God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Chapter 2 provides Eliot’s early history. He was born in Washington, DC, in 1918. After attending Loomis and Harvard Law School, he served honorably with the marines in World War II, rising to the rank of captain. Near the end of the war, he is diagnosed with “combat fatigue.” While convalescing in Paris, he meets Sylvia, the daughter of wealthy philanthropists, whom he marries.

Back in America, Eliot resumes his legal studies, specializing in international law, and becomes president of the Rosewater Foundation. He drinks heavily but never seems drunk. His alcohol consumption does not initially interfere with his, but this changes as Eliot’s behavior becomes increasingly eccentric. In Milford, Pennsylvania, Eliot invades a room of science-fiction writers and gives a rambling speech. Mushari has the drunken speech on tape, in which Eliot extolls the writers as the only ones who take the world’s big issues seriously; he values their willingness to speculate about humanity’s trajectory.

Eliot’s favorite writer is science fiction author Kilgore Trout, who works as a stock clerk. Although Trout is a prolific author, he is unknown outside the science fiction community. Eliot reads a copy of Trout’s novel 2BR02B, in which Trout describes a world where humans have “conquered” diseases. Automation dominates society, and without the prospect of death, ethical suicide parlors become popular. In the story, one dying man says that when he finally meets God, he wants to ask: “What in the hell are people for?” (22).

After the Milford incident, Eliot hitchhikes to a bar in Swarthmore, where he offers to buy drinks for all volunteer firefighters. Eliot tells the bar patrons that he used to belong to a volunteer fire department. The truth is that as a boy, Eliot was the honorary mascot of the Volunteer Fire Department of Rosewater. Eliot makes an intoxicated speech about the violent power of oxygen, explaining how the element has the potential to combine with any earthly matter. He believes that he and the firefighters are bound together to protect Earth from oxygen. After his speech, he spends the night in jail on a drunk and disorderly charge.

A month later, he begins trading his expensive wardrobe for work clothes and cheap suits. When told about his son’s eccentricities, Eliot’s father says that Eliot has a “spine” and that there is no need to worry. Eliot begins psychoanalysis to help him stop drinking, but a year later, the therapist discharges him as “untreatable.” The therapist tells Sylvia that Eliot blames himself for the death of his mother and that this is a source of emotional trauma. Eliot’s mother died in a sailing accident when he was 19, but he was not at fault.

At the end of the chapter, Eliot and Sylvia attend a performance of the opera Aida, which the Rosewater Foundation has funded. Eliot is well-behaved until the opera’s final scene, during which he yells at the characters on stage, disrupting the performance. In the scene, the two actors gasp their last breaths as they suffocate. Eliot seriously recommends that they stop singing and assures them that he knows about oxygen.

Mushari learns that Eliot disappeared on the night of the Aida performance. Ten days later, Sylvia receives a letter from Eliot addressed to Ophelia. In the letter, Eliot reminds her that she asked for a divorce and compares himself to Hamlet. Eliot vividly describes Elsinore fire trucks and compares them to tigers. The letter does not read as if it were written by someone of sound mind, but Mushari is disappointed that it does not provide definitive evidence of Eliot’s mental “instability.”

Eliot travels to Vashti, Texas, and is arrested after making a speech about revolution at a firehouse. He posits that the aim of the military is to clean up “poor Americans” so that “rich Americans” can bear the sight of them. He then goes to New Vienna, Iowa, and writes to Sylvia on the local fire department’s stationery. Eliot assures her that he has not touched alcohol in 16 hours and now knows where he must go.

At the end of the chapter, Syliva waits with a recorder for Eliot to telephone her. Eliot calls and eventually tells her that he is in his hometown of Rosewater, Indiana. His plan is to remain there, relocate the foundation’s headquarters, and take care of the townspeople. He describes the town’s failing industry and world-weary citizens and explains his newfound purpose: “I realize that they can’t even care about themselves any more—because they have no use. […] I’m going to love these discarded Americans, even though they’re useless and unattractive. That is going to be my work of art. (43).

