God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Mushari is the novel’s antagonist. He is a 23-year-old lawyer of Lebanese descent who works for the firm McAllister, Robjent, Reed, and McGee. Mushari chose to work at the firm because it manages the Rosewater Foundation’s money, and Mushari is intent on procuring the foundation’s money for himself. To emphasize Mushari’s negative attributes, Vonnegut describes him in unflattering physical terms, referencing both his short build and his enormous buttocks (3). Though the author means the description to be humorous, by today’s standards, such a description registers as bias because there is no correlation between one’s appearance and moral character.

Mushari is intelligent—he graduated from Cornell Law School at the top of his class—but he is unscrupulous. Vonnegut describes him as a “boy shyster” (1), meaning that he is a lawyer who will use illegal means, such as fraud or deception, to achieve his ends. Mushari resents the wealthy Rosewaters (though he does not know them) because they did nothing to earn their vast fortunes. Vonnegut notes that Mushari is “the least Anglo-Saxon male employee in the firm” (3) and that his colleagues shun him, leaving Mushari to eat lunch alone in “cheap cafeterias” (4). The author’s mention of Mushari’s ethnic background is significant and suggests that racial discrimination plays a role in Mushari’s co-workers’ negative perception of him.

Mushari uses his access to the firm’s files on the Rosewater Foundation to plot his acquisition of the foundation’s funds. He plans to remove the foundation’s president, Eliot Rosewater, by having him declared “insane” and installing a distant cousin as president, Fred Rosewater, whom Mushari knows he can manipulate. Mushari’s character is a catalyst because his actions set the plot in motion. His investigations into Eliot’s past and his attempt to transfer the foundation’s funds make up the main action of the novel. Mushari provides Vonnegut with a context for his satire as he can focus his humor and ironic observations on Mushari’s behavior without preaching to the reader. Despite his mercenary motives, Mushari is an outsider in a society in which the rich only use their money to benefit themselves.

Vonnegut uses the Senator to satirize the privileged conservative point of view, and the character is a caricature of exaggerated callousness. The Senator is an influential senator from Indiana and Eliot’s father. Unlike his forebearers, the Senator does not become a business tycoon or concern himself with increasing the Rosewater fortune. He gains power through politics, first as a representative from Rosewater County, and then as a senator. The Senator allows McAllister, Robjent, Reed, and McGee to manage the Rosewater Foundation and establishes the rules of its stewardship by successive Rosewater heirs. The foundation’s true purpose is to serve as a tax haven for the Rosewater estate. Outwardly, the foundation is a philanthropic organization. The Senator is unconscious of the great privilege he wields and as a character represents the wealthy class that disregards the reality of everyday people.

Trout is the fictional science-fiction author who appears in many of Vonnegut’s novels. Trout is a rhetorical device, a mouthpiece from which the author can make moral claims in the text without sermonizing. Trout sympathizes with Eliot; just as Mushari represents Fred in proving that Eliot is not mentally competent, Trout defends Eliot’s “sanity,” arguing that Eliot’s morality and compassion, rather than a mental health condition, are the causes of his ostracism.

Although Trout occupies an outsider position in the novel, his values are not radical. He values honesty, integrity, and hard work. Even though they are different people, his values align with those of Fred Rosewater, who says: “America is one place in this sorry world where people shouldn’t have to apologize for being poor” (205). Vonnegut strategically places Trout at an ideological crossroads so that neither side can easily dismiss his arguments.

Sylvia, whose given name is Sylvia DuVrais Zetterling, is Eliot’s wife. She is from Paris and comes from a family of wealthy cultural elites: “Her mother was a patroness of painters. Her father was the greatest living cellist. Her maternal grandparents were a Rothschild and a DuPont” (12). This description establishes her European background, and her heritage both links her to and sets her apart from America’s upper class. Although Sylvia occupies a minor role in the novel, she represents those who possess self-awareness but lack the fortitude to act. She loves and supports Eliot but cannot remain with him at the cost of her own psychological and emotional stability. She is a foil for Eliot in that she too experiences mental health crises, but they do not lead to a revelation. She retreats to the familiar world of European wealth and, with her lawyers’ help, attempts to gain part of the Rosewater fortune.

Fred is Eliot’s second cousin and the heir to whom stewardship of the Rosewater Foundation would pass if Eliot were deemed “incompetent.” Fred represents the everyman whom the capitalist system disenfranchises. He is a life insurance salesman from Pisquontuit, Rhode Island, and he struggles financially. His father, an unsuccessful businessman, died by suicide, and Fred contemplates suicide every day; he fears that he will never be able to provide for his shallow wife, Caroline, and his son, little Franklin. The narrator refers to Fred’s life insurance policy, which pays out $42,000, implying that his death would benefit his family more than his efforts while he is alive. Mushari is able to manipulate Fred because Fred craves the wealth and esteem that the other side of the Rosewater family has enjoyed since birth.