Kurt Vonnegut

Diana Moon-Glampers is a fictional character created by Kurt Vonnegut. She appears in two of his works, and does not appear to be the same person in both, because of great time differences. Diana Moon Glampers appears in the novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as a neurotic woman who is afraid that... she is going to be struck by lightning in her kidneys, which she refers to as her "kiddleys". She worked as a housekeeper for the Rosewater family until they stopped living in the Rosewater mansion. In the novel, she is described as "a sixty-eight-year-old virgin who, by almost anybody's standards, was too dumb to live". Moon-Glampers is the Handicapper General in the short story "Harrison Bergeron", one of Vonnegut's most famous short stories, collected with other works in Welcome To The Monkey House. She fatally shoots Harrison Bergeron and his dance partner with a double barreled shotgun.
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Billy Pilgrim is a fictional character and protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, who has appeared in adaptations of the novel for film and the stage. Billy Pilgrim was based on Vonnegut's comrade-in-arms Edward R. Crone, Jr. Billy Pilgrim was born in Ilium, New York on the... Fourth of July of 1922. After Billy graduated from high school, he enrolled in the Ilium School of Optometry. He is tall at 6 feet 3 inches, but weak and skinny at around 140 pounds. He is also friendly and kind toward others, even when others are rude or accusatory towards him. Billy also tries to pass on wise advice or information that he has learned from the Tralfamadorians. In 1943, 21-year-old Billy Pilgrim was drafted into the Army. He served as a chaplain's assistant in Virginia, and was serving on the front-lines in Germany by 1944. At the Battle of the Bulge, Billy is taken prisoner along with a fellow soldier Roland Weary. At this moment, Billy becomes "unstuck in time", and he re-experiences moments from various points in his life, albeit without any control over which moments. Billy and the other prisoners are transported to Luxembourg, where Roland Weary dies of gangrene.
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Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his psuedonym George Orwell, was an English author. His work is marked by a profound conscientiousness of social injustice, an intense dislike of totalitarianism, and a passion for clarity in language. His two most popular works are 1984 and Animal Farm.

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60... plays. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the London County Council. In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St.
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James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine. Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio, to Charles L. Thurber and Mary Agnes Fisher Thurber on December 8, 1894. Both of his... parents greatly influenced his work. His father, a sporadically employed clerk and minor politician who dreamed of being a lawyer or an actor, is said to have been the inspiration for the small, timid protagonist typical of many of his stories. Thurber described his mother as a "born comedienne" and "one of the finest comic talents I think I have ever known." She was a practical joker, on one occasion pretending to be crippled and attending a faith healer revival, only to jump up and proclaim herself healed. Thurber had two brothers, William and Robert. Once, while playing a game of William Tell, his brother shot James in the eye with an arrow, and Thurber lost that eye. This injury would later cause him to be almost entirely blind.
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Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both... French and world literature. He remains, however, a controversial figure because of his anti-Semitic pamphlets. The only child of Ferdinand-Auguste Destouches and Marguerite-Louise-Céline Guilloux, he was born Louis-Ferdinand-Auguste Destouches in 1894 at Courbevoie, just outside Paris in the Seine département . His father was a minor functionary in an insurance firm and his mother was a lacemaker. In 1905 he was awarded his Certificat d'études, after which he worked as an apprentice and messenger boy in various trades. Between 1908 and 1910 his parents sent him to Germany and England for a year in each country in order to acquire foreign languages for future employment. From the time he left school, until the age of eighteen, Céline worked various jobs, leaving or losing them after only short periods of time.
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