is
Vonneguts jab at making fun of the American fondness for the €˜lowest common denominator in
certain aspects of civic life. To the objective sociopolitical and anthropological writers POV,
it can often seem that intellectuality and the intelligeciaThe Eliteare under attack. And that
the old-guard ideal of American €˜society as meritocracy, is bankrupt as we drift further into
cultural homogeneity.
As such, the conflict generated is in what you perceive
as opposed to the ostensible situation. One part of Vonneguts is framed as documentary, but
expressed back-handedly, with a sort of horrendousthat you, the reader, must
sense is sarcastic. Vonneguts narrative stance is like that of the writing technique of the
€˜unreliable narrator, in which the text conveys two messages; what he knows and what the reader
knows to be a contradiction of character.
As another note, the handicapping
or forced behavior-modification in this story is similar to that of A Clockwork
Orange, though Harrison Bergeron is the earlier work.
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of some his earlier
short stories, which were once a major feature of popular print entertainment; including the
bustling magazinemarket. (Paperbacks themselves emerged about one third of the way through the
Twentieth Century, in time for WWII care packages to the troops could include the latest fiction
and entertainment in lightweight, inexpensive editions.) Im winging it a bit here, buthaving
survived his tour of duty in that world warhe happens to have been steeped in the paperback of
the day; that was indeed Private Vonnegut in his bunk reading James Jones, or another popular
author of that €˜manly but tender ilk.
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