ヴォネガットのSF的想像力と人間性の探求

Kurt Vonnegut’s Science Fictional Imagination and the Quest for Human Nature

Nakayama Satomi

英語英文學研究

Hiroshima studies in English language and literature

[ISSN] 02882876

[NCID] AN0002064X

As is well known, Brian Aldiss has argued that Frankenstein (1818) was the first work of science fiction. When we see the monster struggling to be humane, it reminds us that science fiction has, since the beginning, been asking the question,“What is man?”
Kurt Vonnegut is often considered a science fiction writer. Many of the themes he has pursued also relate to issues of human nature and the spiritual decadence linked to the development of technology. This paper will discuss Vonnegut’s depiction of the renewal of humanity and its dangers, focusing on a few science fiction works. It will also refer to a sign of renewal, of which Vonnegut was likely aware, dating to the end of the 19th century.
This paper examines a few of Vonnegut’s short stories and his novels, Player Piano (1952), The Sirens of Titan (1959), and Timequake (1997). “Epicac” (1950) explores themes that science fiction has been addressing in various forms since Frankenstein: the difference between man and machine, and the possibility that machines are more human or that humans are more mechanical than machines.
“Harrison Bergeron” (1961) and Player Piano foreground the mechanization of humanity and human beings deprived of their dignity. In particular, Player Piano depicts men desperate to regain their memories. They are trying to return a broken machine, which was nothing but a threat to themselves, back to the way it once was.
The deprivation of memory is depicted in The Sirens of Titan, the most SF-like work examined in this paper. The hindered capacity to think and remember depicted in these works symbolizes the loss of a part of our humanity. In “Harrison Bergeron” and The Sirens of Titan, people who are prevented to think and whose memories are continuously erased are portrayed as if they were machines. Thus, in Vonnegut’s works, the boundary between men and machines becomes very blurred.
Finally, we will examine the problem of thought and memory in Timequake which depicts people who are bound by future memories. In his last novel, people who spend a decade tied up in future memories are forced to stop thinking. Then, we will find out that the protagonist, Kilgore Trout, played the role of a real-life Dr. Frankenstein, bringing people’s memories and thoughts back to life.
Kurt Vonnegut has authored various works of science fiction, a genre that began with the monster created by Mary Shelley and Dr. Frankenstein. In his fiction Vonnegut considers the changes in human nature brought about by the development of technology in the second half of the 20th century, and the line between humans and non-humans.

jpn

広島大学英文学会

著作権は，執筆者本人と広島大学英文学会に帰属するものとします。

[ISSN] 0288-2876

[NCID] AN0002064X