JULIA RIGGS SUMMER READING.pdf - 1 ENGLISH 4 Dual Credit...

1
ENGLISH 4
Dual Credit
SUMMER READING
Player Piano
Kurt Vonnegut
2019-2020
This assignment is worth 3 Formative Assessment grades for the First Six Weeks.
You will not pass if you do not read the novel.
Grades:
1) Assignment completed and turned in by Friday, August 23 rd .
2) Major Essay (Page 9)
3) In Class Test on Monday, August 26.

2
Visit the following website (or any other reputable site) and read the
information provided on author Kurt Vonnegut. Use “bullets” to compile
significant and notable highlights of Vonnegut’s life and career.
➔ Became a novelist and essayist in the 1960s
➔ known for satirical literary style, as well as science-fiction elements
➔ He studied at Cornell University from 1940 to 1942
➔ Kurt Vonnegut enlisted in the U.S. Army and then sent by the Army to what is now
called Carnegie Mellon University to study engineering in 1943.
➔ He fought in the Battle of the Bulge. After this battle during this time Vonnegut was
captured and became a prisoner of war.
➔ His first novel, Player Piano, took on corporate culture and was published in 1952.
➔ Slaughterhouse-Five, draws some of its dramatic power from his own experiences
➔ This exploration of the human condition mixed with the fantastical struck a chord with
readers, giving Vonnegut his first best-selling novel.
➔ He struggled with depression on and off for years,even he attempted suicide in 1984
➔ Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Vonnegut acted as a powerful spokesman for the
preservation of our Constitutional freedoms, for nuclear arms control and for the
protection of the earth’s fragile biosphere.
➔ Died on April 11, 2007, at the age of 84, as a result of head injuries from a fall
Chapters 1-5
Setting:
The setting of a piece of literature is the time and place in which the story takes place. The
definition of setting can also include social statuses, weather, historical period, and details about
the immediate surroundings. Settings can be real or fictional, or a combination of both real and
fictional elements.
Describe Ilium’s physical setting:
Split into three parts
➔ Northwest- Managers and engineers
➔ Northeast- Machines
➔ South- Homestead (where people live)

3
Describe the events that led to the cat’s demise and what do these events foreshadow ?
➔ Paul brought a black cat into Building 58 where a sweeper came by and ̈ threatened ̈
her. This made her go towards the sweeper and where she stood her ground. Before Pual
could find the switch to turn it off the cat had been gobbled up and spat out into the chute
still alive though. She then climbed out of the chute and desperately clawed her way up to
the fence, which then set off alarms making the cat electrocuted. This could be
foreshadowing that machines will be the death of cliviation and animal life.