The Sirens of Titan Themes

The Sirens of Titan Themes

Organized Religion

Vonnegut makes some pointed suggestions about organized religion throughout the novel. In the very first sentences of introduction, the narrator speaks of the time in which the story takes place as the "Nightmare Ages" before people had learned to find the meaning of life. This age was filled with "gimcrack religions", the narrator says, calling them "big business" (p. 7). This period is placed as the period between World War II and the fictional "Third Great Depression". In other words, the time the narrator describes could be the time contemporary to Vonnegut's 1959 novel.

The first such religion described in the novel is the anti-space-exploration faith espoused by a character called Bobby Denton, who compares the building of large spacecraft to the building of the Tower of Babel in the Bible and reforms the Ten Commandments into a rocket launch countdown.

The organized religion of Rumfoord's Church of God...
(read more)