52 pages • 1 hour read
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.The Sirens of Titan
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1959A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: "United Hotcake Preferred"
Constant visits the Magnum Opus company’s Los Angeles headquarters and meets the company president, Ransom K. Fern. Constant is surprised to find that his office is filled with floating furniture that is "suspended magnetically at the proper height" (34). The "exceedingly thin" (35) Fern is an avid reader and smarter than both Malachi and Noel Constant, but lacks their extraordinary luck. Yet in recent months, Constant's decisions have been remarkably unlucky—he has now lost the huge fortune that his father built. Magnum Opus is set to close as a company and the entire staff has been let go. The company "is no more" (36).
The narrative then shifts to provide the backstory of the family company. Noel Constant founded Magnum Opus after a lifetime of failure. He was an ugly man, the son of an anarchist, and someone who seemed to possess no redeeming qualities. While on holiday as a travelling salesman at the age of 39, he chanced upon a Bible. He decided to invest a recent inheritance in the stock market, choosing companies based on their initials and how these corresponded to the letters in the opening sentence of the Bible. Much to Noel's surprise, the method worked and he picked "the stock market's most brilliant performers days or hours before their performances began" (37). Within months, he was a millionaire. He purchased a hotel and stayed in the same hotel room, with only the maid, Florence Whitehill, getting to see him. Every ten days, Noel paid "a small, flat fee" (38) for Florence to have sex with him.
One day, a man from the Internal Revenue Service visited the hotel, shocked by Noel's fortune. He claimed that based on his accounts, Noel was "the luckiest man who ever lived" (39). The IRS man was Ransom K. Fern. Fern had long been told that he was an intelligent but unlucky man, so he spent a year at the IRS, searching for a lucky man in need of intelligent counsel. Fern unveiled a plan which would allow Noel to grow his business exponentially, using Fern's intricate knowledge of "corporate law or tax law" (39) to find loopholes and schemes. Noel hired Fern.
Florence became pregnant with Malachi. Noel married Florence and bought her a large house to live in, while he remained in the hotel. He asked Florence to continue her regular visits, but "not to bring the baby" (40). The first time Malachi Constant met his father was at the age of 21, at the hotel. Noel explained his esoteric investing system to Malachi—the only time he ever shared his secret method with anyone. Handing over two short pieces of advice given to him by his father, as well as the entire company, Noel bid an abrupt and awkward farewell to Malachi. That was the first and last time they met. Noel died five years later.
In his office, Constant is shocked by Fern's revelation that the company is no more. Fern says that the company could not survive Constant drunkenly giving away 531 oil wells to his party guests. Additionally, Constant sold his space travel to the President and the government space travel program, just before a massive investment was announced. Many other parts of the business have suffered similar, shocking bad luck. Noel prepared for this eventuality, Fern says, and there is a letter for Constant waiting in Noel's old hotel room in the case that his "luck ever really turned sour" (42).
Constant goes to the hotel. In the cocktail lounge, "a thin woman and a fat man" (43) named Helmholtz and Wiley stare blankly into the wall. They claim to be retired Midwestern teachers. They are actually "crack agents for the Army of Mars" (44), sent to spy on Constant and recruit him, just as they have recruited thousands of other humans. These recruits are sent to Mars, their memories are wiped, and they are fitted with special antennae which make them follow orders. They ignore Constant when he arrives at the hotel and goes to Noel's room. He finds the letter, in which Noel apologizes if he "wasn't a very good father" (45). His last piece of advice is that, if ever broke, Constant should accept any "crazy proposition" (45) that someone puts to him. At this exact moment, Helmholtz and Wiley knock at the door and propose to Constant that he join the Martian Army. They describe the many benefits and, without hesitation, Constant accepts. He disappears the next day.
A week later, Beatrice watches the spaceship The Whale—now renamed in honor of her husband—take off on a mission. She congratulates herself on avoiding her husband's prophecy that she will be aboard, thereby proving that "her husband's omniscient bullying was all a bluff" (46). She meets with two people who are offering to help her sell her estate. These people are Helmholtz and Wiley. They ask to inspect one of the buildings on the estate and Beatrice leads the way to what Wiley believes may be a "flying saucer" (47).
