All the King's Horses (story)

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This article is about the short story. For other uses, see All the King's Horses.

"All the King's Horses"
Author	Kurt Vonnegut
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre(s)	Psychological thriller short story
Published in	Welcome to the Monkey House
Publication type	Anthology
Publisher	Delacorte Press
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Publication date	1968

"All the King's Horses" is a short story written in or before 1951 by Kurt Vonnegut.^[1] It can be found in his collection of short stories Welcome to the Monkey House. It derives its title from a line in the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme.

[edit] Plot summary

The story takes place in the early years of the Cold War and centers on a U.S. Army Colonel, Bryan Kelly, whose plane has been shot down in the Asiatic mainland. With him are his two sons, his wife, the pilot and co-pilot, and ten enlisted men. The sixteen prisoners are held captive by the Chinese officer Pi Ying, who forces Kelly to play a game of chess — using his family and men as the pieces. If he can defeat Pi Ying in the battle of wits, then the sixteen captives are free to go, except there is one catch: every American piece who is captured will be executed immediately. This leads to a moral dilemma for Kelly as he is forced to make decisions with the lives of everyone hanging in balance.

[edit] References

1. ^ Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. "All the King's Horses". Collier's. 10 Feb 1951.

v • d • e Works of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Novels Player Piano (1952) · The Sirens of Titan (1959) · Mother Night (1961) · Cat's Cradle (1963) · God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) · Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) · Breakfast of Champions (1973) · Slapstick (1976) · Jailbird (1979) · Deadeye Dick (1982) · Galápagos (1985) · Bluebeard (1987) · Hocus Pocus (1990) · Timequake (1997) Story collections Canary in a Cathouse (1961) · Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) · Bagombo Snuff Box (1999) · Armageddon in Retrospect (2008) Collected essays Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1974) · Palm Sunday (1981) · Fates Worse than Death (1990) · God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999) · A Man Without a Country (2005) Scripts Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970) · