The Unicorn Trap Analysis

Kurt Vonnegut regularly gets his main ideas across by using someone who comes out ahead, as the “winner”, and someone who gets left behind, as the “loser”. Money, power, and social standing are among the most common traits utilized in Vonnegut’s work to portray someone’s status. Through essays in Armageddon in Retrospect and Look at the Birdie, Vonnegut proves that these three common traits ultimately reflect whether someone is a “winner” or “loser”. In “The Unicorn Trap”, Ivy claims fantasizes over the possibility of one day owning the worn drapes on Robert the Horrible’s horse (AIR pg. 120 and 121). Ivy and her husband, Elmer, are, at this point, portrayed as the losers of the story while the elites, such as Robert the Horrible, are portrayed as the winners. When Elmer is summoned to be the town’s tax collector, Elmer claims this is when he will stand up to the government and that “it’s time die for something I believe in,” (AIR pg. 126). Elmer’s sudden suicidal leap of …show more content…
60). Vonnegut uses how Claire and Harve become locked up in jail for murder as a way for the reader to sympathize with them. However, at the end of the story, Claire and Harve are freed and Ed Luby and major comrades are jailed (LAB pg. 101). A transformation of a character from one status to the other occurs as Harve and Claire become winners and Ed Luby and his posse are turned to losers. This is only possible due to how the power in the town has shifted from Ed to a fair system of everyone working towards fairness and the common good as the town begins to turn on Ed in order to save both themselves as well as Claire and Harve once they are told what has truly occurred in the supposed murder