本文是一篇英语论文，作为读者，我们可以从这些人物身上选择一些有用的和有帮助的经验来应对生活中遇到的困难和挫折。
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 About Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut(1922—2007),known as“the master of black humor”,was oneof the most renowned writers in the late 20th Century.He has been“accepted as animportant American writer”(Allen,1988:174)and“the most talked-about novelistsince Ernest Hemingway”(Jerome Klinkowitz,1997:33).Yuan Wei once evaluatedVonnegut that“He never hid his disappointment in humanity,and he hid the warmheart within his black humor which was darker than the asphalt.”(Yuan Wei,2018:188)His reputation as a novelist lies in not only his deep concern for the existingconditions of human beings,but also his innovations in language and writingtechniques.
Vonnegut was born in Indiana to a German-American family.Vonnegut wascarefree in his teenage years.His father,Bernard Vonnegut was obsessed withcreating arts just like painting and was a well-known architect in the city.His mother,Edith Lieber,came from a wealthy wine-making family.Under the condition,hismother received a perfect education and fully mastered many languages.Hisgrandfather was a very successful businessman with abundance of empathy to thepoor,therefore,he was always enthusiastic about making generous donations to charity institutions.However,such kind of harmonious life did not last for a longtime.In the time of change and turbulence,nobody could predict which will comealong earlier:tomorrow or incident,.The Great Depression in the 1930s broughtgreat disaster to Vonnegut’s family.And his father,the breadwinner,lost his job.Vonnegut’s mother,unable to cope with the family’s decline,suffered fromintermittent mental illness and eventually committed suicide.In 1940,Vonnegutenrolled in the prestigious Cornell University,majoring in chemistry,and wasdrafted into the Army in 1943 to fight in World War II.
1.2 About Breakfast of Champions
Gregory D.Sumner(2011)once evaluated that the publication of Breakfast ofChampions in 1973 represented the chaos in Vonnegut’s personal life and thestruggle to find a new direction.The period of writing Breakfast of Champions wasthe hardest for Kurt Vonnegut who was overcoming double pressure from the crisisof writing novels and the breakup of his family.It was regarded as his fiftiethbirthday present to himself.“Breakfast of Champions rounds out Trout’s biographyby shifting back and forth in time from the narrative focus of 1972.”(Giannone,Richard,1977:103)At that time the American society was seriously damaged by theIndustrial Revolution.For this reason,the ecological environment was badly ruined,moreover,it is difficult to maintain the balance between material needs and spiritualdemanding.People were living under the pressure of severe mental crisis.In otherwords,their personality structure needed to be redeemed.
Breakfast of Champions was a story of Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hooverbefore and after they met each other.Trout was a struggling science fiction writerwho,after his fateful meeting with Dwayne,became successful and won a NobelPrize.Dwanye Hoover was a wealthy automobile dealer who was going insane,andwas over the brink by his encounter with Trout.Trout,who believed himself to becompletely unknown as a science fiction writer,received an invitation to the MidlandCity arts festival,then Trout started his travel to Midland City,while DwayneHoover intended to seek for the meaning of life to restore the balance of hispersonality structure.His secretary and mistress Francine Pefko advised him toattend the arts festival,which triggered Dwayne’s complete insaneness.
Chapter Two Theoretical Framework and ResearchMethodology
2.1 The Development of Personality Theory
In this part,an overview of the personality theory would be shown at first.Thenthe thesis would illustrate how personality would be applied.
2.1.1 Overview of the Personality Theory
At the end of 19th century Sigmund Freud established the Personality Theory,then Freud further perfected his theory of personality in The Ego and the Id in 1923.According to Freud,personality is composed of three elements,the id,the ego andthe superego.The id is“unknown and unconscious”,and“contains the passions”(Freud,1960:17).It operates according to the pleasure principle to avoid pain andmaximize pleasure.When the id tries to achieve the demands of the id,“object-cathexes and identification are no doubt indistinguishable from each other”(Freud,1960:23)for the id,which means the id cannot distinguish the subject and theobject.In other words,one cannot be met only by the function of the id.To get whatthe individual actually needs in the real world requires the help of the ego.
The ego is the mediator of the contradiction between the impulse driven by theid in the inner world and the external world.Being considered as the mediator,theego is“in the habit of transforming the id’s will into action as if it were its own.”(Freud,1960:19)The ego is the rational aspect of the personality which isresponsible for directing and controlling the instincts according to the realityprinciple to provide appropriate constraints on the expression of the id instincts.Theego follows the“reality principle”,that is,deciding whether to satisfy the desires ofthe id according to the possibility of reality conditions.
2.2 Research Methodology
Literature research method mainly refers to the collection,identification,collation of literature and the formation of scientific understanding of facts throughliterature research.The methods the author adopts in this thesis are as follows.
Firstly,searching related literature in reverse chronological order.Check themost recent literature first,then literature over the past decades to handle the latestinformation about the fields in time.
