27 Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut on Hope, the Future, and Wisdom – Barbara Liu

(Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five).

Even though they both wrote about dystopian worlds, their writing styles and thought processes were different yet down to earth, and they shared a sense of wonder about the unknown. Today’s world is technologically tightly connected and often cold, yet these stories of the universe and unknown connections bind and “mark” us in a grounded way, as Vonnegut writes in Breakfast of Champions.

Bradbury and Vonnegut managed to show both the glories of technological advancement and warn us of the dangers. They wrote within the different genres of mystery, horror, fantasy, and science-fiction but were critical of science. Bradbury never drove a car and only used a manual typewriter, and was eccentrically enthusiastic, gleeful in his excitement about storytelling within his “hungry imagination;” his “appreciation of the fragility” of everything, kindness and common sense, encompassed every thought that went into his writing (Bradbury, The New Yorker, 2012). Bradbury often said, “You’ve got to love libraries. You’ve got to love books. You’ve got to love poetry. You’ve got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it” (The New Yorker, 2012). A leap of faith fueled Bradbury’s inspiration, saying “The art of the possible …to look into the future but it’s looking at a reflection of what is already in front of us,” along with his determination to be a writer, “I believe in creative failing—to continue to write poems that fail and fail and fail until a day comes when you’ve got a thousand poems behind you, and you are relaxed, and you finally write a good poem,” fueled his encouragement of young writers to dig deep and not give up (Bradbury, The Paris Review). Both Bradbury and Vonnegut were plagued by people who did not believe in them, but they each chose to push on, and their ultimate success has become a beacon for young writers.

Vonnegut was a writer whose beliefs on pacifism, social justice, a yearning for common decency, common sense came from his life growing up in a problematic family and living the nightmares of war traumas. Vonnegut wrote in different genres, including fantasy and science-fiction, but he did not have a good impression of science fiction, yet Slaughterhouse-Five was science fiction. It is important to note how much Bradbury and Vonnegut disliked labels. The significant works of these authentic Midwest authors are good examples for students to remember that reading and dreaming are not a luxury but a necessity. Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953 during the Cold War and McCarthyism—later discovering an FBI file on him. Bradbury became upset watching a movie about Nazis burning books, inspiring him to write Fahrenheit 451.

Jonathan Eller explained in Becoming Ray Bradbury that Bradbury sent out fanzine stories in the 1940s, and many were rejected, yet he began to read Thomas Wolfe, Steinbeck, H.G. Wells, Lovecraft, Frederic Prokosch, and Poe. He loved the work of Poe. As his writing improved, Bradbury wrote The Martian Chronicles in 1950 and Fahrenheit 451 in 1953. Eller explains that the years from 1923 to 1953 were essential to Bradbury. Bradbury thrived when writing stories but had mixed feelings about science fiction, saying, “The only book I’ve written that’s science fiction is Fahrenheit 451. That’s political and psychological science fiction” (p. 192).

Vonnegut’s and Bradbury’s storytelling offers unique perspectives in the genre of science fiction. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is realistic science fiction; at the same time, filled with satire and dark humor parceled in with fantasy segments in science fiction. Fahrenheit 451 is also science fiction. Vonnegut’s novels began with threads of contempt and sorrow about pain in war and science as he contemplated the boundaries of imagination. Vonnegut and Bradbury observed that science was becoming the research monster–focusing on destruction, mass killings, and tortuous outcomes. Bradbury realized that after Hiroshima, science fiction became more popular. As seen in There Will Come Soft Rains, Bradbury was violently opposed to machinery in almost any form, showing his dislike of nuclear war and modern mechanizations. This thinking was unusual within science fiction, and both had a capacity for imagination that envisioned plotlines revealing the machinations of our modern day. Vonnegut was “. . . critical of science for its blind generosity in giving the world better and faster ways to run wars and deliver death when it has always pretended to be more concerned with saving lives than with destroying them” (Anderson, p. 26). Vonnegut often criticized the science community for using advancements for killing people.

Vonnegut and Bradbury both had sponsors of reading and writing in their childhoods. Bradbury grew up middle-class during the Great Depression and visited the library each day. Vonnegut’s family had been wealthy till the Depression hit, and books were important in his life. This literature allows us to view their identity and understand Bradbury and Vonnegut – how their work on their writing craft invented stories. Their writing is significant, detail-oriented, and perfect for teaching writing, reading, and literacy and, as noted in The Paris Review, Bradbury loved books:

Interviewer: What do you think of e-books and Amazon’s Kindle?

