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Fates Worse Than Death Study Guide

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by Kurt Vonnegut
About 76 pages (22,662 words)
Fates Worse than Death Summary

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Chapter 20 Summary and Analysis

Vonnegut is a "Roundhead" to Xanthippe's "Cavalier" (an oblique reference to the English civil war suggested by Arthur Schesinger, Jr., as an apt division of the world into types), and both are too barbaric to respond to the history of their art, which Saul Steinberg says is the alternative to responding to life itself. Having finished reading William Styron's Darkness Visible, Vonnegut says suicidal people can be divided into Styron's type, blaming it on brain wiring and chemistry, and his own, blaming the Universe. Humorists feel free to speak of life as a dirty joke, even though life is all there is or ever can be. At the point of killing himself, Hamlet does not ponder the grief and confusion he will cause survivors. Had the future King of Denmark wanted.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 386 words. This study guide contains 22,662 words (approx. 76 pages at 300 words per page).

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Fates Worse Than Death from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.

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