Breakfast of Champions was the first Vonnegut book that I ever "got" or at least felt like I did. :) As I begin to read it and gradually began to learn what it was that Kurt Vonnegut was talking about it had a really profound effect on me. It felt like I was literally opening my eyes. I felt like I had awoken in a different place with new knowledge about what was going on around me.

It is hard to define exactly why it had this effect on me, except to say that maybe, prior to reading it I had lived (have lived) a very sheltered life and probabaly a very shallow one too. It made me think about things that I probably would not have thought about at any other time.

I credit this book (which I first read at about 20 or so) with sort of opening my eyes to social awareness. Just in general. I don't think I ever thought about a lot of the things that I think about now. It was sort of like coming out of being a sheltered, spoiled teen and learning about the world out there.

It is interesting and frightening to think about whether or not this sort of 'awakening' would have taken place had I NOT ever read this book and later all of Vonnegut's work. Would I have become a different person? Would I have remained a sheep, who could never see past the mall, if had not been for KV?

This is not to say that I am now some kind of harbinger of social justice and enlightenment, just that I am an 'aware' member of society, who tries to think for themselves. Someone who tries to know what is going on and helps whenever they can.

I would also like to add that I think my becoming a Buddhist many years later and the limited amount of social activism that I have participated in have probably come in some way from this book. If not for my eyes being opened, who knows who I would have turned out to be?