Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Confronts the Death of the Author

own societal perspective. His humanism motivates him to address these societal faults, his novels mocking their confounding and foolish nature, yet an answer is never truly achieved, just postulated-and then, a punch line. This reoccurring motif emphasizes Vonnegut's own perspective: he can write about these concerns, make humorous inferences and comments, yet he struggles with a solution. These narrators mirror Vonnegut's own struggles with his identity, in particular his role as an author. His literature progresses throughout his career. Though authors are consistently invested in improving their craft and gaining confidence in their writing, his transformation is significant because it develops alongside a literary theory discussing an author's role towards his novel and within the literary field. Several prominent poststructuralists, in particular Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes, write about the author's identity as absent or limited in relation to the literature he or she writes. Foucault, in his lecture "What is an Author" (1969), questions the author's role, what he provides to the novel and its audience, and whether his existence is influential and beneficial. However, he concludes, "The author function will disappear" (Foucault 14) and the reader's role will bolster the novel's substance. Barthes, in his essay "Death of the Author" (1967), conjectures that the author is a restrictive force and that the reader should be respected and admired for his role: the author's perspective and goal are secondary to the reader, the possessor of the novel. Barthes asserts the reader provides literature with the most potential through a plethora of opinions and inferences, rather than limiting the novel to the author's purpose. Therefore, Barthes claims the author's decline offers the reader and the novel growth.