“God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” by Kurt Vonnegut – The Shame of Poverty

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Short Summary

Kurt Vonnegut has given us no shortage of piercing and poignant stories getting right to the heart of what’s wrong in modern American society, but among them, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater flew a little under the radar (in relative terms). It follow the life of Elliot Rosewater, a disillusioned millionaire whose conscience leads him to move the headquarters of his Rosewater Foundation to his former family home, Rosewater, Indiana, where he does all he can for the poor people living there.

Kurt Vonnegut Imagines a Millionaire with a Conscience

Many countries have tried different sorts of governments, yet in each one of them, the same problem has persisted and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future: a class divide. Eventually, there always seems to rise a minority more affluent than the rest, capable of affording a luxurious lifestyle without proportionally contributing back to society. In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, we meet one such member of the affluent caste, one who has suddenly grown a conscience.

The novel begins by explaining just how deep the roots of the Rosewater Foundation run in the United States of America. In short, it was founded by Senator Lister Ames Rosewater of Indiana, so that his future descendants might avoid paying taxes on the family property. Since then it has grown, and through various legal manipulations, it turned out to be a complete success, with its owners being none the wiser as to how it functions, solely concerned with reaping benefits from it.

Our main character in question, Eliot Rosewater, the senator’s son, receives an annual 3.5 million-dollar pension from the fund. However, he is the not the typical millionaire, at least no how most people imagine him. He holds the distinction of being a World War II veteran, a volunteer firefighter, a raging alcoholic, and, more recently, the owner of a newfound conscience, driving him establish a headquarters back in Rosewater County, so that he might help the people there.

Much to the displeasure of his father, Eliot settles down and does his best to shower the poor, uneducated people living around him with infinite amounts of love, and various sums of money (usually a hundred dollars). At the same time, he tries to come to terms with this whole class divide thing in his country, desperately trying to find an argument as to why the useless ought to be loved.

While Eliot is busy being a philanthropist, the only other branch of the Rosewater foundation, Fred has just learned that he is, in fact, a Rosewater, and is entitled to the family fortune. Being a suicidal insurance salesman, he sees it as his big opportunity to finally get the fortune he so rightfully deserves, and his plan is simple: prove that Eliot is completely insane… which really doesn’t seem to be too hard of a task these days.

The Endless Divide in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

The line splitting the rich and the poor has been a topic of conversation and rumination long before modern societies developed. We can go back as far as the times of ancient Romans and Aztec empires, and even there we will find a similar picture: a minority hoarding a disproportionate amount of wealth, extremely busy with justifying why it is they deserve it to the poor majority.

Even today, though the American society boasts openly of freedom and equality for all, anyone with a pair of eyes and a semi-functional brain can see it is not the case in the slightest. An elite class has hermetically sealed itself off from the rest of the world, content with living in a bubble from which they show contempt for those less fortunate than them, oblivious to the great fortune they were bestowed by sheer luck.

This idea, from what I could gather at least, rests at the centre of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and is the driving force behind many of the things Eliot does. He can see the absurdity behind the modern American class system, how it forces people to live in completely different worlds, often unable to see anything beyond the bubbles they were born into.

More importantly, he develops something most of us suspect the ultra-rich ruling class of lacking: a sense of empathy for the chronic losers in life, those born into nothing and destined to nothing. While living in Rosewater, Indiana, Eliot encounters those people day in and day out, and those interactions are by far some of my favourite parts of the this novel.

At times hilarious and at times heart-wrenching, it is always interesting to see the types of concerns and woes with which people call Eliot, how they express themselves, and of course, the various remedies he proposes to them. More often than not, he proves himself slightly incompetent from a practical standpoint, with much of his advice being nonsense, and yet, it is precisely what they need to hear.

Slowly but surely, Eliot arrives to the stark realization, at least for a man of his stature in life, that these people living at the bottom of the American barrel simply want to be loved, listened to, and understood more than anything else. They yearned for his companionship, for the reassurances he gave them, for the fact that he loved them, even if they were useless.

An Ode to the Useless

This leads into the next large topic I wanted to touch on, and a central idea of this novel which rears its head time and time again: how exactly does one love the poor and useless? From the perspective of someone living in Eliot’s world, this question often seems a little ridiculous and probably even beyond consideration. Unbeknownst to him, though, it’s something driving him onward to greater discoveries about life and the world at large.

At the heart of American society is the idea that people ought to be proportionally-rewarded to the efforts they invest into their work. The idea that people who make money, pay their taxes, and then spend their money in reasonable ways are what make the American economy turn (and by extension, in some peoples’ minds, the entire world). The idea that those who don’t fit into this mould are societal leeches and bring everyone else down.

Naturally, this outlook has come at a great cost for many, represented by the downtrodden citizens of Rosewater County in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Most, if not all of them, have never even had a chance to get going and break free from the chains of poverty they were born into, and they too deserve all the love in the world, as do the old, the sick, the crippled, and anyone else who can’t contribute to society. It takes him a while, but Eliot does come to see it.

Naturally, with this being a Vonnegut novel, this often-sombre topic is presented through a lens of humour and lightheartedness, characterized by the author’s short chapters, brief sentences, and piercing comical observations about the world in his novel, often relating to real life. On many occasions they had me laughing… because I couldn’t help but accept their truthfulness.

Though the flow of events is a little all over the place at times (which isn’t really anything new for a Vonnegut novel), it retains enough of an integrity to feel like one consistent story. The large cast of characters is, once again, nothing if not memorable, with many of them actually being reoccurring in other novels by the author. From this perspective, this early novel of Vonnegut’s lives up to the quality we’ve come to expect from the later ones.

The Final Verdict

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut is both a hilarious and revealing journey into the class system cleaving America in two, complete with harshly true observations and laugh-out-loud funny quips and a cast of unforgettable, idiosyncratic characters, and a strong message: there is no shame in being poor, downtrodden and useless. On the contrary, those people need our love and understanding more than anyone else.

Whether you’re a long-time Kurt Vonnegut reader or are just discovering him for the first time, I think this is the type of novel which ought to be read by anyone, regardless of their tastes, for just how concisely (and hilariously) it captures the woes of modern existence (despite being almost sixty years old now). All in ll, I highly recommend it.