they wanted to see it. And the word was this: ‘Beaver!’” (22). The redefinition of an existing word to fit a more valuable meaning is at the core of American pragmatism. The word “Beaver” is more valuable to these men when it refers to a vagina. Thus beaver defined as vagina becomes true. This exposition is followed immediately by a description of the animal. Then a drawing of the animal. Just to be clear, the narrator finally draws a crude representation of a vagina, saying before it “The sort of beaver which excited news photographers so much looked like this:” and after it, “This was where babies came from” (23). The narrator leads the reader through a journey from beavers to babies. The reader is forced to consider the various meanings of this one word and all the possible objects it can refer to, thus Studge defamiliarizes the term. The use of such a vulgarity is then connected to the giving of life and the innocence of babies. “Beaver” is a pornographic term, arising out of a pragmatic need, used to refer to the female anatomy that produces babies. It is also a woodland animal. Once confronted with these simplified connections, the reader should at once see how the pragmatic need has manipulated language into something preposterous.
The subtitle of the novel, “Goodbye, Blue Monday,” is used in a similar demonstration. The motto of “The Midland City Ordinance Company” is “GOODBYE, BLUE MONDAY” (42). The only reason the reader hears about this company is because Studge is explaining how Dwayne purchased his car dealership: through a loan which he got by putting up stock he owned in the company as collateral (42). After giving the reader the company motto, a seemingly useless piece of information, Studge tells the reader that Harry LeSabre, Dwayne’s sales manager, served in the Army Air Corps and once “got to paint a message on a five-hundred-pound bomb which was going to be dropped on Hamburg, Germany” (43). The narrator gives the reader one of his now expected and familiar drawings; it is of a bomb and on it is written, “GOODBYE, BLUE MONDAY” (43). This short exposition is easily overlooked because none of the information is immediately pertinent to the actual plot. However, there is a profound irony here. In the context of a company motto, Goodbye, Blue Monday is cheerful, hopeful. It is a declaration of happiness: Our products make your life easier. The context of the motto is given later on in the novel with an explanation of an advertisement for the Robo-Magic Corporation, which became The Midland City Ordinance Company. The ad reads: “Off to the bridge club while my Robo-Magic does the wash! Goodbye, Blue Monday!” (250). There is hope for a better life imbedded in the motto.
In the context of the bomb, it is a joke, a sad irony. There is a message of hope painted on the side of a weapon meant to destroy human life. The bomb represents the opposite of what the motto does. The narrator demonstrates that it is that simple to change the meaning of language. Simply paint the words somewhere they don’t belong. The phrase itself doesn’t carry any meaning outside of a context. Outside the context of a motto regarding household chores, the words mean nothing together. They take on meaning once they are placed within a context. Here, a pragmatic conception of language works to its fullest because the words truly have no value until put into what ever context makes them most valuable.
The irony of this odd section goes much deeper than the motto and its placement on a bomb. It is no coincidence that Harry LeSabre is the one who painted the motto on the bomb, though the narrator makes no mention of it being anything at all. He simply tells the reader the facts with no further explanation. As far as the reader knows, neither character is aware of the coincidence either. But immediately following this section, Dwayne drives Harry into a deep depression. There is a series of two coincidences, one perpetrated by Harry, one by Dwayne. Harry makes the mistake of speaking about adoption—something he and his wife considered. He does not know that Dwayne was adopted, and Dwayne doesn’t tell him. It remains an unspoken coincidence, just as the motto is unknown. Dwayne explodes and tells Harry he should “ ‘burn up [his] fucking wardrobe’ ” because his clothes are boring (48). Dwayne rants on and on, noting the coincidence between Harry’s last name and a Buick model by the same name. The narrator states that Harry “might have weathered all this with only minor damage, if only Harry hadn’t been a secret transvestite [. . .] Harry had to suspect that his secret was out” (48). In this instance, Dwayne is unaware of the coincidence and the effect his words cause. This example demonstrates, on a much more practical level, the power of words in context. Neither Harry nor Dwayne is aware of the reason behind the effect their words have on the other.
