“Trick or Treat!”: The Trickster Figure in Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr Rosewater and Slapstick

Abstract

In the framing chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut recounts what he learned in his Anthropology course at the University of Chicago—that people are essentially the same and that nobody is “ridiculous or bad or disgusting” (7). He further confesses that this is the reason he never writes stories with villains (7). Though largely true, his claim seems debatable if one examines two of his characters—Norman Mushari and Norman Mushari Jr.—the two being the objects of study in this article that propounds an alternate understanding of Vonnegut’s assertion. These characters have startling similarities with the archetypal trickster figure of American Indian myths as commented upon by Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung among others.