Vonnegut Characters from Five Novels Quiz

Answer: Slaughterhouse-Five

What's a guy to do when he becomes unstuck in time, experiencing his life out of order? If you're Billy Pilgrim, you go with the flow as best you can and try to take comfort in the good times. This is "Slaughterhouse-Five", the 1969 quasi-autobiographical novel by Kurt Vonnegut, which, in part, recounts Vonnegut's time as a prisoner of war and witness to the destruction of Dresden.

Billy Pilgrim is the main character of novel, and he's a mild-mannered American soldier who survives World War II and the firebombing of Dresden. After the war, Billy becomes an optometrist, marries Valencia, raises two children, and gets abducted by aliens. So just a regular person like you and me.

Answer: Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut appears in more than one of his books, and his appearances in "Slaughterhouse-Five" are fleeting and scattered. We meet him in passing multiple times as a POW. Like Billy, he survives the firebombing of Dresden by sheltering in an underground meat locker under a slaughterhouse.

His presence reminds us that no matter how absurd the novel may get, the events of the war were very much real.

Answer: Slaughterhouse-Five

Oh, Montana. Montana Wildhack is a young American actress who becomes Billy Pilgrim's "mate" in the alien zoo on Tralfamadore. And you thought this was a World War II novel! The Tralfamadorians abduct her and place her in an enclosed habitat with Billy, where the two develop a relationship and have a child together.

The events of the alien zoo scenes are a big part of the reason this book gets challenged so much in American libraries and schools.

Answer: Mother Night

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." That's the messages of Kurt Vonnegut's 1962 novel "Mother Night". Here we meet Howard Campbell, a notorious Nazi propagandist awaiting trial in an Israel jail cell. He claims he was a counter-intelligence agent for the United States during World War II, passing messages to the allies through his hate-filled radio broadcasts.

In the book, Campbell is an American-born playwright who grew up in Germany. During World II, he became a very prominent Nazi propagandist. He even makes an appearance in "Slaughterhouse-Five" spreading propaganda to Allied POWs.

However, according to his story, he was secretly working as a double agent for the United States, embedding intelligence in his radio broadcasts. After the war, Campbell lives in a private life in New York. He struggles with the fact that, whatever good he may have done as a spy, he also did some truly vile deeds.

Answer: Mother Night

According to Campbell, Wirtanen is the American intelligence agent who recruits him to spy on the Nazis. He's one of the very few people who knows Campbell's true mission. For years, Wirtanen keeps Campbell's secret because revealing his true role could expose American intelligence methods. Eventually, though, he promises to provide evidence confirming Campbell's story.

Answer: Mother Night

Helga is Campbell's German wife. She's an actress who stars in the plays he writes. Campbell's devotion to Helga is central to his character. Campbell thinks of their marriage as a little "nation of two", a private world he tries to keep separate from politics and the horrors surrounding them. Helga disappears during the war and is eventually presumed dead, leaving Campbell devastated.

Answer: The Sirens of Titan

Are you searching for meaning in your life? Kurt Vonnegut would like to have a conversation with you. Or he would if he were in a speaking mood these days. Instead, you can try reading 1959's "The Sirens of Titan", which tackles the topic along with free will and determinism. Our protagonist is Malachi Constant, whose adventures on Earth and travels through the Solar System lead him to learn a difficult lesson.

In "Sirens of Titan", Malachi Constant is the richest man in America, thanks to the fortune he inherited from his father and a tremendous amount of good luck. Ridiculously good luck. In the beginning, he is a wealthy, self-indulgent, self-centered playboy. Not having read my brief summary above, he believes his success is a sign of divine favor. After meeting Winston Niles Rumfoord, however, his life turns into a bizarre journey across the Solar System. He becomes a soldier on Mars under the name Unk, travels to Mercury, returns to Earth as a religious symbol, and eventually ends up on Titan. There he comes face to face with his destiny.

Answer: The Sirens of Titan

Rumfoord is a rich and powerful space explorer whose spaceship passes through a strange cosmic phenomenon called a "chrono-synclastic infundibulum". Yeah. As a result, he exists across space and time in a way that most people just don't. That is, he appears on Earth and other planets at predictable intervals while possessing knowledge of the past and future. Cool ability to have.