The visual representation of language is examined again when Kilgore Trout, trying to make his way to Midland City, hitches a ride with a trucker. The narrator provides a drawing of the truck: A sixteen wheeler with the word “PYRAMID” painted across the entire side of it. Studge calls it “a message written on the side [. . .] in bright orange letters which were eight feet high” and tells the reader that “Trout wondered what a child who was just learning to read would make of a message like that. The child would suppose that the message was terribly important, since somebody had gone to the trouble of writing it in letters so big” (92). This instance is similar to Harry LeSabre’s bomb message in that it is a word taken out of context, and additionally, its visual representation is called into question. Trout senses the word becomes more important, more valuable, since it is painted larger, yet the actual letters have not changed.
The word becomes the topic of conversation as Kilgore Trout makes his way to Midland City with the truck driver. The driver tells Trout about his brother-in-law who is “President of the Pyramid Trucking Company” (111). Trout, the only one in the novel who somehow understands what the narrator has been demonstrating about language, asks:
Why did he name his company Pyramid? [. . .] I mean—this thing can go a hundred miles an hour, if it has to. It’s fast and useful and unornamental. It’s as up-to-date as a rocket ship. I never saw anything that was less like a pyramid than this truck. [. . .] Why would anybody in the business of high speed transportation name his business and his trucks after buildings which haven’t moved an eighth of an inch since Christ was born? (111-12)
The narrator repeats what he did previously with the word “Beaver.” He draws a picture of an Egyptian pyramid and explains what they are, once again calling the reader to question the arbitrary nature of language and the way pragmatism has altered its meaning according to utility. Yet, Studge adds a new element this time. He tells the reader that “the driver’s answer was prompt. It was peevish, too, as though he thought Trout was stupid to have to ask a question like that. ‘He liked the sound of it [. . .] Don’t you like the sound of it?’” (112). This question of sound is an important one because the only reason the driver can give for attributing new meaning to this word is its sound. This type of pragmatism is the most outrageous because based on the truck driver’s logic, any word could be used in any application simply based on how it sounds.
Trout makes the mistake of asking the same question about the fire extinguisher in a Ford Galaxie which he becomes a passenger in after the truck driver has had enough of him. The narrator gives a visual representation, showing that the word “Excelsior” is written on the extinguisher (176). The narrator explains that, “As far as Trout knew, this word meant higher in a dead language. It was also a thing a fictitious mountain climber in a famous poem kept yelling as he disappeared into a blizzard above. And it was also the trade name for wood shavings which were used to protect fragile objects inside packages” (176). The narrator takes the sound of language one step further with this example. Trout again asks, “ ‘Why would anybody name a fire extinguisher Excelsior?’” and again receives the reply, “ ‘Somebody must have liked the sound of it’” (177). It is important that the word in this case is dead in its original usage. It then has four meanings attributed to it: one original definition, now dead; two completely different uses based on arbitrary changes; and one again based on how the word sounds. In pragmatic terms, the actual definition of the word has no utility because it is from a dead language. This demonstrates that not only the sound of a word can cause a completely arbitrary meaning: the death of a word or language can affect arbitrary usage as well.
The number of examples regarding arbitrary language and its pragmatic usage in the novel is extensive, but they begin to culminate and become clear in purpose as Studge moves toward the climax. The first event in this culmination is entrance of the narrator himself into the novel. This begins a view of language much larger than single word evaluation. The text points to itself as invention. The narrator flaunts his ability to create; he reminds the reader that Dwayne and Kilgore are “two human beings [he] created” (197). When speaking about Wayne Hoobler he announces that he has “created all Wayne’s misery to date, [he] could kill him or make him a millionaire or send him back to prison or do whatever he damn pleased with Wayne” (197). Studge flexes this creative power to demonstrate his control of language as a whole. He has invented and created lives and he can do whatever he pleases with them. The narrator demonstrates for the reader, at this point, the highest level of pragmatism: the construction of reality. If pragmatism is the “utility” of truth (Bawdin 421), then whatever definitions hold the most value become true. Studge has already pointed out some of the ways in which words have had new definitions attached to them based solely on utility. Using this definition of pragmatism and the examples Studge has given about words and their pragmatic redefinition based on need, context, and sound, a complete construction of reality would be entirely possible for anyone. The narrator has temporarily deceived the reader and, ironically, himself into believing that human beings have complete control over language, when the exact opposite is true.
