America has grown into a very capitalistic, consumer-targeting society. Advertising is a gimmick that markets have been using to target the consumer audience. Although some look at the growing consumer oriented markets as progress, Kurt Vonnegut uses his novel Breakfast of Champions to downgrade the whole issue of advertising and consumerism. He emphasizes how the market economy has become incorporated into our language, has manipulated our actions, and has had a somewhat adverse effect on American society.
             In Breakfast of Champions, criticism on the whole advertising industry is a frequent theme. It is phenomenal how advertisement has affected a whole array of people in so many ways. Children three years of age being exposed to "Power Ranger laser guns," to seniors of age 85 watching infomercials on the "Clapper," are a huge amount of people being targeted. Not only are these advertisements appealing, they also subconsciously become part of the consumers' language. The word "Kleenex" is used to refer to soft pieces of tissue. This has become so internalized in our vocabulary that we refer them by their brand name rather than simply as "tissues." To Vonnegut, it sounds silly when people see a Volkswagen Beetle automobile and refer to it as a "bug." It is ironic that a one-ton mass of metal is named after a tiny, two-ounce organism. Through his character, Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut analyzes how this whole concept of internalization. Trout, when sitting with the trucker, notices the big, bold signs on the sides of trucks. He can't help but think the way a child would in the situation, "the message must be terrifically important, since somebody had gone to the trouble of writing it in letters so big." One truck had the sign "AJAX" on the side. To one first hearing about it, it would look like just a bunch of capital letters making an awkward s...