Rudy’s father truly believed that he was an artist. Throughout the entire text, he always refers to how well of an artist he is. Actually, his father only ever actually half way completed one painting, before his father ever even met his mother. That was his artist credibility. He wasn’t very credible at all. He was a fake. His father also inherited the family pharmaceutical business, which later went to Rudy.

Rudy’s mother came from a wealthy family that had high expectations of her. Rudy’s father and mother are important, yet useless characters. They are completely unable to take care of themselves their entire lives because of how much they rely on servants.

Felix was Rudy’s older brother. Felix was blessed with a wonderful voice, so he was requested by the military to speak on their radio system.

When Rudy was twelve, on mother’s day, he was granted with the key to the gun room so that he could have an exclusive all access pass. His dad finally trusted him enough, because he proved himself to him earlier that day at the gun range. This fatal mistake, along with giving the 12 year old boy the sole task of cleaning all of the guns unsupervised, is what led to his horrible mistake.

He was cleaning the springfield .03-60, and he decided to crawl into the top of the barn and shoot the gun over the top of the city. He said that the bullet was a goodbye to his youth, a goodbye to his innocence. He ended up killing a woman across town who was vacuuming. She was pregnant. He committed a double murder.

Because of Rudy’s father’s arrogance, he believed that if he made a big scene of a confession that he would essentially get off of all charges. He blamed himself for allowing Rudy near the guns, since Rudy was a minor and he was solely responsible for his gun training. Rudy and his father both went to jail. Rudy was let out the next day, however, his father was to remain there for some time to serve out a sentence.

After arriving at the prison, Rudy’s father had been severely beaten. Rudy, on the other hand, since he was so young and the police would look bad if they physically hurt him, was covered in ink and placed in a cage. There was a public display to taunt him, everyone was invited to ridicule the little murderous boy. The only one who objected to it was Mr. Metzger, the husband of the victim.

Because of Rudy’s extreme guilt, he gives his life away in order to repay his debts. He essentially enslaves himself to the command of others, so that maybe he will someday be forgiven for what he has done. He vows to stay away from absolutely anything that could further cause him to do harmful things – such as drugs or alcohol, and even goes as far as to emotionally detach and remove himself from society. Rudy considers himself to be a neuter, neither homosexual nor heterosexual, in order to punish himself for his actions. The murder is a heavy burden among Rudy.

Since Rudy spent most of his childhood raised by the family slaves, as he aged and his parent’s slave number decreased, Rudy became their slave. It was his payback to society. He did absolutely everything for them, because all that they knew how to do was lay around lifelessly. That was all that they had ever done.

Rudy was referred to as “Deadeye Dick” in public all of the time. People would call him at work just to harass him and ask if he is the infamous Deadeye Dick. That name haunted him.

The only thing that Rudy ever truly did for himself was produce a play called Katmandu, which was featured in New York for one night. The play was a story about one of his father’s friends.

After his parent’s death, Rudy and his brother moved to Haiti to live out their lives there. It was safe and far, far away from Midland City, Ohio.

A neutron bomb completely destroys all that is left of Midland City, Ohio. The city is virtually untouched, however all of it’s inhabitants were killed. While the city is safe to live in, it remains a ghost town. No one comes to live in the neutron bomb city. There is an advanced security team that has been hired by the government to protect the city from theft at night.

After visiting Midland City to reclaim what had been theirs, although it was illegal to smuggle back out due to the enhanced security, Rudy decided that we are still in the dark ages. We are still in the dark ages because of how selfish, cruel, and inhumane our society has become. We are still in the dark ages, and we will remain there until humanity shall reveal itself once more.

Examples:

“Many people found out house spooky, and the attic in fact was full of evil when i was born. It housed a collection of more than three hundred antique and modern firearms… Father thought them beautiful, but they might as well have been copperheads and rattlesnakes. They were murder.”  (Chapter 2, Pg 11)

This quote is foreshadowing in the sense that it is saying at how dangerous and murderous the weapons truly are, hinting that something more may happen involving them.

“This would have been in the springtime of 1943, almost exactly a year before I became a murderer – a double murderer actually. World War Two was going on.” (Chapter 6, Pg 42)

“So this was Mother’s Day to most people, but to me it was the day during which, ready or not, I had been initiated into manhood.” (Chapter 9, Pg 68)

This quote is preparing the reader for the horrendous plot that is about to unfold before them, the double murder of Mrs. Metzger and her unborn child.

I’ve also noted that Vonnegut has used similes in his novel, such as this example.

“The morning after Katmandu opened and closed, Felix and I were flying over a landscape as white and blank as our lives.” (Chapter 20, Pg 167)

The following example is one of personification, the snowflakes have been given the human capability to kiss.

“In twinkling I was on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village at high noon, gazing up at a theater marquee as snowflakes kissed my face.” (Chapter 19, Pg 145)

The fact that Rudy Walts is consistently called “Deadeye Dick”, is an example of how Kurt Vonnegut used epithets in his work.

This is the first excerpt that I chose. Not because it is also the first few lines in the book, but because it best describes Rudy’s character as a whole. He is never truly concerned with the world around him, none of it matters much to him. For the majority of his life, Rudy is merely a servant to his family. He grew up being taught by the slaves, not his parents. After his parents had slaves no more, Rudy became theirs. He did chores. He cooked. He took care of them. He did this for his brother, too.  After he loses his innocence, he feels that he has to give his life away in order to pay back his debts. The rest of the world doesn’t matter all that much to him.

