Destiny as a Fictive Device in Cats Cradle, Mother Night, and Jailbird

The literary genius of Kurt Vonnegut is evidenced by his ability to weave a story from the most mundane of characters and circumstances into an intricate web of possibilities for his stories by using literary tools such as cause and effect, congruence and destiny. Here we will examine Vonnegut's use of one of these literary tools, destiny as a fictive device, which serves to propel the three following books: Cat's Cradle, Mother Night, and Jailbird. Kurt Vonnegut is a master of fictive devices because he uses them to construct an intricate web of possibilities for his stories to proceed on. Destiny, as the dictionary tells us, is "a predetermined course of events often held to be a resistless power or agency," and in these three novels, Kurt Vonnegut implies that destiny is just the way things are bound to be. Some of the many forms of destiny used by Vonnegut to guide his characters and to shove his stories into the right direction include: destiny for people who don't believe in destiny; such as religious persons, anti-destiny; the idea of what might have been, and predestination; the idea that what happens to you is already decided. In Jailbird, Vonnegut uses a particularly obscure main character named Walter F. Starbuck. Walter F. Starbuck was a normal, law-abiding citizen in his fifties, with a wife and a son who didn't like him, but, by using destiny as a fictive device, Kurt Vonnegut creates an amazing story filled with adventure, love, and betrayal. In the novel Mother Night Vonnegut lays out the life of his main character, Howard W Campbell, Jr., from when he was ... ... "And, inwardly, I sarooned, which is to say that I aquiesed to the seeming demands of my vin-dit."(p137 Cat's Cradle). A vin-dit is "...a Bokononist word meaning a sudden, very personal shove in the direction of Bokononism,..."(p53 Cat's Cradle). By making the character of John believe in destiny, anything that happens, which sounds like destiny, the character will react to. This gives the author more to write about. Kurt Vonnegut is a great author of American literature because of how he uses literary tools to write his exciting stories. Destiny used as a fictive device is the easiest tool Kurt Vonnegut uses to fertilise the lives of his characters, but it is also the most effective. If more teachers taught about how destiny is used as a fictive device, then we would all benefit, as writers and readers.