On a simple level, within the plot of the story, language becomes master over Dwayne Hoover. He is trapped by language in multiple ways. He is, first and foremost, a character in a novel created by the narrator, and although the narrator recognizes eventually that his creations themselves have the ability to create, Dwayne never recognizes that. Even the short bit of information about his real parents help to define a person born under the influence and control of language, yet completely unaware of it. His mother wrote poetry, and his father put it in print. Language finally exerts complete control over Dwayne when he reads a novel by Kilgore Trout titled Now It Can Be Told which is written in the second person and tells Dwayne that every being on Earth is a robot but him. He believes it wholeheartedly. Trout’s novel becomes true to Dwayne because it has value to him. It ignites his “bad chemicals” (Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 14). To the reader, Trout’s book is clearly fiction; it is clearly nonsense. Pragmatism, however, evaluates Dwayne’s belief in Trout’s novel as justified. It is a “successful lie” (Bawdin 421). A parallel is then drawn between the nonsense of Trout’s novel and what the narrator defamiliarizes and overturns as nonsense at the beginning of the novel: the sacred American symbols. The narrator’s point is well taken—Americans have been and still are trapped by language just as ridiculous, just as false as what Dwayne has been trapped by. Dwayne’s bad chemicals finally have the bad ideas they need to make Dwayne lose his mind. The implication is that some of America’s bad ideas have done the same to other Americans full of bad chemicals.
On a much more complex level, Studge realizes that his own creation, his own language construction, is able to affect him. The paradox is that the narrator announces it by telling the reader: “And now comes the spiritual climax of this book, for it is at this point that I, the author, am suddenly transformed by what I have done so far. This is why I had gone to Midland City: to be born again” (224). This spiritual climax is ignited by the words of the artist Rabo Karabekian who, speaking of a Midland City swimmer, says, “What kind of man would turn his daughter into an outboard motor” (224)? The narrator goes through a myriad of realizations about greed and fear and finally tells the reader:
I [have] come to my own conclusion that there [is] nothing sacred about myself or about any human being, that we [are] all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe. (225)
The narrator’s climactic, profound statement regarding the nature of humanity is delivered to him through a character that he created. Rather than the narrator simply explaining this to the reader with no context within the novel, he discovers the truth with the reader. Vonnegut has already said that “works of the imagination themselves have the power to create” (Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons xxvi). His narrator’s constructed reality is altered and affected by itself, demonstrating that he doesn’t have control over what was supposed to be his construction.
The narrator’s conclusion itself is important as well. He essentially concludes and sums up exactly what has happened to him. He, along with the rest of humanity, is a machine, ultimately powerless to control his reality, though he has existed under the impression that he has been in control. This brings him to the conclusion that he is no more sacred than any other object described by language. He, too, is trapped by language. Yet, unlike Dwayne, the reader is lead to believe Philboyd Studge is immediately and consciously recognizing this. That is why Dwayne goes crazy, and Studge does not. The recognition that humans are powerless under the influence of language is important because it negates the power that pragmatism promises. The utilitarian value assigned to any particular definition is ultimately worthless because we do not control language, it controls us. Therefore to hold to “truths” based on lies because they hold a significant value does not make sense. The control of reality through construction is only perceived control. If this lack of control is not recognized, then language becomes a trap just as it does for Dwayne. Revisiting the overturning of American symbols is important. The narrator, through this epiphany, subtly suggests that there might be a lot less hate, destruction of human life and bigotry if the power of language and its control is recognized.
