Audri Swisher's Blog

This week in Honors we tackle two speeches by Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer known for his pessimism, heavy satire, and humanist beliefs. The first address was given in 1970 to a women’s college graduating class. Vonnegut first recounts the loss of his optimism – mostly due to his experiences in World War II – and laments that science lost its luster when he realized that it couldn’t “make us so happy and comfortable.”

Therefore, no matter how much he would have liked to, he can’t bring light and happiness to this graduating class; all he offers is the truth, bleak and gloomy as it is. He calls for putting hope in superstition (“become an enemy of truth and a fanatic for harmless balderdash”), which he defines, essentially, as believing that humanity is a creation of God Almighty. According to Vonnegut, both this “superstition” and the arts put humanity on a pedestal. If a person believes that, then he will not treat his fellow man with contempt; at least, that’s his theory.

Vonnegut advertises socialism for a little while and ends. Gotta give points for brevity. Moving on…

Vonnegut’s last speech (delivered by his son after Vonnegut’s death) was given in his hometown of Indianapolis. The speech is a rather convoluted mishmash of ideas, wherein he tries to find a universal American sentiment, informs us that the Mona Lisa is not a perfect painting, succinctly summarizes the origin of the universe (“…BANG! And that’s where all this crap came from”), proclaims the apocalypse, discourages the use of semicolons, and praises communism and Karl Marx. He mentions asking his son what life is all about, to which his son replied, “Dad, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

Response:

Oh, Kurt Vonnegut.

What I love about Vonnegut is that even if you think he’s crazy or his politics are complete and utter trash, he’s still a fun read. His writing is that kind of gallows humor that you laugh at, then sort of shift guiltily and look around to make sure you’re not the only one to do so. His personality comes through so well – probably because it seems as if he writes down whatever happens to be wandering by in his thoughts. His style is brief and simple, punctuated often by seemingly random tangents.

Coming into this reading, I was curious to see what thirty-seven years would do. How had those years changed him? Truthfully, I didn’t see much of a difference. However, it made me wonder – what would Vonnegut have expected to see from those almost-forty-years-older girls from his 1970 speech, now that they were “old enough” to change the world?

I can appreciate that Vonnegut writes from his personal hardships and that his beliefs come from his own experiences. However, his presentation of the “truth” is permeated with the very worst assumptions. After all, why believe that anything is true or good or pure when you can lower your expectations and believe the very opposite? Hey, if you’re proven wrong, you haven’t lost anything, have you?

The saying goes, “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.” Vonnegut was honestly trying to change the world for the better, I think; but, I also believe he had a few things wrong.

I read Slaughterhouse-Five several years ago. In it, Kilgore Trout, a character who functions as a sort of alter ego to Vonnegut himself, had a maxim for life: “Being alive is a crock of shit.” Mr. Vonnegut, being alive is not a crock of shit. I wonder if you had that figured out before the end.