30 pages • 1 hour read
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.Epicac
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1950A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
The Narrator
The narrator is the story’s protagonist. The narrator remains unnamed because the story is told in first-person, and none of the other characters refer to him by name. The narrator begins the story saying he “wants to vindicate EPICAC,” because, “maybe he didn’t do what the Brass wanted him to, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t noble and great and brilliant” (Paragraph 2).
The narrator, a mathematician working the evening shift with the computer EPICAC, is a round character with a story arc that challenges The Ethics of Friendship and Love. The narrator speaks in a consistent colloquial dialect. He refers to the military higher-ups as “the Brass,” and he uses plain syntax with a mixed diction (words like “hell” and “dammit” alongside “protoplasm” and “arrogant”) to make him accessible to the reader. This accessibility makes his love story (his courting Pat) the kind of story anyone in love could relate to. The narrator has two wants in the frame story and in the story told within the frame. His want in the internal story is to win Pat’s love and hand in marriage, both of which he gets. His want in the story on the page from beginning to end is to vindicate EPICAC from the embarrassment felt by “the Brass” and their attempt to cover up EPICAC’s demise.
The narrator works to vindicate EPICAC by making the details of the computer’s demise public information because he believes the taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their “$776,434,927.54” (Paragraph 1). These beliefs and actions demonstrate the dutiful aspects of the narrator’s personality which have become stronger in the course of his relationship with EPICAC. Vonnegut makes use of indirect characterization in showing this part of the narrator’s growth as the narrator never says anything directly about his own feelings of personal ethics in relationships except when he says, “asking [EPICAC] to ghost-write the words that would give me the woman he loved would have been hideously heartless. Being fully automatic, he couldn’t have refused. I spared him that final humiliation” (Paragraph 52). This moment also indirectly shows the narrator’s realization that while he may have been resourceful in signing his name to EPICAC’s poems for Pat, he cannot be the type of man to ask for her hand in marriage by any other means than his own.
The narrator’s relationship to the machine begins as one would expect with the machine doing the work he was designed to do. During the story’s arc, though, the narrator comes to rely on the machine emotionally, which grows into a model teaching him the nature of ethical friendship.
EPICAC
EPICAC is the story’s deuteragonist. It may even be said that he could share the protagonist role with the narrator because they both experience profound change. EPICAC is a unique character in that he functions like a tragic hero. EPICAC is also a round character who grows into having wants and opinions. At the story’s beginning, EPICAC has already self-destructed. During the course of the story, the narrator gives detailed and specific conversations that he shared with a computer. Before the narrator’s asking EPICAC “What can I do?” (Paragraph 18), the computer had only served humans. He had computed results based on information given to him, which is what the Brass wanted him to do. EPICAC is personified throughout the story as he works to learn new words and concepts, apply them in conversation, and display critical thinking skills.
At the story’s end, EPICAC’s change is most visible in his movement from only computing, to interacting with the narrator, and finally choosing actions based on his own feelings and his feelings for others. EPICAC seems to feel heartbreak, for instance, when he learns that Pat is in love with the narrator and not with him. While on the surface-level, it could be duty that compels EPICAC to give the narrator the anniversary poems, the message he leaves behind before self-destructing indicates a deeper understanding of humanity and of his tragic role. EPICAC’s choice to self-destruct is an indication of the pain that he is able to feel as he has learned aspects of humanity throughout the story. His final act, though, is more in line with Vonnegut’s Socialist ideals. EPICAC’s self-destruction may appear self-centered, yet his penultimate act of the anniversary poems suggests that EPICAC has learned how to be an ethical friend despite his tragic flaw, which is jealousy. He understands friendship, as is evident in his creation of the poems for the narrator despite his own demise.
Pat
Pat is a static, secondary character in the story. The only “change” she undergoes is the movement from resisting the narrator’s romantic advances to finally accepting them and falling in love with him. Pat doesn’t grow emotionally in the course of the story, but she is crucial to the story’s telling because both EPICAC and the narrator need to fall in love with her to test the depths of their own understanding of love and friendship. Pat also serves to bring the narrator into a closer emotional connection with EPICAC because her refusals of his romantic advances result in the narrator first asking EPICAC what he should do because “[his girl doesn’t love [him]” (Paragraph 26). Pat’s awareness of the narrator’s revealing story in the frame narrative is unclear. Whether telling the truth about EPICAC affects their relationship or whether she never hears the truth is left up in the air.
Dr. Ormond von Kleigstadt and the “Brass”
Kleigstadt and the “Brass” are static, flat characters who serve the story by creating EPICAC and providing the infrastructure needed to keep him running, which is what brings The Narrator, Pat, and EPICAC into the dramatic situation that turns into the telling of this story. Vonnegut uses these characters to be at-once peripheral and “always there,” much like the nonfictional military presence in his own life and the inspiration driving the heart of the narrative.
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