Breakfast of Champions Inspired Dog Names

Kurt Vonnegut’s work has been lauded since his first and one of his most important works, Slaughterhouse-Five, hit shelves back in 1969 — though in retrospect, he received much praise for his earlier work as well, including the timeless Cat’s Cradle. In his work, through direct characters or indirectly through references, Vonnegut has always used animals as a means of comparison to human beings and was thus always able to make grand statements about the elements of our existence. In fact, one of his most famous quotes, “Life is no way to treat an animal,” graces the headstone of his fictional science fiction author Kilgore Trout.

In Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut again uses animals, namely dogs, as vehicles to create meaningful analogies — although it could be argued that Bill, Trout’s parakeet, served a similar purpose. One of the two most important and impactful dogs in the story is Dwayne Hoover’s Labrador retriever named Sparky. Like most of Vonnegut’s other characters, Sparky certainly has a unique background. After an automobile accident years before, Sparky lost the ability to wag his tail and thus, tell other dogs how truly friendly he really was. Because of it, he constantly found himself in scraps with other canines, leaving his ears tattered and his body lumpy with scars — a perfect companion for a human who suffers similar misunderstanding in his own life. Although the book is littered with characters Dwayne is familiar with, Vonnegut states that Sparky is one of Dwayne’s only true friends, as his wife, Celia, had taken her own life years before. 

But Sparky isn’t the only dog to provide meaning in the book. The other is likely familiar to readers of Vonnegut’s previous and latter books: Kazak, who also appears in Sirens of Titan and Galapagos. In Breakfast of Champions, Kazak’s role is brief but purposeful. During the book’s epilogue, Vonnegut, the book’s assumed narrator, is actually attacked by Kazak, a vicious Doberman Pinscher. But despite the dog’s disposition, Vonnegut uses him as a vehicle explaining the dynamic between people and animals, as well as each other. It is detailed that Kazak was actually looked after by the husband of Dwayne’s maid (Lottie Davis), who was cruel to the dog before finally cutting him loose to roam. Vonnegut, the self-aware narrator even goes so far as to describe the attack in scientific terms instead of emotional ones, furthering his case that humans are more machines than most anything else.