A Field Guide to Kurt Vonnegut's Environmentalism and Planetary Citizenship
September 19, 2022
Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction was marked by his belief in humans’ responsibility for environmental and social justice, according to this strong survey. Jarvis (The Male Body at War), an English professor at State University of New York at Fredonia, posits that “Vonnegut saw writing itself as an act of good citizenship,” and traces the genesis of the author’s worldview back to his early education, which focused on “connecting children with their local environments,” and the “pure high adventure” he experienced on a teacher-led trip through the American Southwest when he was 14. Vonnegut’s other sources of inspiration, Jarvis writes, include Henry David Thoreau, who he looked to “for ideals of self-reliance... critiques of emergent technologies and injustice, and even stylistic conventions,” and his time at the University of Chicago, where he reflected on “nuclear technology and human extinction.” This, Jarvis writes, informed many of the “apocalyptic landscapes” within his fiction, as seen, for instance, in Sirens of Titan, in which Vonnegut “simultaneously presents humans as important biological agents... and as one humble species among many in the cosmos.” Close readings bolster her case, and Jarvis’s study, though scholarly, has zest. Vonnegut’s fans will revel in this clever exploration of his influences.