Vonnegut's Portrayal Of Society In Breakfast Of Champions

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despair, greed, and
apathy.

The issue of society's flaws is a major concern of Breakfast of
Champions. Such problems arise and are dealt with as failure to
communicate, ecological destruction, a contempt for art, and the
government's inattention to important problems (Merrill 157). The
experiences and trials of Kilgore Trout, an unknown science fiction writer
from New York, and Dwayne Hoover, a Pontiac dealer from Indiana, show the
suffering and unintelligibility of daily living (Giannone 107).

Dwayne Hoover suffers greatly despite his apparent wealth and
prosperity, being burdened with the problems of himself and his family
(Merrill 158). Hoover's mother killed herself by drinking Drano (130),
and his son is a homosexual (131). Although Dwayne owns a Pontiac
Dealership, a fast food restaurant, a Holiday Inn, and a large part of the
most successful corporation in all of Midland City, he is mentally
disturbed and suffering from psycological disillusion (84).

Kilgore Trout, ...

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had been given to them by their creator,
and murder the lesser animals for sport, for the thrill of the hunt. They
merely lived off the land being kind to all things.

"The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the
continent were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the
continent, the slaves were black. Color was everything" (11). Vonnegut's
basic description of early America is sadly true. The newcoming Europeans
thought that they were a superior race of beings, and that they had the
right to enslave others and force them to do their bidding or be punished.
Even after slavery was eliminated, whites looked down on other races,
referring to them as ...

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