Chapter 4 Summary: "Tent Rentals"
The Martian Army recruits march across a parade ground in their "rough-textured, frosty green" (48) uniforms. Among them is a private named Unk, who has spent eight years in the military. Three years ago, he was demoted from the rank of lieutenant-colonel and now he is a private in the Assault Infantry Division. Unk looks remarkably like Malachi Constant (and, unknown to Unk, he is Malachi Constant). After a recent stint in the Army hospital for treatment for an unspecified mental health issue, Unk gathers with the other privates around a hollow square where a red-haired young soldier is tied to a stake. The private tries to send a message to his best friend Unk but Unk does not "recognize his best friend at the stake" (49). Unk has an antenna in his head. At the hospital, the staff explained that the antenna will make him feel pain if he ever fails to "obey a direct order without a moment's hesitation" (50). Unk is ordered to strangle the private tied to the stake. Feeling a small pain in his head, Unk marches up to the man and kills him. With his dying words, the man tied to the stake ignores the pain in his own head to tell Unk: "barrack twelve . . . letter" (51). Unk ignores him and the soldiers are ordered to march away.
Chapter 5 Summary: "Letter from an Unknown Hero"
Unk and his unit march back to barrack number 576, where Unk finds the number above the door "fascinating" (53) but does not know why. He struggles with vague memories of his past which now seem unreachable. A fellow soldier named Boaz has a uniform "made of far finer stuff, and [that is] much better tailored" (54) than the other recruits’. Boaz is Unk's official "buddy" (55), the system around which the Martian Army is organized. For his amusement, he grills Unk about the vague and unreachable memories but the sergeant warns Unk that remembering is "the worst thing you can do" (56). The effort of remembering causes a sudden, horrid pain in Unk's head. He faints and, when he comes to, the sergeant blames Boaz for Unk's collapse.
Unk is told that remembering the past makes him a bad soldier and he is ordered to abandon his memories. The sergeant's attempts to punish Boaz cause a pain in the sergeant's head, so he leaves instead. Boaz also manages to avoid a surprise inspection from the captain. He does so because he possesses a special controller, hidden in his pocket, which allows him to control people using the implanted antennae. Boaz has no antenna because he is one of the 800 "real commanders of the Army of Mars" (57) who are hidden among the regular enlisted men. These real commanders control the officers, undermining any potential unrest and protecting the leaders during the battle. The man Unk killed was Stony Stevenson, another real commander and Unk's friend and ally. His efforts to help Unk remember led to Stevenson being fitted with an antenna and then killed.
Boaz jokes with Unk that most people do not need their memory wiped seven times. On Earth, Boaz was a poor orphan. He has heard rumors that Unk was a rich man but he has not verified this information. Instead, he is "wretchedly dependent" (58) on Unk because he believes that Unk will take him to Hollywood parties when they reach Earth. These jokes hide Boaz's fear that he will lose his status as a commander. Stevenson's death has left him "worried sick" (59).
While the men play German batball, Unk remembers what Stevenson whispered to him before he died. Unk discovers a "very long letter written in pencil" (60) in barrack 12, which contains "one hundred and fifty-eight things the writer knew for sure" (61). This information ranges from the simple, such as the fact that the writer is on Mars, to the substantive, such as the fact that the Martian Army's plan is to kill every living thing on Earth. The list warns that Boaz cannot be trusted and that Unk and Stony Stevenson are old friends. Unk worries that the letter writer has wasted his efforts, as Unk does not believe he can overcome the pain-inducing antenna in his head.
Unk reads about Phoebe, the only city on Mars, and Stevenson's past life as a whisky-loving Englishman. Stevenson had come to believe that the Martian plan is essentially "suicide" (62), a theory prompted by Unk's unfiltered questioning of the world. He was killed for sharing information and whiskey with Unk, who he described as his "best bloody friend" (63). Together, Unk and Stevenson decided that the person really in charge of the army was a smiling commander with a dog. This man only appeared approximately every 100 days. The author of the letter does not know this, but the smiling man is Rumfoord. He is the true mastermind behind the Martian Army. Unk and Stevenson wrote everything they knew in the letter so that they could preserve their knowledge in the event of their memories being wiped.