Ray Bradbury: Those aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. (The Paris Review, No. 192, Spring 2010)

Literacy is more difficult to attain without a sponsor, and library programs encouraging literacy and reading are essential and meaningful. “Literacy has proven to be a difficult and contentious topic of investigation largely because its place in American culture has become complex and even conflicted” (Brandt, p. 2). Even these days, we hear engaging stories of individuals in history serving as examples of how literacy can facilitate progress in individuals, families, and society. Literacy helps people out of poverty, opens a world of self-discovery, and encourages them to contribute to society. At times, those in neglected areas in America—and during this last year, the women in Afghanistan—illuminate how education and literacy empower young women on a path of self-development and enable them to make welcome contributions to societies and economies. Enabling literacy in one person creates a ripple effect for positive change. “Most importantly to Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 helps us realize that the public’s willingness to support the decline of reading and library usage will lead to a hedonistic and ignorant society” (Fox, p. 32).

It was surprising how new insights concerning Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury exposed an activism culture and reflection. David Fox wrote, “After Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451,” explaining that “the combination of the various scholarly works along with the primary source of Fahrenheit 451 shows how America was shaped and changed by the ideas of mutually assured destruction mass homogenization of culture, and Cold War strife” (p. 33). Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five was anti-war and explained the futility of giving analytical attention and opinions on an economy based on money-making for war. “The absurdity of war stems from man’s inability to deal in rational terms with mass death and destructiveness” (Vonnegut, p. 3). The `writing of science fiction and Vonnegut’s attitude reflected anti-atrocity emotions and the stupidity of war. It is challenging to discuss Slaughterhouse-Five or other books Vonnegut wrote without mentioning his disappointment government officials continued to push war worldwide. In cultivating conversations about their country, Bradbury and Vonnegut wanted to instill courage to anyone who would listen about the evidence and the rampant perpetuation of war, a particular focus of our government activities shaping the world. Vonnegut never used existing accounts of the war when writing. He tried to explain the intersection that words can describe, the horror and fear—comparing war and making connections through writing seemed to trivialize it. “Until Vietnam, Americans did not fully take it in that theirs was a permanent war economy, totally bureaucratized for war, prepared to make war endlessly” (Anderson, p. 36). Vonnegut would say, “so it goes,” and there is much to consider when researching Bradbury and Vonnegut. “There was no doubt about Kurt Vonnegut’s attitude about war. He detests it and his antipathy begins with his personal experience” (Anderson, p. 97).  Their vision of the problems in the world, reflections considering conditions, and realities when confronting life and the invisible, are essentially on par with writers. In some respects, Vonnegut and Bradbury had many similarities and differences in using their writing to discuss their thoughts about the world. Still, their experiences contributed to the spontaneity and imagination of their art and understanding amongst thinkers, especially in writing and education.

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Anderson, June A. (1972). Major Themes in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4619. https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd/4619

Bradbury, Ray. (06/04/2012). Take Me Home. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/04/take-me-home

Bradbury, Ray. (1995). A Feasting of Thoughts, a Banqueting of Words: Ideas on the Theater of the Future.  Leonardo, vol. 28, no. 1, The MIT Press, pp. 47–50, https://doi.org/10.2307/1576155.

Bradbury, Ray. (1967). Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Brandt, Deborah. (2001). Literacy in American Lives. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Duffy, John, et al. (2014). Literacy, Economy, and Power: Writing and Research after “Literacy in American Lives.” Southern Illinois University Press.

Eller, Jonathan R. (2013). Becoming Ray Bradbury. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.  https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Eller%2c+Jonathan+R.%3a+Becoming+Ray+Bradbury.-a0511784481

Fox, David. (2011). Fahrenheit 451: The Burning of American Culture.”  https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/histsp/16

Klinkowitz, Jerome.  (2009). Kurt Vonnegut’s America. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press.

Vonnegut, Kurt. (2001). Slaughterhouse-Five. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers.

Vonnegut, Kurt. (11/23/2020). Letters to Woofy. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/letters-to-woof.

Merrill, Robert. (1990). Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions: The Conversion of Heliogabalus. In Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut, edited by Robert Merrill, 153-161. Boston: G. K. Hall and Co.

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Rubens, Philip M. (1979). “‘Nothing’s Ever Final’: Vonnegut’s Concept of Time.” College Literature, vol. 6, no. 1, Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 64–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24369777.%3Cbr