Michael Ashmore
Mr. Phillipy
Lyceum 4
12 October 2007
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true (S5 1). Nevertheless, it all started with a “skeptic” named Kurt Vonnegut Jr. As a writer, Vonnegut first caught readers’ interest with his answer to the meaning of life in The Sirens of Titan. His well recognized statistic voice complexly emerged in his antiwar novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, about his survival of the Dresden fire bombing. Kurt Vonnegut’s greatest hardship, the Dresden firebombing, became the groundwork and purpose of the writing that gave him fame and a tonic to the everlasting nightmare in his great mind.
The First Vonnegut immigrated to the United States just before the start of the Civil War. He was a German merchant that started a general store in Indianapolis. Although his name is unknown, he was the beginning of a long line of Vonnegut’s in Indianapolis. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s father and grandfather were both architects. His grandfather, Bernard Vonnegut, established the first architecture firm in Indianapolis. Bernard Vonnegut was responsible for the design of the old L.S. Ayers building, and the Herron School of Art.
When Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in 1922, he was brought into a very well off family. Kurt Jr.’s mother, Edith Vonnegut, was a descendant of a wealthy family, and his father’s architectural carrier brought in enough wealth for Vonnegut to start his education in a private school. Though, everything changed during the Great Depression. “I am not about to speak of soup kitchens, much of the news again of late. We never missed a meal during the Great Depression (Fates 23).” Kurt Jr.s father was out of work since no building were being build, and he seemed to literally give up on life. Edith Vonnegut suffered a bad case of depression and killed herself on the Mother’s day before her son went of to war. Junior was forced to attend public school and his way of life came form being on top of the...