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Description
Each chapter in this thesis focuses on the settings of Kurt Vonnegut's novels, discussed in the sequence of their respective publication, and explores the symbolic qualities of those landscapes. Then the essential relationship between Vonnegut's settings and theme is presented. In Player Piano, we discern Vonnegut's reliance on symbolic terrains—Ilium, Homestead, the Meadows, the farm, and finally the destroyed Ilium—to emphasize his anti-technology theme. In Sirens of Titan, the futuristic, black humor landscapes include the materialistic Earth, war-geared Mars, pseudo-harmonious Mercury, and paradisal Titan. Within these settings , Vonnegut questions the senseless manipulation of mankind by irrational forces and posits the power of love. The settings of Mother Night, remembered in the consciousness of narrator Howard Campbell, include World War II Germany, Greenwich Village, the reported hopefulness of the future in Mexico, and a jail cell in Jerusalem. These terrains symbolize the disillusionment and final despair of Campbell. In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut fabulates the terrains of Ilium and San Lorenzo to present an illusion and reality theme. Vonnegut establishes a contrapuntal relationship between the landscapes of Rosewater and Pisquontuit and creates a hero of the absurd—Eliot Rosewater—in his fifth novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut employs three symbolic settings—Dresden, Ilium, and Tralfamadore—and the objective correlative of science fiction to further his didactic themes. In addition to establishing the vital relationship between setting and theme in Kurt Vonnegut's novels, this thesis reveals that Vonnegut developed as a master of fictional technique—and particularly of the creation of setting—as he advanced from the early and comparatively simple landscapes to the complex mastery of place and time in Slaughterhouse-Five.