“Many people found our house spooky, and the attic in fact was full of evil when I was born. It housed a collection of more than three hundred antique and modern firearms. Father had bought them during his and Mother’s six-month honeymoon in Europe in 1922. Father thought them beautiful, but they might as well have been copperheads and rattlesnakes. They were murder.” (Chapter 2, Pg 11)

This is definitely foreshadowing the events to come – the murder of Mrs. Metzger and her unborn child. Rudy’s father had a large collection of guns of which he taught everything about to Rudy. By the age of 8, Rudy was able to aimlessly clean every gun that his father owned. Those guns were his duty. Those guns cost him his life.

“For a person as familiar with firearms as I was, this represented no commitment whatsoever. I could let down the hammer gently, without firing the cartridge. And then I could withdraw the bolt, which would extract the live cartridge and throw it away. But I squeezed the trigger instead.” (Chapter 9, Pg 68)

This is the actual quote in which the bullet, that ultimately pierces Mrs. Metzger’s forehead, is released. It’s when Rudy loses his innocence and become a full fledged killer.

“I hadn’t aimed at anything. If I had thought of the bullet’s hitting anything, I don’t remember now. I was the great marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing, then nothing is what I would hit. The bullet was a symbol, and nobody was ever hurt by a symbol. It was a farewell to my childhood and a confirmation of my manhood. Why didn’t I use a blank cartridge? What kind of a symbol would that have been?” (Chapter 10, Pg 70)

Here Rudy Waltz is simply replaying the situation over and over again in his head and trying to make sense of it. I believe that he is trying to justify his actions so that he won’t have so much overwhelming guilt.

“What was my own opinion of myself? I thought I was a defective human being, and that I shouldn’t even be on this planet anymore. Anybody who would fire a Springfield .30-06 over the rooftops of a city had to have a screw loose. If i had begun to reply to the people, i think that’s what i would have babbled over and over again: “I have a screw loose somewhere, I have a screw loose somewhere, I have a screw loose somewhere.” ( Chapter 12, Pg 87-88)

This paragraph is showing how much Rudy blames himself for everything that has happened. Rudy believes he must be defective to be responsible for what has happened to him.

“My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die. There is evil for you. We cannot get rid of mankind’s fleetingly evil wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true. I give you a holy word: DISARM.”

” “

This quote was delivered by Mr. Metzger to a crowd of civilians that were blaming Rudy solely for the murder, calling him evil names and saying he was a cold hearted killer. Mr. Metzger, the true victim of this crime, is the only one in the city that isn’t for treatying Rudy cruelly. He doesn’t believe it is right to punish the boy so harshly. He doesn’t believe it’s right to throw anyone in a cage, covered in ink, to be ridiculed and on display to the public, as the police did to Rudy after he was arrested. While he is resentful that his wife and unborn child were killed, he believes it’s the fault of the firearm, not just Rudy Waltz.

“I persisted. I did very little of that, I must say-persisting. During my time in the cage, all covered with ink, I concluded that the best thing for me and for those around me was to want nothing, to be enthusiastic about nothing, to be as unmotivated as possible, in fact, so that I would never again hurt anyone. To put it another way: I wasn’t to touch anything on this planet, man, woman, child, artifact, animal, vegetable, or mineral – since it was very likely to be connected to a push-pull detonator and an explosive charge.” (Chapter 16, Pg 126-127)

This quote can be interpreted to be very deep and meaningful. It can represent the death of innocence, the death of Rudy’s youth, even though Rudy was still a child. It could represent America’s views on how all criminals should act – regretful, careful, and ashamed. It could be just simply explaining how psychologically deep murder affected a 12 year old careless child.

“”You know what I’m going to call you from now on,” he said, “and what I’m going to tell everybody else to cal you?” “No,” I said. And he said, “Deadeye Dick.”" (Ch 14, Pg 102)

This is the conversation between the patrolman Anthony Squires and Rudy Waltz that inspire the title for the novel, when Rudy receives his new name. It is a name which will haunt him, follow him, chase him until he is old and grey, as long as he stays in that town. The actual name ‘Deadeye Dick’ is a common name for someone who knows a fair share about firearms, which is surely the case here, since Rudy not only mastered the usage and cleaning of an entire collection of firearms by the age of 8, but that he also accidentally killed a woman and her unborn child because of his weapon usage.

“You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages-they haven’t ended yet.” (Pg 271)

Rudy believes that, as a society, we are all still in the Dark Ages because of our obsessive inhumane qualities. Qualities that, ultimately, can ruin or make a life, like Rudy’s. Rudy’s life was controlled by the inhumane, selfish ways of his peers who spent their lives taunting him for his mistake.

Lot

Tone of book? – thoughtful
Time/era of story – 1980′s-1999
Internal struggle/realization? Yes
Struggle over – actions leading to death of someone
Is this an adult or child’s book? – Adult or Young Adult Book

Main Character
Gender – Male
Profession/status: – Pharmacist most of his life.
Age: – 40′s-50′s
Eccentric/Mental Yes
Eccentric: – eccentric
Ethnicity/Nationality – White (American)
How sensitive is this character? – Rudy is sensitive to others’ feelings
Sense of humor – Strong but gentle sense of humor
Intelligence – Smarter than most other characters
Physique – healthy but a geeky weakling; overweight

Main Adversary
Identity: – society
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: – an average amount

Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings? – an average amount
United States Yes
The US: – Midwest, Midland City, Ohio.
Europe Yes
European country: – Germany. Rudy’s father travels and attends art school there.

Style
Person – 1st
Accounts of torture and death? – explicit references to deaths
Amount of dialog – roughly even amounts of descript and dialog

For more information on the plot of Deadeye Dick, I recommend you visit this webpage to see the article that was in the NY Times.