Studge is attacked by his own constructions twice in the novel. During the description of Dwayne’s rampage, the narrator says that he “came out of the riot with a broken watch crystal and what turned out later to be a broken toe. Somebody jumped backwards to get out of Dwayne’s way. He broke my watch crystal, even though I had created him, and he broke my toe” (Breakfast of Champions 282). Studge’s own language construction has moved beyond affecting his own thinking to physical harm. That language can affect ideas is easily accepted: even the reader who is outside the text of the novel can be affected by what its language says. The text may also affect a reader physically, if the reader is brought to tears or the language is comical, yet physical harm such as a broken toe or watch cannot happen to the reader just by reading a text. We are not in the text, however, the way the narrator is. He is inside the text, and the text is his own creation. The power of language is strong enough to harm him physically because he is trapped by it.
The second time, Studge is attacked as he waits for Kilgore Trout with the news that Trout is being set free. He tells the reader:
I saw Kazak out of the corner of my right eye. [. . .] He was floating toward me like a zeppelin, hanging lazily in air. My eyes told my mind about him. My mind sent a message to my hypothalamus, told it to release the hormone CRF into the short vessels connecting my hypothalamus and my pituitary gland. [. . .] Everything my body had done so far fell within normal operating procedures for a human machine. [. . .] Trout had had a full day already, but it wasn’t over yet. Now he saw his Creator leap completely over an automobile. (296-97).
The description of the chemical reactions occurring inside the narrator’s brain further demonstrates that he really has no more power over his own creation than any of his own characters. If he was the all-powerful Creator, he could have put his hand up and stopped the dog in midair. He could have turned him into anything he wanted, but instead the dog leaps at him, and the narrator leaps over a car. He continues: “I landed on my hands and knees in the middle of Fairchild Boulevard. Kazak was flung back by the fence. Gravity took charge of him as it had taken charge of me. Gravity slammed him down on the concrete” (297). Language is equated to gravity in that gravity is something else we have no control over. Both language and gravity have taken over the events. The narrator sees again that no matter how much he thinks he is in control of language, he truly isn’t.
In the final events of the novel, Studge attempts to explain to Kilgore Trout that he is a character in a story the narrator has created, but he is being set free. He tells Trout bluntly, “ ‘I am a novelist, and I created you for use in my books’” (299). Trout is speechless and the only thing he can ask of his creator is “ ‘Do you have a gun?’” (299). Studge “shatter[s] his power to doubt” (299) by bringing him to various places all over the universe, which brings Trout to his knees, cowering. The narrator, again, has no control over the reaction of his own creation. He is trying to give him the answers, but Trout does not see that. In a final, climactic speech, the narrator explains to Trout what the entire novel has been building toward:
Mr. Trout—Kilgore—[. . .] I hold in my hand a symbol of wholeness and harmony and nourishment. It is Oriental in its simplicity, but we are Americans, Kilgore, and not Chinamen. We Americans require symbols which are richly colored and three-dimensional and juicy. Most of all, we hunger for symbols which have not been poisoned by great sins our nation has committed, such as slavery and genocide and criminal neglect, or by tinhorn commercial greed and cunning. [. . .] He saw that I held an apple in my hand. (300-1)
This new symbol, created by attributing a new pragmatic meaning to something already in existence, is what the narrator has been driving at. America, as a nation, needs to abandon its history of “great sins” and look toward a future where its symbols represent something wholly good and are not tainted by a gruesome past. America needs to believe in something because it is good, not because it has value.
This seems like something Kilgore Trout should understand. Throughout the entire novel, the narrator has noted Trout’s questioning of pragmatic language interpretation. All of Trout’s novels and short stories treat the core problems of humanity with childlike simplicity. After this new American symbol is presented to Trout, the narrator says to him, “ ‘Arise, Mr. Trout, you are free, you are free’” (301). Studge seems to ignore his own earlier conclusion: No one is free from language. However, he has set Trout free in another way. He has shown him that he too is trapped by language. If Trout can recognize this and act accordingly, then he will be free. Everyone else will continue on, passively allowing language to control them. “For others, tonight will be a night like any other night,” Studge tells Trout (301). This is really nothing new for Trout. He has seemed to understand humanity’s problems better than anyone since the beginning.
