Bluebeard, by Kurt Vonnegut

Tell me, how did your parents die? Oh, my name is Michael by the way. So? Was it slow and without pain? Or did they go out in a flit of passion and rage? Please, I would really like to know.

Quite an introduction, no? At least this is the case for Circe Berman in Kurt Vonnegut’s, Bluebeard. After all, “what good is ‘Hello’?...it means ‘don’t talk about anything important.’ It means, ‘I’m smiling but not listening, so just go away.’”

Vonnegut wastes no time in getting to the point in this one. With this introduction, he is telling us that if we were looking for something fleeting and without depth, then stop listening– just go away. No, we are here to talk about death, about life, and pain, and happiness, and love, and art, and everything that it means to be living, despite how often we may not feel alive.

Vonnegut’s Bluebeard is a faux autobiography of a man named Rabo Karobekian. Rabo is an Armenian-American that served in the war, lost one of his eyes, and returned to America to start the Abstract Expressionism movement. During this autobiography, written towards the end of Rabo’s life, he takes us on a time machine to his past, his parents’ past, and his current situation of life in the Hamptons. While the book begins during the “present” with him meeting a woman on the beach named Circe Berman, chronologically the story begins with his parents in Armenia during the Armenian genocide.

One of the most significant themes in the book is the concept of Survivor’s Syndrome. This phenomena is an expression of one’s guilt for being alive when so many others had died in an event. In this example, Rabo’s father survived the genocide and escaped for America. However, he may as well have died as he wasted away his talents and died an unhappy man. Rabo’s father could never be content with his own life while others never got the chance to live. During these flashbacks to the old country, we are painted (pun intended) one of the most vivid images in any of Vonnegut’s works. Rabo’s mother during the genocide, found herself in the city streets among the fallen dead. While soldiers were searching for survivors to finish off, his mother pretended to lie dead in the street next to a woman who was murdered. After the soldiers had gone home, she noticed that the woman had hid diamonds and jewels in her mouth. Rabo’s mother grotesquely picks the fortune out of the dead woman’s open mouth and uses that to pay for her voyage to America. Wow.

Once in America, Rabo’s parents raise him in California where he develops a passion for art. Working for the local newspaper, he submits a portfolio to a famous Armenian painter, Dan Gregory, in New York, who agrees to fly him out to serve as his apprentice. In reality, it was the painter’s secretary and lover who appreciated Rabo’s work; and it was she who flew him to the city. Here they become best friends (with benefits) while living with Gregory. They were free to do as they pleased, granted they never attended the Museum of Modern Art. Naturally, the two lovers are caught visiting the museum and Rabo is banished from Gregory’s home.

With no money, Rabo joins the army where he loses his eye. And it wouldn’t be a Vonnegut story if Rabo was not in Dresden when the city burned down. During the war, Rabo befriends a man named Terry Kitchen, and upon returning to New York, they begin the Abstract Expressionism movement with the help of a man named Jackson Pollock. Oh yeah, he’s in this book, too.

Thus concludes the background of what the book is about and I will not go into more detail as the rest is an adventure to discover for yourself. Now, I would like to tell you how I felt while reading yet another book by my favorite author. Time and time again, Kurt Vonnegut impresses me with his ability to teach me how to be human. It is his code of kindness that I have adopted as the one rule that exists in this world: dammit you’ve got to be kind! With Rabo reaching back in time and continuing his present day thoughts, we get to see life from every stage. We see birth, coming of age, love, divorce, and ultimately death, with multiple characters. And it is in these moments that Vonnegut defines what it means to be alive.

Rabo, when reflecting on a past lover, concludes “she had had a life. [He] had accumulated anecdotes. She was home. Home was somewhere [he] never thought [he’d] be.” Life is so much more than simply passing through time, acquiring stories and moments. Rather, living is an aggressive act in itself of which to take advantage. In truth, we are all survivors, for we are all victims to our thoughts and feelings; but it is our choice of what we do with them. Rabo claims that “everything about life is a joke,” and if this is the case, there is absolutely no reason to not laugh every chance we get; to not love every chance we get; because soon enough, someone is going to be asking my son, “how did your parents die?”

I often say that Slaughterhouse Five is my favorite Vonnegut book­– that’s the classic. However, we see a very mature side of Vonnegut in Bluebeard. This book is everything I have ever felt and everything I have never known the words to say. Yes, this book is a criticism of abstract art, though not in the way one may presume, but it is also touches on women’s role in history, PTSD, and so many other themes that are left for you to explore for yourself. This book is a giant hug of emotions that one cannot help but to fall victim. Bluebeard is a must read for any Vonnegut fans and any fans of the human race. In order to entice you to read on, I assure you there is a big Vonnegut secret in this book. Find out that secret. Find out why Vonnegut is Bluebeard. In the meantime, the next time you meet someone, do not simply say hello.

Favorite Quotes:

- Tell me how your parents died.

- She had figured out that the most pervasive American disease was loneliness.

- Everything about life is a joke. Don’t you know that?

- You don’t write for the whole world, and you don’t write for ten people, or two. You write for just one person.

- What a fool I would have been to let self-respect interfere with my happiness!

- “Women are so useless and unimaginative, aren't they? All they ever think of planting in the dirt is the seed of something beautiful or edible. The only missile they can ever think of throwing at anybody is a ball or a bridal bouquet.”

- “Never trust a survivor … until you find out what he did to stay alive.”

- One would soon go mad if one took such coincidences too seriously. One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or One would soon go mad if one took such coincidences too seriously. One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand. not thoroughly understand.