God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.”

In the book’s opening line, Vonnegut emphasizes that the story centers on the Rosewater fortune. Just as bees instinctually produce honey, Vonnegut argues, humans have a similar innate impulse: making money is their raison d’être. Not only is money important in the novel, but Vonnegut also calls it the protagonist, suggesting that the Rosewater fortune has its own narrative arc of growth. This absurd concept establishes the story’s satirical, humorous viewpoint from the onset.

“E pluribus unum is surely an ironic motto to inscribe on the currency of this Utopia gone bust, for every grotesquely rich American represents property, privileges, and pleasures that have been denied the many.”

Mushari reads this line in Eliot’s letters to his potential successor. Although his mental fitness to run the Rosewater Foundation is in question, Eliot thinks deeply about the inequality in America. The country was founded on a motto—E pluribus unum (“out of many, one”)—that stands at odds with the reality of financial equality among its people. In America, Eliot finds the gap between the most wealthy and the most impoverished obscene and hypocritical. The Rosewater fortune symbolizes this socioeconomic gap.

“Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed.”

Eliot’s attitude of the wealthy toward the working class develops the theme of American Capitalism and Socioeconomic Inequality. The country incentivizes the accumulation of wealth by granting the affluent greater power and influence in society.