Table of Contents
Plot
Breakfast of Champions is a satire and postmodernism book by Kurt Vonnegut. It’s about two people, one person named Kilgore Trout and the other named Dwayne Hoover. It tells how the both of them end up meeting each other, how to two of them are when meeting each other, and the rest tells about after them meeting one another. Trout thinks of himself as a writer, an unknown writer to be specific. But then Trout gets an invite to an art festival, which is in Midland city. He decides he will go talk at the festival. But also decides to go to New York City before the festival. But while in NYC he is attacked and kidnapped by a character known as The Pluto Gang. He then gets a ride from a van with a pyramid on it. Then he begins discussing all sorts of topics. After some time, he goes into a different van with a happy character. The character is salesman with a van because is a traveling salesman.
Dwayne Hoover, the second main character begins to get more and more crazy as the book continues. At his job at Pontiac he scares his coworkers. He scares a character named Harry after talking badly about his clothes. This scares Harry because Harry is a transsexual who is ‘in the closet.’ And he thinks that Hoover might know about it. Then he gets in an argument with his secretary Francine Pelko, who is also his mistress. Francine is accused of trying to get him to buy the KFC company.
Both Hoover and Trout cross paths again at a Holiday Inn lounge. Then there is a server who switches the lights to black lights. This makes Hoover surprised and interested about the white shirts glowing. Hoover goes to Trout, and then starts to read Trout’s novel. The novel being called Now It Can Be Told. While Trout reads the book, it is learned that the book is about one being. And that one being is the only being that has a will that is free in the universe. But the being with free will is the person reading the book. Everyone else is a machine, a robot. With Hoover being insane, he thinks this book is a message. A message for him from ‘the creator’ or The Narrator. With that belief, Hoover starts attacking and hurting many people in that are physically close to him. After he is stopped He is sent to a mental hospital.
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During the end of the book Trout, with a severed finger due to Hoovers anger, gets out of the hospital. Now Hoover is heading to the festival. Only thing is that it had been called off. The character, The Narrator, comes fully into the story and finds and catches Trout. Trout doesn’t believe him at first, but when he moves Trout all throughout Earth, and time, then finally returning him back, Trout believes him. Trout believes he is the Universes creator. After that The Narrator goes back to wherever he was before. But Trout yells three words over and over at him while he returns. Those words being, make me young.
Characters
Dwayne Hoover is a character who is an insane man who is a victim of drug abuse. He thinks that everybody else is a robot, which comes from him reading science fiction, and thinking of it as science nonfiction book instead. He also works at Pontiac and scares employees there. These traits are show with the line “She was a defective child bearing machine. She destroyed herself automatically while giving birth to Dwayne.” (pg. 45) This shows just how insane Dwayne Hoover is as a person in this book.
Kilgore Trout is a writer, and nobody knows that he is one. He writes Science fiction books and thinks that he doesn’t have any effect on the world. Ever since the begging chapter he has been hoping to die or be dead. With these traits and the line “Trout was the only character I ever created who had enough imagination that he might be the creation of another human being” (pg. 246). This tells that Trout is the most human like character in the book.
The Narrator is also a character in the book. It is hinted that the narrator is Kurt. It seems this way because the narrator says he created the characters, and Kurt wrote the book, thus he created the characters.
Setting
This story takes place during the 1970’s just after the Vietnam war. The setting is takes place at New York City, and Midland City. Some of the story takes place in a Pontiac company. And with the character Dwayne Hoover thinking everyone is robots while working there. That part of the setting really adds to the insanity of that character.
Theme
During the book, Communism is shown as one of the themes. This theme is shown in a conversation Trout has with the first van driver. The driver has a brother, and that brother is working in to make weapons for the U.S. that can be used to fight in Vietnam. The weapons were being dropped by planes over the Vietnam forest. The weapons would kill the living plants, in the jungle. So, that brother is indirectly killing himself, by killing a part of the planet. Which means they should not fight communism, because fighting communism is backfiring one oneself. So, it is just best to leave it alone.
