Robber Barons

            Kurt Vonnegut: Schizophrenic, or Just Lonely? Kurt Vonnegut has been through many difficult times in his life. He has lived through times in which he was completely isolated from the rest of his society, relationships within his family, and relationships outside of his family. Vonnegut places a great deal of stress on experiences from his life that caused depression (Lundquist 2). All of these separations were brought about by forces other than ones controllable by Vonnegut. These forces were caused by death or other natural forces. The characters in Vonnegut's books experience these same feelings of isolation. Like in Vonnegut's own life, the isolation is not self-imposed. Some characters are isolated from society, while others are isolated from relationships important to them. Vonnegut also shares tendencies of paranoid schizophrenia with his characters. They often feel as though they are the only people in the world that have the capability to make their own decisions. This is a common fantasy of patients with paranoid schizophrenia. Vonnegut takes all important experiences from his own life and puts them into his works. He doesn't necessarily use specific events, but instead uses the emotions he feels during these times in his life. The incidences in Kurt Vonnegut's life, in which he has been stripped of important relationships, experienced schizophrenic illusions of grandeur brought on by loneliness, and sought artificial relationships to fill the void, surface in recurring themes: forced isolation of characters, allusions to schizophrenic tendencies, and one's yearning for relationships, real or otherwise. .
             At the age of fourteen, Vonnegut was forced into the role of being part of a single parent family. In May 1944, his mother committed suicide by poisoning herself. Vonnegut had had an important relationship with his mother up until that point. It was to be the first of many times in which Vonnegut would be forcefully removed from relationship.