As the narrator “somersault[s] lazily and pleasantly through the void” (301) back to his reality outside of his text, he hears his father’s voice issuing from Kilgore Trout’s mouth. Studge begins to cry, and draws a picture of his eye shedding a tear. Trout is shouting, “ ‘Make me young, make me young, make me young!’” (302). He missed the point. After being told the secret of his own existence and being shown the type of symbol that could bring humanity back from the brink of disaster, all Trout can see is his own vanity. He knows the man he was just talking to is his creator. All he wants is to be made young again. The narrator’s actions then parallel the story of the actual Creator of the Universe. Studge has referenced this Creator throughout the novel without acknowledging an affiliation—it is just The Creator in general. The way Studge’s actions parallel this Creator are without affiliation as well: The Creator sent the solution, the way to save ourselves, yet many can only see vanity. Studge sheds a tear for his own creation just as he imagines The Creator would shed a tear for those of us who do not understand.
The question then becomes: Is this a pessimistic ending? Is humanity doomed to vanity and misunderstanding: Doomed to continually be trapped by language? The narrator’s use of “ETC” drawn large and ornately at the end of Trout’s plea has been used throughout the novel. At first, the narrator doesn’t use the abbreviation. He simply says “And so on” countless times. Once he enters the text, he begins drawing the letters, the abbreviated form of “et cetera,” which denotes “and so on” and is “occasionally used when the conclusion of a quotation, a current formula of politeness, or the like, is omitted as being well known to the reader” (OED). In the novel, the phrase is usually included after some instance of human suffering, or something that is overly familiar. When the drawing is included, Studge prefaces it by saying, “The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be that same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it” (Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 234). He, of course, ends his own story with the abbreviation, indicating that Trout’s vanity, his disappointing behavior, should be well known to the reader. It is innate in all of us.
If this behavior is innate, if it is well known, if it is expected, then what hope can there be for a future with symbols to believe in such as the apple presented to Kilgore Trout—to bring humanity back from the brink of disaster? The narrator’s ending is a warning. It is a warning against vanity. It is a warning against a pragmatic reality based on a history of great sins. My epigraph is quoted from an early Vonnegut novel in which the main character is giving a speech at a baptism. The only thing he can think to tell the babies, new to the Earth, untainted by the horrors humanity has inflicted upon itself, is that being kind is the only thing we have control over. Vonnegut’s humanism comes through in another sense in Breakfast of Champions. Human beings may be trapped by language; humans may not be in control of their own reality even with the ability to construct it, but recognizing that rather than passively ignoring it is the only solution. We have the ability to recognize that we do not control our own reality.
Works Cited
Bawdin, H. Heath. “What Is Pragmatism?” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods. 1 (4 Aug. 1904): 421-27.Culler, Jonathan. “Semiotics and Deconstruction.” Poetics Today 1.1/2 Special Issue: Literature, Interpretation, Communication (Autumn 1979): 137-41.
Derrida, Jaques. “Différance.” Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
“et cetera, n. 1” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 13 Nov. 2007.
Gholson, Bill. “Narrative, Self, and Morality in the Writing of Kurt Vonnegut.” At Millennium’s End: New Essays On the Work of Kurt Vonnegut. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001
Klinkowitz, Jerome. The Vonnegut Effect. Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press, 2004.
Melchert, Norman. The Great Conversation: Volume II: Decartes through Derrida and Quine. 4th Ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.
Prescott, Peter S. “Nothing Sacred.” Newsweek. (14 May 1973): 114.
Rackstraw, Loree. “The Paradox of ‘Awareness’ and Language in Vonnegut’s Fiction.” Kurt Vonnegut: Images and Representations. Ed. Marc Leeds and Peter J. Reed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Rovit, Earl. “Some Shapes in Recent American Fiction.” Contemporary Literature. 15 (Autumn 1974): 539-61.
Todd, Richard. “Review of Breakfast of Champions.” The Atlantic. 231 (May 1973): 106.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of Champions. New York: Random House, 1973.
— Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons. New York: Dell, 1979.
No comments:
Post a Comment