Robber Barons

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The characters in Vonnegut's books experience these same feelings of isolation. Like in Vonnegut's own life, the isolation is not self-imposed. Some characters are isolated from society, while others are isolated from relationships important to them. Vonnegut also shares tendencies of paranoid schizophrenia with his characters. They often feel as though they are the only people in the world that have the capability to make their own decisions. This is a common fantasy of patients with paranoid schizophrenia.

Vonnegut takes all important experiences from his own life and puts them into his works. He doesn't necessarily use specific events, but instead uses the emotions he feels during these times in his life. The incidences in Kurt Vonnegut's life, in which he has been stripped of important relationships, experienced schizophrenic illusions of grandeur brought on by loneliness, and sought artificial relationships to fill the void, surface in recurring themes: forced isolation of characters, allusions to schizophrenic tendencies, and one's yearning for relationships, real or otherwise.

At the age of fourteen, Vonnegut was forced into the role of being part of a single parent family. In May 1944, his mother committed suicide by poisoning herself. Vonnegut had had an important relationship with his mother up until that point. It was to be the first of many times in which Vonnegut would be forcefully removed from relationship. Due to the things that have happened in Vonnegut's life, he too has given up on love. He states that the best experiences he has had with love, "could easily be described as 'common decency'" (Vonnegut, 2).

He simply treats someone well for awhile, and they treat him well in turn. "Love need not have had anything to do with it" (Vonnegut, Slapstick 2). After another thirteen years, his father, Kurt Vonnegut Sr., died. Up until this point, Vonnegut had written under the name, "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr." After his father's death, "in an act of Freudian cannibalism, I dropped the 'Jr.' from my name" (Vonnegut, 22). He became separated from his father, and published all of his subsequent works under simply, "Kurt Vonnegut."

Paralleling Vonnegut's dysfunctional relationship with and eventual loss of his father, Vonnegut's works are often filled with characters who have broken relationships with their fathers (Schatt 108). Dwayne Hoover of Breakfast of Champions is just one example. His son, Bunny, is the "town gay" and so Dwayne and Bunny's relationship has deteriorated to the point where they rarely speak to each other. "Bunny Hoover, Dwayne's homosexual son, was dressing for work now... Very soon, Bunny Hoover would be seriously injured by Dwayne" (176). Vonnegut lost another important family member when his first wife died. He has become totally separated from her. He never mentions her by name. « mai multe referate din Diverse