The powerless have a limited perception of the world around them due to their blissful ignorance of the control that the powerful hold over them. By being blissfully ignorant, characters in Vonnegut’s novels refuse to acknowledge the violence that ensues around them, and therefore unwittingly allow said violence to occur. In Slaughterhouse-Five, a hospitalized character named Rumfoord does not acknowledge the severity of the violence that occurred in World War II because he was not directly affected by it. Even though Billy Pilgrim is trying to explain to him how intense the fighting was, Rumfoord ignores him, calling him crazy, “It was difficult for Rumfoord to take Billy seriously… Rumfoord had so long considered Billy a repulsive non-person…show more content… In Breakfast of Champions, Dwayne Hoover is told, through Kilgore Trout’s sci-fi novel, that he is the only human with free will. After being told this, Hoover becomes increasingly controlled by Trout without even knowing it, “He punched Bonnie MacMahon in the belly. He honestly believed that they were unfeeling machines… He thought that the Creator of the Universe had programmed them all to hide as a joke” (265). Hoover becomes the most controlled human by thinking that he is the only one not controlled. Both the narrator and Trout predicted the violence that would ensue, further proving that even when a character believes he has free will, he is being controlled. This passage also satirizes free will by showing the violence that can occur when someone thinks he is autonomous. The same mindset resonated with characters in Cat’s Cradle. Characters are trained to expect the worst if they are caught practicing the Bokononist religion which is supposedly banned, even though everyone secretly practices it. Here a couple were caught in practice and expected imminent death, “The two rolled off the shelf and fell to the spattered dropcloth. They landed on their hands and knees, and they stayed in that position- their behinds in the air, their noses close to the ground. They were expecting to be killed” (Cat’s 157). The government has trained citizens to not practice this religion, without an explanation on why it is wrong, just under the pretense that such practice could end in execution. By accepting this treatment, the citizens of San Lorenzo are religiously controlled and feel they have no choice unless they want to face violent