The letter also contains a call to Unk not to give up. Unlike most of the soldiers, the letter says, he has family including a woman and a child. The woman is a teacher named Bee and the child is named Chrono. The author instructs Unk to escape the barracks with Stevenson and find Bee and Chrono. Reaching the end of the letter, Unk is shocked to see his own signature. He is the author, having "written the letter to himself before having his memory cleaned out" (64). He has been using this system to preserve his knowledge for years, through numerous memory wipes, though he does not know that the man he strangled is his best friend, Stony Stevenson. This knowledge might cause him to become suicidal. Unk goes back to his barrack and hears that the Martian invasion of Earth has begun.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
The fortune of Noel Constant explains the brash insecurity of his son, Malachi. Only two people know the secret, absurd method used by Noel to build a fortune. The method of investing in the stock market based on initials taken from the Bible leaves both father and son with a gnawing sense of undeserved wealth. Noel tries to deal with this insecurity by changing nothing about his life. He lives in the same hotel room (though he now owns the hotel) and sticks to the same routine as he did when he was poor, to the point where he refuses to even see his son. He feels that by living the same life he did before he had money, he cannot be criticized for enjoying the benefits of his ill-gotten fortune.
Malachi deals very differently with his insecurity. Malachi, like Noel, does not believe that he deserves to be the richest man in the world. Despite this, his fortune keeps growing. The disparity between Constant's exorbitant wealth and the extent to which he believes he is deserving of this fortune only grows. The more this disparity grows, the more he feels the need to act out. He has a reputation as a party-loving celebrity—the result of completely embracing his nihilism. If someone like him can become the luckiest person on the planet without doing anything to deserve this fortune, then he does not know what meaning can be derived from life. He parties out of self-loathing, trying to make himself less and less deserving of his fortune, just in case some universal force finally has an excuse to take everything away from him. Constant may be rich and powerful like Rumfoord, but a key difference between the men is that Rumfoord has never doubted his own importance or whether he deserves his money. For Constant, this fear comes to define him. Every waking moment is filled with the anxiety-ridden terror that someone will finally point out that he does not deserve to be so rich.
On Mars, Malachi Constant is replaced by Unk. This switch of identities marks a clear transition between one part of the story and the next. Malachi Constant was a man with doubts, fears, and—most importantly—memories. When the memories are removed from his mind, he ceases to be Malachi Constant. He does not have the same doubts and fears about his worthiness because he no longer remembers that he is a rich man. After the memory wipe, Constant ceases to be and Unk is all that remains. Unk is a blank slate whose personality is recreated regularly by the reading of a letter. The obliteration of Constant as an identity, however, provides insight into what it really means to be human: If a person can be completely erased by the removal of their memories, Constant is essentially dead. Human identity is therefore a brittle, fragile social construct. Constant—for all his wealth, arrogance, and power—can be eliminated and replaced with a disempowered, unrecognizable person. In a novel which focuses so much on the nature of free will, this loss of identity challenges the extent to which a person even truly exists. Loss of identity is a challenge to free will because there is no longer a person resembling Malachi Constant which can express free will, even if the physical form of that person still remains.
In this sense, the letter is an important expression of autonomy and identity. Constant writes to himself, writing down the facts that he knows to be true. After having his memories wiped, Constant is not even aware that the letter exists, let alone that he is the author of the letter. As such, the letter becomes a short index for a personality. Unk knows that his identity is a transient construct, so he seeks out a way to create a legacy. The letter is the only way he can pass on his thoughts, feelings, and ideas to his own self. Each time Unk reads the letter, he is reborn as an echo of his former self. However, identity, as fragile as it is, is only ever as reliable as the person writing the letter that reassembles Unk’s identity each time. As such, the novel shows that Unk's desire to perpetuate himself beyond each memory wipe is an expression of free will and independence which is not always reliable. A new version of Unk will always emerge but, due to the nature of his emergence, he cannot be considered a continuation of what came before. Each version of Unk differs slightly with each reincarnation to the point where he eventually becomes unrecognizable.
Related Titles
By Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
