YMMV / Breakfast of Champions

• Ass Pull: Lampshaded in-verse, as Vonnegut conveniently makes Dwayne a speedreader, courtesy of previously unmentioned classes, in order to quickly read the book that will inspire his rampage.
• Jerkass Woobie: Dwayne Hoover. The novel spoils that he'll have a psychotic episode and hurt several people, but he's still a poor man damaged by his wife's suicide. The late-stage syphillis doesn't help, either.
• Nightmare Fuel: While the fact that he will lose it and attack people isn't a secret, it's still horrendous when the rampage finally happens. Among other things, Dwayne brutally smashes his son's face, breaks his lover's ribs, and bites off the top part of one of Trout's fingers, when he tries to intervene.
• Tearjerker: Despite the comedic tone, there's plenty of personal tragedy in the novel to go around:
  • Kilgore Trout really goes through a number of hardships in the narrative. Finally recognized, he's mugged in New York City, has his feet hardened in plastic after wading through the polluted river, unwittingly inspires a demented man to attack other people, and loses a piece of his finger when he tries to intervene. To say nothing of the conclusion, where he meets Vonnegut and begs him to make him young again. It's further cemented by the final illustration of the novel: Trout, with a single tear rolling down his face.
  • While most of the novel's many, many tangents are played for laughs, Vonnegut going off on how his mother killed herself with sleeping pills, and how her suicide affected his fight with depression, can really hit the reader in the gut. (And it is true, by the way.)
• The Woobie:
  • Trout, for the reasons listed above. Creeps into Jerkass Woobie territory, when he acts in a hostile manner, to illustrate his lack of success and recognition in the arts.
  • Patty Keene also counts. She was raped before the events of the novel, and her attempt to turn her life around is foiled by Dwayne's mental state keeping him from recognizing her plea for employment.
  • Wayne Hoobler had a rather miserable life as well (much of it spent in prison), but he's too much of a delusional Cloud Cuckoolander lost in his own nonsensical happy talk to even notice how pitiful he is.

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