“On science fiction” is a popular essay by Kurt Vonnegut exploring the stereotypes and critics that people brand writers. In this essay, Vonnegut condemns how the society likes drawing assumptions and criticizing other people’s work without fundamental reasons. According to him, he never considered himself to be a writer under any particular segment (Vonnegut, N.p). However, one day after writing a novel, he read a review whereby the reviewer referred to him as a science fiction. He later comes to learn that many people know him as a science fiction writer. However, for him, he thought that he was just writing narratives that were relatable to people and their daily lives. The essay has been well composed with high level of literary techniques. While reading the essay, one could easily identify the poetic techniques that have been employed by the author. This particular paper provides an in-depth and critical analysis of Vonnegut’s essay in relation to the poetic mechanisms that have been employed throughout the essay.
Unlike other forms of literary criticism which focuses on the meanings of a text, poetics is identified from hermeneutics by its concentration of the different elements that are combined to bring out the effect that a piece of literature has on the audience. The essay by Vonnegut has employed many features that are often used in poetry (SFE, N.p). Some of the things that can be deduced from the essay is the broad use of rhyme, repetition, personification and imagery.
In this particular essay, the author has employed an indignant tone throughout the essay to evoke an angry mood among the readers. The speaker in the essay seems to be very annoyed by how he has been branded as a science fiction writer. The author starts the essay providing an overview of the environment he was operating that led him to write a novel which was classified as a science fiction. He shows amusement when he notes that he read in a newspaper that he was a science fiction. “And I learned from the reviewers that I was a science-fiction writer” (Vonnegut, N.p). In this statement, it is clear that Vonnegut was not happy with how he was branded since he did not classify himself as a science fiction writer. This is the first hint revealing his indignant tone. Tolf (N.p) notes that an indignant tone can be deduced when a writer criticizes something a lot. The indignant tone can also be noted in the third paragraph when he talks about the lack of freedom among writers. “The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city” (Vonnegut, N.p). Here, the speaker claims that people like judging others without solid grounds and that is why he notes that writers cannot be respected for the knowledge they have about different subjects.
There is a wide usage of similes in the essay. Similes have been employed throughout the essay to add emotions to the message. Through these similes, a reader can gain a deeper understanding or rather a vivid sense of the effect that the author intended to be evoked among the targeted audience (Auken 108). For instance, in the fourth paragraph, the speaker notes that “They are happy in the drawer because most of the people in it love each other as members of old-fashioned families are supposed to do” (Vonnegut, N.p). Here, he is trying to show readers that there are a group of writers who are not so good in their work that they have chosen to embrace the categorization. He uses a simile to compare those writers to members of old-fashioned families who are known to enjoy being associated with their family names (Vonnegut, N.p). He also compares how he has been branded to the common assumption or rather a stereotype in the society that gentlemen in the city cannot wear a brown suits. Here, he draws these comparisons to portray how newspaper editors are doing a bad job by branding other writers.
Poetic features can also be found in the essay through the author’s wide use of repetition and rhythm. Even though the author has not used repetition and rhythm to bring about a flow on effect. He has used this poetic stylistic feature to embed a set of words in the mind of the reader to make the essay catchy. The use of rhythm particularly assonance has been employ to build the mood of the essay (Genette 268). There are several repetitive and rhythmic words that have been employed in Vonnegut’s essay such as tasteless, tastelessness and childishness. The use of rhyme and repetition has also been employed by the writer to make the essay interesting among the readers (Sanford, N.p). The masterful use of this particular poetic feature makes the essay easy and interesting to read.
The last poetic feature that can be evident in the essay is the recurrent use of imagery. He has made lots of comparisons. Instead of simply noting that writers have been categorized, Vonnegut states that he has been put in a file drawer and labeled as a science fiction writer. He uses the file-drawer as a symbol of a category that writers have been categorized and labeled. Instead of pointing out the writers who feel good being labeled, he notes that there are those who love life in the fulsome drawer. Here he uses the image of loving life to refer to the science fiction writers who are interested in the label (Tolf N.p). Moreover, while explaining that there will come a time when all the labels will cease to exist. He compares the period and challenges that are being faced at the time to a lodge. In the conclusion paragraph, Vonnegut claims “The lodge will dissolve. All lodges do, sooner or later” (Vonnegut, N.p). Here, he is comparing the labels to the lodges. He uses lodges in place of the categorization or rather the labels to make the readers gain a better understanding of the concept and message in his essay. Through the comparison of the lodges and the categories through which authors have been categorized, the readers can gain a better understanding since it is something they relate with. He opts for this comparison because at the time it would have been difficult for people to understand his message about how those categorizations will fade out with time.
In conclusion, the main theme that has been explored in Vonnegut’s essay is radicalization. Throughout the essay, the author is condemning and dismissing the beliefs that is being advocated that writers can be grouped into certain divisions. According to him, the radicalization offers a negative perception and diverts people from the actual content written by different authors. He dismisses the science fiction division that he has been labeled and on the contrary urges the readers to focus on the main message in his writings (Sanford, N.p). It can be concluded that the author wanted to distance himself from the genre of science fiction because he believed that the distinction will limit the readership of his works.
Works Cited
Auken, Sune. "Genre and interpretation." Genre and… (2015): 154.
Genette, Gérard, and Marie Maclean. "Introduction to the Paratext." New literary history 22.2 (1991): 261-272.
Sanford, Jason. So goes the love-hate relationship between science fiction and Kurt Vonnegut. Medium.Com, 2014.
SFE. “The Science Fiction Encyclopedia. sf-encyclopedia.com, 2021
Tolf, Sarah. Kurt Vonnegut and the Science Fiction Writers’ Lodge. Tor.Com, 2019
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Week 4: Science Fiction - Slaughterhouse-Five". Sites.Google.Com, 2021,
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