Secondly,qualitative research is a scientific research method that determines theessential attributes of things through in-depth observation and analysis.This paperuses this method to study the specific characteristics or behavior of the researchobject,and further explore its causes,which can effectively bring insight intobehavior,motivation and their influence.
Thirdly,case study method can analyze the objects more targeted by providing apurposive sample.In this thesis,the author centers on certain individuals in order todig out a deeper understanding of this topic。
Fourthly,close reading method is also employed in this thesis.This method isnot an isolated text analysis,but a careful study of the context of the work and itsimplications.The object of close reading should be examined as an organic wholeand the relationship between the reader,the writer and the text should also beconsidered.
Chapter Three The Imbalance and Restoration of Kilgore Trout’s Personality Structure.14
3.1 Traumatic Events as the Causes of the Imbalance of Kilgore Trout’s Personality..........15
3.1.1 Trout’s Melancholy Caused by the Depressing Childhood...................................16
3.1.2 Trout’s Pessimistic Attitude Caused by the Rejection of Identity.........................21
Chapter Four The Instability and Deterioration of Dwayne Hoover’s Personality Structure........................................30
4.1 Major Factors of the Instability of Dwayne Hoover’s Personality..................30
4.1.1 Miserable Childhood as An Origin of Suffering................................31
4.1.2 The Programmed Country as A source of Spiritual Wasteland.............................33
Chapter Five The Collapse and Rehabilitation of Other Characters’Personality...............38
5.1“Lucky Fellows”on Kilgore Trout’s Side..........................39
5.1.1 The Fortunate Passersby:the White Driver.................................40
5.1.2 Poor Sensible Passersby:the Old Miner......................................41
Chapter Five The Collapse and Rehabilitation ofOther Characters’Personality
5.1“Lucky Fellows”on Kilgore Trout’s Side
Under the direction of Kurt Vonnegut,Kilgore Trout’s sidekick was given arelatively acceptable ending.The people around Trout were given relatively goodendings,life and freedom,and in their own way the painful thing was relieved orhealed.The two that stand out were the white driver and the old miner,who dealtwith their trauma with either helplessness or openness.Because their egoscommunicated more freely with the real world,their superegos were open-mindedand sensible,and their ids,which followed the principle of pleasure,did not breakthe rules,the structure of their personalities was naturally not affected by the pain.Ina sense they were the lucky ones.
However,all the things which seemed ridiculous and do not abide by the logicalprinciple are all reasonably assembled by Kurt Vonnegut.For one thing,thesimilarity of fellows who have intersection with Trout was that they were alive in theworld.Elaborating on the point was,first and foremost like Kilgore Trout,they hadbeen severely hurt by the indifferent and chaotic world.Various degrees of traumahad grounded at the bottom of their hearts invisibly,and the effects on the balance ofpersonality structure could be predicted without difficulty.Meanwhile,the iron willto live and the worthless fortune to live was a common collocation and it was similarto Trout’s dramatic but reasonable situation.Trout’s fellows had found their ownprospects to heal the trauma so that the balance of their personality structure could berestored,thus their own life would be naturally operated in routine.The white driverTrout met on the way to the arts festival was one of the fortunate passersby.
Conclusion
Kurt Vonnegut finished writing Breakfast of Champions when he was goingthrough a serious spiritual crisis.And as a means of displacement Vonnegutsuccessfully transferred the crisis into the novel.Every character in Breakfast ofChampions experienced turbulence in their spiritual world to various degrees.Meanwhile,their personality structure had also become imbalanced.Some werecaused by their miserable childhood,some were caused by the cruel survivalenvironment,others were caused by the mixture of the two elements.Kurt Vonnegutwas good at hiding the idea of encouraging people to fearlessly continue the uneasyreal life.
Under the assignment of Vonnegut,these characters nearly exhausted last ounceof energy to restore the balance of their personality structure,no matter howunmercifully the reality treated them.With the help of Freud’s Personality Theory,people could intuitively understand the changing process of the personality structureof the characters in Breakfast of Champions.
Depressing childhood and rejection of identities led to the imbalance of KilgoreTrout’s personality structure.The scene of Erns’death brought a tremendous strikeon Trout’s heart when he was a child even if the death of Ern was caused by fungusbrought by human beings.He strongly held the view that men deserved to diehorribly,and Trout himself preferred to pass away in a high speed rather thanexisting on the broken planet.Depending on this factor,the id which acted upon thepleasure principle almost lost its function.Trout’s id practically lost the ability to gethappiness from anywhere.More unfortunately,the identity of science fiction writerwas not recognized,either.The real world treated Trout so coldly and indifferentlythat he did not leave any expectation on it,no attachment to it,he wanted to sayfarewell to this cruel world.The attitude Trout took towards himself and humanity asa whole was the same.However,in Kurt Vonnegut’s opinion,seeking ways to healthe trauma was the most important thing to Trout.
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