Teacher Guide

Breakfast of Champions Lesson Plan

Introduction to Breakfast of Champions

Published in 1973, Breakfast of Champions or Goodbye, Blue Monday! was Kurt Vonnegut's 50th birthday present to himself. It also marked the end of a period of depression that had followed his 1969 publication of Slaughterhouse-Five.

Breakfast of Champions tells the story of Kilgore Trout, an elderly science-fiction author and one of Vonnegut's recurring characters, and Dwayne Hoover, an insane but wealthy Pontiac dealer who interprets Trout's work literally. When the two finally meet in a bar, Hoover becomes violent, attacking bystanders and biting off Trout's finger.

Vonnegut experiments with structure, most obviously when it comes to the inclusion of his own childlike sketches. The...

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