Hannah Hecht's Blog

When I first began reading this week’s passages, both speeches by Kurt Vonnegut Jr, I thought them to be simple ramblings of a mad man. He darts from topic to topic using the stream-of-consciousness style, without much concern for whether the audience will be able to follow. Sometimes, he spends time talking about serious issues, such as starvation and nuclear weaponry. Just as often, he shoves in random, nonsensical comments, like in the second speech when he called semicolons “transvestite hermaphrodites.”

As I continue to read, I realize that I have read some of Vonnegut’s stories in high school English. The one that sticks out in my mind is a gruesome and morose science-fictional commentary on modern medicine. In this story, a woman has been essentially hooked up to machines in order to stay alive. Each organ is a different mechanical box and all that remains of her original body is a head sitting on a stool. Thinking about it still gives me goosebumps.

Even though I try to bring a much more optimistic approach to life than Vonnegut’s harsh cynicism, there are some bits of information in his speeches that I agree with and find to be really interesting. At one point he talks about how humanity doesn’t necessarily need more science to help the world become a better place. Instead, Vonnegut states, people should just be less selfish and help each other out. There is definitely a lot of truth in Vonnegut’s words. While science is very important to the forward progress of humanity, sometimes we just have to remember to help out our fellow man.