Breakfast of Champions: Chapter 24 Summary & Analysis

Dwayne attacks so many people on his “rampage,” that a “special ambulance known as Martha” is called to the scene. The ambulance can hold up to thirty-six “disaster victims,” and it has an operating room and enough food to last for an entire week. The ambulance is named for the wife of a Country Commissioner who died from rabies after she was bitten by a bat. “My psychiatrist is also named Martha,” Vonnegut writes. Martha is on vacation now, but Vonnegut “likes her a lot.”

Aboard Martha is two physicians, Cyprian Ukwende and Khashdrahr Miasma, who is from Bangladesh. A young “white American” named Eddie Key is driving the disaster vehicle, and he is the direct descendant of Francis Scott Key, the man who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner. Eddie knows the history of over six hundred of his ancestors, which includes “Africans, Indians, and white men.”

Dwayne boards the ambulance wrapped “tightly in canvas restraining sheets.” He is unaware of his surroundings and yells, “Goodbye, Blue Monday!” as Kilgore boards the ambulance unassisted. Kilgore is one of the “walking wounded,” and he holds up a bloody hand for Dr. Ukwende to assess. Kilgore had grabbed Dwayne from behind as he gave Francine Pefko the beating “his bad chemicals made him think she richly deserved.” He had already broken her jaw and several ribs by the time a crowd began to form. “Best fucking machine in the State,” Dwayne yelled. “Wind her up, and she’ll fuck you and say she loves you, and she won’t shut up till you give a Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.”

When Kilgore tried to stop Dwayne from beating Francine, Dwayne bit off Kilgore’s finger and spit it into Sugar Creek. “This isn’t the kind of book where people get what is coming to them in the end,” Vonnegut writes. Except for Don Breedlove, who raped Patty Keene behind the Bannister Memorial Fieldhouse. Don was in the kitchen fixing a gas oven when Dwayne went crazy in the lounge of the Holiday Inn. He stepped out of the kitchen to see Dwayne, whom he already knew because Dwayne had sold him a “lemon” from his dealership.

Dwayne didn’t actually sell Don a “lemon”—the neighborhood kids had poured maple syrup in the gas tank—but Dwayne had tried to fix it anyway. As Dwayne approached Don at the Holiday Inn, he shook his hand, then Dwayne punched him hard in the side of the head. Don will “never hear anything with that ear, ever again.”

Aboard Martha, Dr. Ukwende tries to remove Dwayne’s shoes, but he has waded through Sugar Creek as well, and his socks and shoes have turned to plastic. Dr. Ukwende is plenty used to “plasticized, unitized shoes and socks.” He sees it all the time when kids come into the emergency room, and he even has a special pair of tinsnips he uses to cut them free. “Get some shears,” Dr. Ukwende says to Dr. Khashdrahr.

For a moment, Dwayne’s “awareness returns to Earth,” and he begins to talk lucidly. He tells Dr. Ukwende that he is going to open a new health club in Midland City. Dwayne plans to open the health club and sell it for a profit as soon as possible. “People get all enthusiastic about getting back in shape or losing some pounds,” Dwayne says. “They sign up for the program, but then they lose interest in about a year, and they stop coming. That’s how people are.”

Dwayne never does open a health club. Instead, he is mercilessly sued by all the people he attacked and is “rendered destitute.” He loses his fancy house and moves to “Skid Row” to live at the Fairchild Hotel. When people in town pass him on the street they say, “See him? Can you believe it? He doesn’t have doodley-squat now, but he used to be fabulously well-to-do.”