preview

What Is Vonnegut's View Of Colonialism

Decent Essays

Erica Drummer
CH 202-1204
Essay #3
12/11/15
Word Count:
TITLE
Colonialism; the practice of attaining full political control of a country, by occupying it with settlers and developing it economically. The idea of colonialism has been established since the 1500’s and it has not stopped since. While some viewed the idea of colonialism as a grand concept, others looked at it as an awful idea that should have never happened. Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Galapagos, criticized colonialism and also the human brain. Vonnegut claimed that the only “real villain” in his story was “the oversized human brain”. Vonnegut blamed the large human brain as the main reason Ecuador had its financial crises. Mainly taking place in the 1980’s, Galapagos is the fictional story of marooned humans on a fictional island named Santa Rosalia. The humans left Ecuador from the result of a serious financial crisis and pandemic that had rendered all human kind. This specific pandemic was described as …show more content…

Originally written in 1848, Marx described the economic crisis in Germany and how the working class should overthrow the capitalist bourgeoisie class. George Orwell, who wrote Shooting an Elephant, narrated the story of a colonial British police officer, which is he, stationed in a British-colonized portion of Burma. Frantz Fanon, who wrote the French novel, The Wretched of the Earth, writes about the effects of colonization and how the people should fight back with warfare and rebellion, to achieve de-colonization. The Communist Manifesto, Shooting an Elephant, and The Wretched of the Earth all speak of the ideas of violence, colonialism, contained colonialism, and also adaptation. I intend to argue that these three books foreshadow the events in the book Galapagos because all four of these books share one idea, which is

Get Access