A New Kind Of Humanism Kurt Vonnegut Represented In His Three Novels

Seldom has the belief that artists are agents of change failed the postmodern artist, Kurt Vonnegut. Bearing this belief forever in mind, he devoted his half a century artistic career to serve his society by preaching a new kind of humanism as opposed to modern humanism. The author of this thesis attempts to approach the characteristics of Vonnegut’s humanism represented in his three novels (Player Piano, Breakfast of Champions, and Timequake) from a postmodern perspective through a textual analysis. The postmodern theories involved in this textual analysis are mainly Lyotard’s definition of the postmodern as incredulity toward meta-narrative, Hassan’s conception of indeterminacy and constructionism, Fredric Jameson’s argument of the postmodern as the cultural logic of late capitalism, and Linda Hutcheon’s postmodern theory and this study also refers to the ethical theory of Zygmunt Bauman.In the three novels, Vonnegut reconstructs a new kind of humanism while he deconstructs the traditional humanism. Vonnegut deconstructs the old one from three aspects:the unquestioned way of scientific progress, the fundamental thought of universalism and the myth of totality, and the static aim of the final utopia. Accordingly, he reconstructs a humanistic world from three aspects:the affirmation of art to inspire creative imagination and to forge human spirit, the admission of pluralism and the constructedness of human life, and the acceptance of local alternatives like community and extended family for a better reality.This thesis concludes that the new kind of humanism Vonnegut preaches is decidedly postmodern. Vonnegut is not only a humanist, but also a postmodern humanist, and the humanism he preaches is a postmodern one which offers humanity a hopeful but provisional solution to the postmodern condition. Vonnegut’s postmodern humanism holds such a position that affirms humanistic values while maintaining a postmodern perspective, dismisses a fixed, essential reference, and functions as comforting lies for humans to negotiate with the enigmatic life.