WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND: THE NAIVE - SCHIZOPHRENIC - RESURRECTED CYCLE IN THE NOVELS OF KURT VONNEGUT (SOCIAL DARWINISM)

"What Goes Around, Comes Around: The Naive-Schizophrenic-Resurrected Cycle in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut" is a study of the underlying narrative structures of Vonnegut's novels from Player Piano to Galapagos. The cycle is recognizable in the lives of his protagonists as well as within the overarching establishment or cosmic superstructures. The foundations for the cycle are found within Vonnegut's own experiences and include consideration of: hyphenated lineage, suicide, technocracy, the establishment of religious and governmental authority, evolution and social Darwinism (as inertial forces resulting in the entropy of man), schizophrenia (from a clinical neuro-psychiatric mode as well as a more liberal literary characterization), and resurrection. Vonnegut's various views of twentieth century man are encased within the defining moments of his life, the "structured moment." His recapitulation of form implies an intractable reliance upon his past to develop a view of the future. Beneath the science fiction and fears of the apocalypse, beyond ice-nine, the fire-bombing of Dresden, and the neutron bomb, behind economic, religious, and political conspiracies is Vonnegut's vision of man trapped by biology and culture, nature and nurture. The result is a no-fault existence.