Noah and a few like him perceived that the continent was in fact finite, and that venal office-holders, legislators in particular, could be persuaded to toss up great hunks of it for grabs, and to toss them in such a way as to have them land where Noah and his kind were standing. Sylvia Rosewater, who was born Sylvia DuVrais Zetterling, is from Paris. She's married to Eliot and eventually started to dislike him. Her father is the greatest living cellist. Her mother sponsors painters. She eventually divorces Eliot and enters a convent. Some folk do benefit by the legal arrangements of corporate capitalism. There are "about seven" in Rosewater County, Indiana for example. But aside from them, it's the fraudsters who end up on top. Legal arrangements being what they are, the corporate world is, as the Romans knew it would be, like the "1812 Overture played on a kazoo." That is to say a false representation of something magnificent: the instinct to do something beneficial for ones fellow man.

Didn't Think This Through: Mary Kathleen O'Looney's ultimate plan was to create a socialist society by having RAMJAC expand until it owned all businesses, then leave it to the US government when she died. While a creative idea, the government has no interest in running all of RAMJAC's businesses and just auctions them off. Re-reading this for the second (or third) time I am again astounded – YES! astounded is the right word – at Vonnegut’s cool, minimalistic narrative ability. What puzzles me is why people seem to get so much pleasure out of hurting each other. Why don't they try liking each other once in a while? [Deeds] The dignity of human beings, rather than any specific plot, is always close to the surface of Vonnegut’s works. From his novel Player Piano, on, Vonnegut has also been prophetic about the direction of automation replacing human beings. But he is vehement that people have a value outside of any job or any role they might have in society. What’s working against the tendency to value people, however, is greed exemplified in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by corporations. Trout’s favorite formula was to describe a perfectly hideous society, not unlike his own, and then, towards the end, to suggest ways in which it could be improved.Senator Rosewater could be easily imagined today as one of the leaders of the Republican Party: “I have spent my life demanding that people blame themselves for their misfortunes.” Lister Rosewater is Eliot's father and he's the one who created the Foundation for the money. He's a senator from Indiana. He believes that Eliot is just being silly and experimenting. He doesn't think he's crazy at first but later comes to hate his devotion to the poor. He's not a fan of Trout until he meets him and speaks with him.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut tells the story of a man who wants to help the less fortunate and another man who wants to gain control of his employer's fortune. Cosmic Horror Story: While most of his works, with a few exceptions, don't often include hostile extraterrestrial or quasi-supernatural beings (preferring anthropogenic agents of the apocalypse, e.g. Ice-9 in Cat's Cradle), Vonnegut shares with writers of the cosmic horror genre a belief in a universe that is completely indifferent to human welfare and morality and therefore seems hostile. Vonnegut is also notable because he was one of the first modern science fiction authors to get serious attention in the literary world. Although your literature professors (and Vonnegut himself) may try to tell you he's not actually a science fiction writer, the aliens and time-travel seem to disagree. It is in this novel that Rosewater wanders into a science fiction conference--an actual annual event in Milford, Pennsylvania--and at the motel delivers his famous monologue evoked by science fiction writers and critics for almost half a century: "None of you can write for sour apples... but you're the only people trying to come to terms with the really terrific things which are happening today." Money does not drive Mr. Rosewater (or the corrupt lawyer who tries to shape the Rosewater fortune) so much as outrage at the human condition. Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Examples of tropes from his other stories

Author Filibuster: Vonnegut's characters (particularly Eliot Rosewater and Kilgore Trout) are often surrogate mouthpieces for his social and political views. This was my fourth Vonnegut, and the one that definitely put him on my all time favourite shelf. I was positively surprised by the hilarious ending, which suggested some hope for humankind, as I had placed Vonnegut high up on the list of authors with the bleakest vision for humanity after I read Cat's Cradle. The trademark dark humour, and the interconnected stories within the main story, that I had enjoyed in Breakfast of Champions, were taken to a higher level in "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater", where the small sideshows added new angles to the overarching message of the general plot. Non c'è nulla di intelligente da dire su un massacro. Si suppone che tutti siano morti, e non abbiano più niente da dire o da pretendere. Dopo un massacro tutto dovrebbe tacere, e infatti tutto tace, sempre, tranne gli uccelli. E gli uccelli cosa dicono? Tutto quello che c'è da dire su un massacro, cose come "Puu-tii-uiit?" His heart going like a burglar alarm, Norman Mushari hired a large safe-deposit box, and he put the letter into it. That first piece of solid evidence would not be lonesome long. In Elliot, we have one of Vonnegut’s most poignant protagonists. His heroism is tragicomic, being touched as it is by legitimate mental health issues but also by the supposed psychosis of guilt for his riches. Vonnegut is too good to leave us with merely a morality tale about social consciousness – he also asks questions about the effectiveness of blind welfare.

Also apparent here is the experimental nature of the writing, still in search of the best mode of expression for the core ideas the author wants to convey: Eliot Rosewater is a veteran and the head of the Rosewater foundation, which oversees millions used for charitable donations and helping people. He decides to go out into America and meet people, view small towns, and try to figure out how to help people more. He ends up in Rosewater, Indiana, and decides that he'll help those people.As a story, Vonnegut is his usual hilarious self, letting his character as narrator drop several times and revealing personal asides. Beneath the surface, the author conveys an allegory about our spiritually hollow lives, a not so subtle dig at capitalism, having more money than sense. All-Loving Hero: Eliot's defining trait - he loves everyone, no matter how unlovable they are, simply because they are human and need someone to love them. Possibly deconstructed, note though it could also be seen as a case of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good as Senator Rosewater bitterly notes that that makes for a raw deal for anyone who (like himself) wants to have a personal relationship to Eliot, since Eliot loves them exactly as much as he does a random person on the street. Eliot's wife also tries to be this, but it eventually causes her to have a nervous breakdown and turn into a complete sociopath for a while - essentially, she wore out her sense of empathy by trying to apply it as widely as Eliot. Eliot himself also suffers a mental collapse towards the end of the novel. Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade, first published in 1969, features Eliot Rosewater in Chapter Five. Billy Pilgrim, the main character of the novel, has committed himself to a psychiatric hospital during his last year of optometry school, and finds himself sharing a room with Eliot Rosewater. Eliot introduces Billy Pilgrim to the works of Kilgore Trout, which set the foundation for Billy's adventures through time and with the Tralfamadorians, aliens that Billy claims abducted him. [5] Film appearances [ edit ] Siblings of the President were to become officers of the Foundation upon reaching the age of twenty-one. All officers were officers for life, unless proved legally insane. They were free to compensate themselves for their services as lavishly as they pleased, but only from the Foundation's income.