Power and Powerlessness of the Author in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions

• Main Authors: Hu Chen Chi, 胡禎琪
• Other Authors: Kate Chiwen Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/86144963559326869058

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 英國語文學系 === 87 === Abstract The thesis is an examination of Kurt Vonnegut's use of authorial power and its relationship with his thematic concerns in Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions. The author is presented as a powerless one as Vonnegut abandons some of the realist and modernist authorial controls over the text. He challenges the omniscient and omnipotent power of the author by presenting a belittled writer figure, exposing the writing process, and renouncing his control over language, plot and structure. However, all these apparently negative strategies help Vonnegut successfully present the absurd and paradoxical nature of his subject matters in both novels. Consequently, the author is actually a powerful one since the seemingly powerless aspects are Vonnegut's strategic arrangements in presenting his unusual themes without falling into the inadequacy of the writing modes of realist and modernist traditions. Historically, Vonnegut's writing strategies respond actively to the metafictional writers and the spirits of black humor. The first chapter defines the paradoxical ideas of the authorial power/powerless. The following two chapters discuss separately about how the powerless author strategies empower the author in Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions. In both novels, Vonnegut connects his main issues with the subject of writing, which reinforces the presentation of his concerns and the conveying of his messages. In Slaughterhouse-Five, the incomprehensibility and absurdity of war and death echo to the revelation of the failure and frustration of the author in writing, while in Breakfast of Champions, the author's inability actually help reflect the social, cultural problems in American society and the those of human existence.