Perhaps today it is difficult to meet a person who would not have known Vonnegut Kurt. And even if you have not read any of his books, you have probably heard quotes from his works more than once. Today we offer a closer look at the life and work of this great American writer.
Kurt Vonnegut: biography
The future world famous writer comes from a family of German immigrants. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in 1922, November 11, in the American city of Indianapolis, which in the future often became the scene of his works. His father was one of the co-owners of the construction company, and his mother came from a wealthy family of an American millionaire brewer. Kurt had older brothers and sister - Bernard and Alice.
During the period of the Great Depression, the financial situation of the Vonnegut family was significantly shaken. At the same time, Kurt's mother began to manifest the first symptoms of a severe mental illness, which ultimately led to her committing suicide. This happened in 1944. This fact greatly shocked young Kurt. After leaving school, Vonnegut Jr., at the insistence of his father, entered the chemistry department of Cornell University. However, this subject was of little interest to him, and the boy devoted all his time to work in a student newspaper.
The Second World War
After the United States announced its participation in the Second World War, the young man volunteered to join the American army. As a result of this, he was transferred to the University of Tennessee, where he studied mechanical engineering. After that, Vonnegut Kurt went to the front. At the end of 1944, the young man, along with other American soldiers, was captured by the Germans. He was sent to a labor camp in Dresden (Germany). At night and during the air raids on the city of Vonnegut and other prisoners were locked in the building of an abandoned slaughterhouse. Kurt was fortunate enough to survive an air raid on Dresden in early 1945. Then the whole city was almost completely destroyed. According to estimates of Kurt himself, who participated in the analysis of the rubble, killed at least 250 thousand people. The experiences of the youth associated with this terrifying catastrophe were reflected in several of his works in the future. Among them, a special place is occupied by the book “Slaughter Number Five, or the Crusade of Children,” which brought the writer real fame.
Post-war life
After the war, Vonnegut Kurt returned to the United States and entered graduate school (anthropology) at the University of Chicago. In parallel with his studies, he worked as a police reporter at the Chicago news bureau. In 1947, a young man attempted to defend his master's thesis on the subject of an unstable relationship between good and evil in fairy tales. However, this work was unanimously rejected by all teachers. As a result, the Department of Chicago Department still awarded Vonnegut the title of Master. But this happened only in 1971. The reason for this was the novel of the writer "Cradle for the Cat" (1963).
After the failure of his first master's thesis, Vonnegut Kurt goes to the city of Schenectady, where he enters the public relations department of a large American corporation, General Electric.
Kurt Vonnegut: books, writer career
The events experienced by Vonnegut in his youth laid the foundation for his first work. It was a science fiction novel called Utopia 14. In his book, released in 1952, the author paints very unsightly pictures of the future when all the work on earth is done by machines, and people are no longer needed. Vonnegut's subsequent works are also written in the genre of science fiction: The Sirens of the Titan (1959) and The Cradle for the Cat (1963). Real world recognition came to Kurt thanks to a work based on real events, entitled “Slaughterhouse Five, or Children's Crusade,” written in 1969. The book is dedicated to the bombing of German Dresden by aircraft of Great Britain and the United States in February 1945, during which the city was almost destroyed, and a significant part of its population died.
Also, Kurt Vonnegut’s pen contains such wonderful books as “Fars, or Down with Loneliness”, “Small is not a miss”, “Repeatist”, “Galapagos”, “Blue Beard”, “The Shake” and others.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
The most famous sayings of this man include the following phrases: “No matter what scientists work, they still have weapons”, “And although people are stupid and cruel, look what a wonderful day!”, “Maturity is the ability to recognize the limit their capabilities. ”
last years of life
Kurt Vonnegut was very passionate about his writing and did not stop working, even reaching a very advanced age. This famous American author died on April 11, 2007. The cause of death was the consequences of a traumatic brain injury, which the 84-year-old writer received as a result of the fall. Despite the fact that this great humanist and thinker has been dead for several years, Kurt Vonnegut, whose books still stir the minds of readers around the world, will forever remain in the memory and hearts of millions of people from all over the world.