He uses his abilities to orchestrate a war and establish a religion called the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. Rumfoord appears to control Malachi's destiny, but who controls his?

Answer: The Sirens of Titan

Salo is a robot from the distant planet Tralfamadore who has been stuck on Titan, one of Saturn's moons, for hundreds of thousands of years after a crucial part of his spaceship breaks. He's on a mission to carry a message across the universe, but what's a poor robot with a broken spaceship to do? His predicament delivers one of literature's most beautifully absurd revelations.

Answer: Cat's Cradle

The premise of the 1963 novel "Cat's Cradle" is pure Vonnegut: the narrator, John, is trying to write a book about what important Americans were doing on the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, including the scientists who created it. As way leads to way, we learn about an even deadlier invention. This is another look at the absurdity of the human animal, especially in the context of scientific progress without any moral responsibility.

John is the narrator and protagonist of "Cat's Cradle". As the story opens, he is hoping to learn more about Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the scientists behind the creation of the atomic bomb. His research leads him into the world of Hoenikker's children and eventually to the island nation of San Lorenzo. That's where things go sideways for the human race.

Answer: Cat's Cradle

Dr. Felix Hoenikker was a brilliant physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb during World War II. He's completely fictional, and as the story begins, he's been dead for some time. However, his influence can be felt everywhere. Felix approaches science with childlike curiosity, treating even world-changing discoveries as intellectual games rather than actually considering the consequences for humanity.

His most dangerous invention is ice-nine, a fictional substance capable of increasing the temperature at which water crystalizes. Sounds pretty harmless, right?

Answer: Cat's Cradle

Bokonon, whose real name is Lionel Boyd Johnson, is the founder and spiritual leader of Bokononism. After arriving on the poverty-stricken island of San Lorenzo with Earl McCabe, a deserter from the U.S. Marines, he realizes their plans to create a utopia have failed.

Instead, he develops a religion built around comforting lies, known as "foma", believing that these falsehoods can give people hope and help them endure life's hardships.

Answer: Breakfast of Champions

1973's "Breakfast of Champions" is a book that satirizes American culture, racism, the American dream, cruelty, obsession over penis size, consumerism, and how mental illness was viewed at the time. It's a divisive book that tends to have adamant adherents and equally adamant detractors. At its simplest, it's a story about a man experiencing a severe mental breakdown who becomes convinced that he's the only person with free will on Earth and everyone else is a machine. He goes on a violent rampage, seriously injuring several people in the process. We learn this in the beginning. Sometimes with Vonnegut, it's more about the journey than the outcome.

Dwayne Hoover is the wealthy, successful businessman who goes crazy at the end of the book. He owns a Pontiac dealership and several other businesses in Midland City, Indiana. Beneath his respectable image, however, he is suffering a gradual mental breakdown, intensified by personal troubles and just the pressures of everyday life. Finally, he meets writer Kilgore Trout and reads one of Trout's novels. This convinces him that he is the only person with free will and everyone else is a machine.

Answer: Breakfast of Champions

Kilgore Trout is a largely unknown science-fiction writer whose bizarre novels and story ideas contain some of the most important ideas of the book. He earns a living installing storm windows and has few admirers apart from his devoted fan, Eliot Rosewater.

When he arrives at an arts festival in Midland City, Trout unexpectedly crosses paths with Dwayne Hoover. One of his novels, "Now It Can Be Told", takes the form of a letter from the Creator of the Universe to the novel's reader, explaining that the reader is the only creature with free will and everyone else is a robot.

Answer: Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut occupies a particularly unusual role in this novel. That is, he appears as a fictionalized version of himself, acting as narrator and creator of the story's universe. He acknowledges his power to make the characters do what he wants them to do and even complains that the novel is not very good.

It all makes the story extremely self-aware and odd. Near the end, Vonnegut even meets Kilgore Trout in person and reveals himself as Trout's creator. A favorite target of Vonnegut is just what free will means, and in this case, he makes it clear that the characters in his book have very little free will indeed.