Rhetoric, identity, and morality in selected later novels of Kurt Vonnegut

The question of what constitutes identity is a central concern of much contemporary literature, moral philosophy, and rhetoric. The modern self has been depicted as chaotic and fragmented, in which the very question of meaning is always a problem. This loss of meaning finds expression in a sense of contingency in which there is no longer a dominant belief in moral or spiritual frameworks upon which the self can draw. In its most extreme form, this disenchantment and loss of meaning can lead to an "identity crisis," in which the individual is disoriented and lacks certainty about where it stands in relation to the world. Kurt Vonnegut is recognized to be a contemporary author who dramatizes this modern condition.;In response to a conception of the unstable self and the disenchantment of the world, however, a number of thinkers suggest that an inescapable feature of identity is the need to orient the self within a moral space of questions about the good. This thinking involves the awareness of the need for rhetorical orientation, or situating the self within a community of discourse in which the self is never disembodied or free from a subjective involvement with the community, history, or discourses of which it is a part. For theorists such as Charles Taylor, Alasdair Maclntyre, Wayne Booth, and Kenneth Burke, understanding the self in narrative form is an inescapable feature of identity and morality.;Considering four novels from Vonnegut's later career, this dissertation traces his move beyond a strict concern with language and experimental stylistics to affirm humanistic values by locating the concerns of the self in terms of moral questions. For Vonnegut, identity is located in the stability which comes from a narrative self or life story. Vonnegut's most perceptive insight concerns the necessity and possibility of identifying a space from which vital moral choices can be made. As perhaps the most self consciously rhetorical contemporary American author, Vonnegut understands this process to be one of persuasion in which the active involvement of his audience is necessary in the creation of his narratives.