Chapter 4 begins with a brief description of Rosewater County and the town of Rosewater, which is in the county’s center. Some parts of town are impoverished while the affluent people live in a neighborhood called Avondale. They are primarily Rosewater Corporation employees.

Eliot and Sylvia move into the Rosewater mansion, and Eliot thinks of them as the “King and Queen.” Eliot instructs Sylvia to receive all “prosperous visitors” and gifts gratefully but with a cool indifference, which makes the rich neighbors feel snubbed. Soon the couple begins entertaining the less well-off people of Rosewater, holding “lavish banquets for morons, perverts, starvelings and the unemployed” (49). The wealthy residents of Avondale become incredulous of and embittered by Eliot’s attention to people from a lower socioeconomic class. After living in Rosewater for five years, Sylvia has a mental health crisis and burns down the local firehouse. The people of Avondale are gleeful at her downfall. Eliot and Fire Chief Charley Warmergran admit Sylvia to a psychiatric hospital under the care of Dr. Ed Brown. Dr. Brown coins the term “samaritrophia,” which means “hysterical indifference to the troubles of those less fortunate than oneself” (51), to categorize Sylvia’s “disease.” Vonnegut creates the satirical term to pathologize the wealthy’s lack of compassion.

Mushari reads Dr. Brown’s confidential treatise, giving Vonnegut the opportunity to include much of the text in the chapter. Dr. Brown believes that he has cured Sylvia, or “Mrs. Z,” with shock treatments. He has “calmed” her “samaritrophic collapse,” and she no longer shares Eliot’s moral burdens. The doctor also presumes that “Mr. Z,” as he refers to Eliot in the paper, is so caring that if he developed samaritrophia, he would kill himself or others. During Eliot’s visits, Sylvia displays symptoms of paranoia. Eliot sends her to Switzerland for further treatment after she experiences another emotional collapse in July of 1964. On her doctor’s advice, she decides not to return to Rosewater and begins divorce proceedings as part of her recovery.

Back in America in the present day, Sylvia meets Senator Lister, McAllister, and Mushari to legalize the divorce. Eliot refuses to leave Rosewater and does not attend. The Senator believes that Eliot’s compassion is a “booze problem,” insisting that his son would not care about “the maggots” if he were sober. The Senator also laments that Eliot never had a child who could serve as the heir to the foundation. McAllister reminds them that there is another branch of Rosewaters in Pisquontuit, Rhode Island. The Senator does not deem them worthy of the family fortune because they occupy a lower socioeconomic class.

In Rosewater, Eliot opens an office for the foundation in a dingy attic above a lunchroom and liquor store. On each window outside are the words: “ROSEWATER FOUNDATION. HOW CAN WE HELP YOU?” (62).

Every surface in Eliot’s office is covered with tax documents, cans, cigarette butts, and paperwork. He tacks up magazine pictures of people and baby animals. He removes the lettering from one of the windows and replaces it with a poem by William Blake:

The Angel that presided o’er my birth said,

‘Little creature, form’d of Joy & Mirth,

Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth‘ (64).

As the Senator and McAllister talk, the Senator confides that he wishes he and Eliot were dead. To secure the foundation’s money, McAllister suggests that Sylvia and Eliot reconcile, but Sylvia refuses. Following her second recovery, Sylvia now grapples with “worthlessness” and “shame.” She defends the people Eliot helps and maintains that Eliot is doing something beautiful. She explains that she is not worthy to join Eliot’s cause.

Eliot has slowly given away his wardrobe, reducing it to only one shirt, one suit, and one pair of shoes. He has two telephones in his office: one is red, and the other is black. The red telephone rings when people wish to report fires. After a call, Eliot pushes a red button that sounds the fire alarm. The black telephone is for people who call the foundation.

One evening, he receives a call from a 68-year-old woman named Diana Moon Glampers who works as a maid at the Rosewater mansion. She has a fear of lightning and asks Eliot to keep her calm during the thunderstorm. She laments her unhappy life, but when she mentions suicide, Eliot dissuades her. Diana is extremely grateful for Eliot’s compassion: “You gave up everything a man is supposed to want, just to help the little people, and the little people know it. God bless you, Mr. Rosewater. Good night” (71).