Everyone is a prisoner: we are not satisfied with the status quo, and we are greedy for comfort.
Vonnegut brings his own unique black humor to make people feel what kind of person can be called a prison bird.
Fung humor is not easy to understand, compared to his masterpiece "Slaughterhouse Five", there is less humor and more absurdity, but, as Vonnegut repeatedly mentions in "Prison Birds", even when we are faced with too absurd events, we must maintain a good attitude: to be calm.
Vonnegut's black humor is a bit difficult to understand, and it may be a little uncomfortable to read "Prison Bird" for the first time, after all, an era has the characteristics of an era, and there will always be one or another major event in each era, and those who are not in it, who have not walked through that era, may not be able to understand those seemingly absurd events in the context of the era.
And with the stories of these times, although a person's life is very small, there may be no way to resist in the face of the giant wheel of the times, so it is always okay to tell some stories.
Therefore, when people and times are combined, a copy of "Prison Bird" is displayed in front of us.
Through the seemingly absurd life of the protagonist, this book shows the labels of the twenties in the United States: World War II, Watergate, the Cold War, the Great Depression in the United States, and the socialist ideology.....
Behind each label, there are too many angles that can be written, but these labels are implicitly or explicitly shown by Vonnegut around the protagonist, a Harvard University diploma, failed to become the so-called elite in society, did not live a glamorous life, but under the twists and turns of fate, became a decadent little old man, and how did all this happen?
In the words of the protagonist's wife, it may be true: this is my life, and I always walk through the wrong door first.
As Rousseau said: born free, but always in chains.
The protagonist of "Prison Bird" wants to live his life well, but fate is so that the protagonist involuntarily gets involved in the tide of the times, and finally after the wave, what is left is a little old man, but although this little old man has been crushed by the times, he still retains a little conscience, as Mary said to the protagonist temporarily: at least you try to believe what those with a conscience believe - so you are also a good person.
This is also in line with the real view of von Gunet: only conscience can redeem the madness and nothingness of existence.
It's just that what about good people.,Even if the starting point is good.,The result can be very bad.,So the hero who just got out of prison accidentally has to go back to prison again.,Fate may not matter if he's just fair or ridiculous.。
As the protagonist jokingly asks: Do you know what our planet will end up destroying for?
The answer is that people don't care anymore about what's happening, what's going to happen, or how we got into this mess in the first place.
Is the question asked by von Gunet through the joke of the protagonist a general question about the fate of mankind?
In a sense, this is another kind of love and concern for human beings!
Eventually, after Von Gunett calmly spoke about the dark humor, all that remained was time to answer that how to truly live a good life is not an easy task.