Kurt Vonneguts Opinions Expressed in Player Piano, Cats...

Kurt Vonnegut’s Opinions Expressed in Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, and Slaughterhouse-Five Every so often, a person comes along and encompasses the meaning of a generation. This person will capture everything people want to say, and then word it so well that his or her name becomes legendary. The sixties was an era with many of these people, each with his or her own means of reaching the people. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., armed with a typewriter and a motive, was amongst those that defined the sixties. Like other notable figures of the sixties, his strong opinions moved the people. Vonnegut’s opinions cover a wide range of topics and address almost all aspects of society. He represented the flower children of the sixties, as he†¦show more content†¦He attended Cornell University from1940 to 1942, and the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1943. From 1942 to 1945, he served in the United States infantry in Europe during World War II (Ethridge 1-4: 970-971). According to Stanley Schalt’s book Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Vonnegut was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and then sent to Dresden to work in a factory producing vitamin supplements for pregnant women (n. pag.). He was awarded the Purple Heart for his efforts. Vonnegut then came home, where he continued his college education by attending the University of Chicago from 1945 to 1947. He married Jane Cox in 1945 and eventually fathered three children, their names being Mark, Edith, and Nanette. After the war, he was a Chicago City News Bureau Police Reporter in 1947. Before he became a writer, he also worked with Public Relations for General Electric in Schenectady, New York from 1947 to 1950 (Ethridge 1-4: 970). In 1950, Vonnegut decided to become a writer, with his first novel, Player Piano, being published in 1951. He would later go on to write works such as Canary in a Cat House (1959), Mother Night (1961), Cat’s Cradle (1963), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973). His most renowned work, Slaughterhouse-Five, is as close to an autobiography as he comes. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut writes a novel based his experience as a prisoner of war