The Shapes of Stories | Open Source Material
Language: English
Kurt Vonnegut gained worldwide fame and adoration through the publication of his novels, including Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and more.
But it was his rejected master's thesis in anthropology that he called his prettiest contribution to culture.
The basic idea of his thesis was that a story's main character has ups and downs that can be graphed to reveal the story's shape.
The shape of a society's stories, he said, is at least as interesting as the shape of its pots or spearheads. Let's have a look.
