God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Satire is one of the oldest forms of social commentary, and the literary genre uses humor, ridicule, and irony to critique public figures, social norms, and governments. The aim of satire is to use the absurdities of human nature to draw attention to underlying social issues as well as institutional corruption, hypocrisy, and incompetence. Satire differs from simple comedy in that the author’s intention is to both entertain and inform audiences. Through his fiction, Vonnegut uses satire to draw attention to and critique war, inequality, injustice, greed, and the American dream. Vonnegut’s most famous satire is Slaughterhouse-Five, published four years after God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Whereas the former exposes the tragedies of war, the latter is a social commentary on the dehumanizing effects of American values. Elements of satire include anachronisms, irony, juxtaposition, overstatement, parody, and understatement.

Postmodernism emerged as a reaction to World War II, circa the late 1950s and early 1960s. Postmodernist writers rejected modernism’s rational and logical approach to knowledge. Modernism encompasses five core elements: “experimentation, individualism, multiple perspectives, free verse, and literary devices” (MasterClass.