Breakfast of Champions: Motifs 4 key examples

At first, the primary example is race. In Chapter One, Vonnegut declares that "color is everything." Then, for most of the book, he introduces characters by announcing that they "were white" or "were black," often before giving readers any other information. Later, other descriptors emerge. About halfway through the novel, Vonnegut catalogues the penis size and hip, waist, and bosom dimensions of most of his characters; from that point on, he introduces characters using these attributes. 

These latter two descriptions clarifies Vonnegut's attitude towards this technique: by introducing characters based on physical attributes that, despite their crassness, have obtained some kind of cultural value in America, Vonnegut illuminates the arbitrariness of these values and the ridiculousness of caring so much about them. This attitude also applies to his use of this technique to refer to race. By spotlighting the absurd and arbitrary ways racism manifests in society, Vonnegut advocates for equality and fairness. 

Broadly, this technique is part of Vonnegut's declared project of "trying to clear [his] head of all the junk in there." By exposing precisely what that "junk" is in a direct, no-frills manner, Vonnegut can identify it as "junk" and strip it of its value and importance. Crass, humorous, or offensive references to physical attributes throughout the novel seek to expose and remedy a variety of things upon which society places cultural, sexual, or social value.

An example of this capacity occurs at the beginning of Chapter 15, when a series of images progresses from a Nazi flag to a contemporary German flag to a Volkswagen Beetle to a real Beetle. This sequence of images helps Vonnegut articulate the way seemingly disparate aspects of culture or history are actually entwined, and also that these connections are often absurd, strange, or deeply humorous. By comparing a drawing of a VW Beetle with a drawing of an actual beetle, Vonnegut can both describe the comparison and illustrate that it's slightly ridiculous. 

Images also demonstrate Vonnegut's willingness to be frank, offensive, or crass for the sake of demonstrating absurdity and connectivity. Whether drawing flags, objects, molecules, or body parts, Vonnegut is unworried about offending his audience. Instead, he simply draws things as they are. This unflinching willingness to represent things accurately helps Vonnegut identify and illuminate contradictions, injustices, and continuities that would otherwise be difficult to make clear. 

In addition to adding entertainment value, humor, and clarity to Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut's drawings give readers a new image of the world they inhabit and a new set of tools for seeing it more clearly. 

Vonnegut's use of apples combines the symbolism of the Garden of Eden with a critique of contemporary life in America. In this passage, the apple is a symbol that has "not been poisoned" by the "sins" of America. In the story of Adam and Eve, though, the apple is forbidden, and causes the pair to be exiled from Eden. Vonnegut recasts the story of Adam and Eve in such a way that the apple represents freedom rather than exile: freedom from the sins of the nation, freedom from "the Creator of the Universe," and free will.

The apple in this passage also interacts with themes of fiction versus truth. Because this passage occurs at the moment when Vonnegut (both author and character) grants Kilgore Trout free will, the apple becomes a way of turning a fictional character into a real human being (though, of course, still within the confines of a novel). In other words, Kilgore moves from Vonnegut's fictional America to the real America. This means seeing past the myths and stories that make up the concept of America, which is often portrayed as a kind of consumerist Eden; it means recognizing the country's sins and trying to elude or remedy them. To accept free will is to accept responsibility and a knowledge of good and evil. In this sense, Vonnegut turns the fable of Adam and Eve on its head. You must accept the apple and the knowledge of America's sins to be a true American. Escape from Edenic fictions means recognizing that America was never the paradise it sold itself to be. 

This moment concludes a larger progression throughout the novel that it's worth taking a moment to track. In the beginning, Vonnegut declares that Breakfast of Champions is about a man (Dwayne Hoover) who reads a novel by another man (Kilgore Trout) that causes him to believe he is the only being in the universe with free will. But because Vonnegut is the author and thereby the "Creator of the Universe" of the novel, all his characters are subject to his whims, and therefore lack free will; only Vonnegut himself (because he is also a character in the novel) is fully autonomous. In this scene in the epilogue, Vonnegut grants his characters free will; and yet even then, the characters remain in the novel, under Vonnegut's broader authorial control. In this complex tangle, what does it mean to have free will?

This predicament is further complicated by the contrast between Trout and Dwayne's attitudes towards free will. When Trout is first freed, he asks Vonnegut, "do you have a gun?" because he feels threatened by the presence of a stranger on a dark street—something almost anyone would do. When Dwayne Hoover merely believes he has free will, though, he goes on a violent rampage and causes significant material damage. This contrast raises fundamental questions about the nature of free will. Does it exist? Does it matter? Is believing you have free will more important than actually having it? Can you ever truly know if you have free will or not? Is free will dependent on others around you not having free will?

In the end, questions of free will are important because of Vonnegut's project of exerting cultural influence. So much of Breakfast of Champions is about the relationship between the material world and the stories, ideas, biases, and myths that constitute it. By advocating for readers to scrutinize what free will looks like in this landscape, and by illustrating the relationship between authorship and free will, Vonnegut champions the notion of identifying the ideas and values that truly matter to you. While free will as a writer might look like control over characters, the complexity of this motif demonstrates that as a reader, free will is about asking the right questions.