Kurt Vonnegut and His Humor in Three Literary Works and Their Cinematic Adaptations

This bachelor thesis compares three different cinematic adaptations of three novels by an American writer Kurt Vonnegut and focuses on the way they translate the humor of the three novels. The novels discussed are Mother Night (1962), Slaughterhouse Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973). The cinematic adaptations analyzed in this thesis are Slaughterhouse Five (1972) directed by George Roy Hill and based on a screenplay written by Stephen Geller, Mother Night (1996) directed by Keith Gordon and based on a screenplay written by Robert B. Weide and finally Breakfast of Champions (1999) directed by Alan Rudolph who also wrote the screenplay. The analysis as such is divided into four chapters. Chapter 2 introduces Kurt Vonnegut as an author as well as a person. Several key theories about humor are presented, mainly those articulated by Paul Lewis, Daniel Wickberg and Sarah Blacher Cohen. The phenomenon of cinematic adaptation is introduced in the same section and the theoretical background provided is based on works by Timothy Corrigan, Brian McFarlane and Seymour Chatman. Chapter 3 discusses the novel Slaughterhouse Five and its adaptation, focusing on its structure, themes, characters, time frame and humor. In Chapter 4, Mother Night is discussed in terms of the successfulness of Gordon's..