From Modernity Crisis To The Resurgence Of The "Real"

Kurt Vonnegut(1922-2007)is one of the famous American postmodernist writers as well as a famous science fiction novelist.Most of his works have a shared theme that is,exposing the current situation of American industrial society and criticizing the crisis of modernity,which reflects on Vonnegut's humanitarian concern of the social development.The term “modernity “defines the developing qualities and features of western society since the Movement of Enlightenment.It contains elements such as the free market of capitalism,rationality,and the absolute quest of scientific and technological knowledge.Holistically,the novels by Vonnegut,especially Player Piano and Breakfast of Champions,profoundly represent the counter-effects of capitalistic modernity.The former represents a society in which people seek technological progress at all costs,people are continuously alienated under the pressure of machinery,and lose the life meaning and the reasons to live for.And the latter demonstrates the importance of humaneness in the conflicts between the dynamic inner core of lives and the dead machinery.In this sense,together the two novels established the dissection and criticism of the drawbacks of modernity of American society from the 1950 s to the 1970 s.Based on the theory of ecological postmodernism,this article attempts to analyze the modernity crisis,which includes technological crisis and ecological crisis in Breakfast of Champions and Player Piano by using close reading method,documentary analysis approach,and comparative analysis.The thesis takes modernity crisis and ecological crisis as starting points,interprets the oppression of human and society in Breakfast of Champions and Player Piano from the criticism of mechanical worldview.At the same time,it analyzes the spiritual and cultural crisis in Player Piano on the basis of economical centralism.Besides,it traces the deep reasons of modernity crisis and reflects on the survival dilemma of people in extremely modernized and extremely mechanized society,for the purpose of calling on people's awareness of ecological issues.Although these two novels express the technological and ecological crisis in American society,the ways to deal with the social crises are different in Player Piano and Breakfast of Champions.The America Society in Player Piano is a technological society which is highly mechanized and extremely rationalized.Extreme imbalances between classes trigger social conflicts.Eventually,people initiate revolutions through a social group,“Ghost Shirt Society”,to proclaim their dissatisfaction to machine society and the ruling class.The social environment in Breakfast of Champions was severely damaged and the whole society was controlled by capitalism.However,people did not unite to resist this kind of modernity.Instead,they try to attract more concern through mad destruction to gain rebirth.To sum up,the thesis dissects that mechanical view of nature and economical centralism are the deep reasons of technological crisis and ecological crisis,and finds out that Vonnegut views the orientation of industrialization as one integral part of the historical process,and simultaneously he emphasizes over the exposure and criticism on the drawbacks of modernity.The thesis attempts to analyze the dialectic relationship between the benefits of modernity progression and the flaws of modernity from the perspective of ecological postmodernism.It also reveals the possibility of the harmonious development of human,nature,society and technology.And finally this thesis reflects on the current living state of mankind,and tries to figure out a way out of the modernity crises and reconstructing the spiritual dimension of mankind.