Black Humor And Concern For Human Existence Probe Into Kurt Vonnegut's Novels

As a considerably influential writer in modern literary world of the USA, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) leaps over better part of a century in his literary creation. However, seen from literary ranks, Kurt Vonnegut seems to be caught in a fix. At the beginning, he was regarded as a low-grade science fiction writer and some critics even thought of him as merely"a comic book philosopher"and"a supplier of empty motto". Later, the Fifth Slaughterhouse published in 1969 establishes his position in novel circles, after which his novels ranks among the best-selling books. Nevertheless, except the Fifth Slaughterhouse which was well received by the readers, it seems as if Kurt Vonnegut gets a lukewarm reception from critics and the label of"black humor"totally generalizes his works and himself. Generally speaking, nowadays there is no comprehensive and systematic study of Kurt Vonnegut in critic circles, especially that the domestic criticism towards Kurt Vonnegut still remains at the state of conceptulized and labelled black humor.Based on Kurt Vonnegut's novels, this paper synthesizes such relative knowledge as black humor and existentialism, and discusses"black humor"unique to Kurt Vonnegut and his concern for the existence of human society. The author aims to provide a new perspective and makes a further exploration into the artistic value and rich connotation of Kurt Vonnegut's novels on the basis of the achievements of the predecessors.There are altogether five parts in this paper.Part one: Introduction. It organizes and summarizes the translation of and introduction to Kurt Vonnegut's works and their state of research in China, and advances the viewpoint of this paper.Part two: Chapter One. It firstly introduces the social and cultural reasons of forming black humor. Under such background, it makes an account of his creation of"Kurt Vonnegut's black humor"different from the traditional one by using different artistic means. Part Three: Chapter Two. It discusses how the writer of humanism -Kurt Vonnegut realizes his concern for human existence by means of his works and social practice.Part Four: Chapter Three. It analyzes the reasons that form Kurt Vonnegut's black humor and his concern for human existence from his life experiences and his philosophy of existentialism.Part Five: Conclusion. It summarizes that Kurt Vonnegut is a special postmodernism novelist. He not only pursues new literary forms with unfailing assiduity but also uses these new forms to express his spirit of humanism and profound reflection towards history. All this shows that his preeminence lies in not only his revolution in literary creation but also the promotion of his spirit of humanism towards social progress.