In Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut intends to release his characters from his control. In doing so, he shows their unreadiness to cope with freedom, or to measure up to its responsibilities. In a sense, he is telling us that we are all living in our own private novels, but our actions do not, in reality, follow a coherent plot. Our lives collide and interfere with each other. We inevitably become what we do….

Vonnegut's people were once machines that one could wind up and set loose. He wants to change that, because they are also part of his own machinery. Even after his decision to free them, they continue to behave as if they were acting out a drama beyond their own control, with major roles and minor roles to play, and a Providence to grant them some means of atonement for their mechanical failures.

In Breakfast of...