Indirect Characterization: Chapter 1

                “I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone. I get drunk, and drive my wife away with a breath like mustard gas and roses. And then speaking gravely and elegantly into the telephone, I ask the telephone operators to connect me with this friend or that one, from whom I have not heard in years” (Vonnegut 8). This quote is an example of indirect characterization because his actions are revealing a few tendencies that Kurt Vonnegut exercises at nighttime which help the audience understand what type of person the author is. He refers to this obsession of drinking alcohol and calling old acquaintances as a disease because he must be doing this quite often. This obsession is not something he is able to stop doing. Vonnegut uses oxymoron to describe his breath and the way he talks into the phone. The fact that he describes his “breath like mustard gas and roses” and the way he talks into the phone is “grave and elegant” is also very humorous. These oxymoron shows that he feels that he is charming and inviting like roses, but at the same time he is polluted like mustard gas. Kurt Vonnegut also called old acquaintances that he had not heard from in years. This shows that he is a friendly man and likes to communicate with people from his pasts.