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Free Will In Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast Of Champions

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In Kurt Vonnegut’s 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions, protagonists Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout are destined to cross paths, and event that leads to the climax of the story, Dwayne’s inevitable mental breakdown. Hoover, a rich businessman in fictional Midland City, has been becoming increasingly mentally unstable since the suicide of his wife. Trout, a nearly unknown author, is invited to Midland City to deliver an address. Midland City becomes the setting upon which their stories diverge. Hoover is driven to madness after reading one of Trout’s stories, which asserts that the reader is the only living being with free will, and all others are robots. Thus, Vonnegut’s publication effectively explores free will and mental health through a

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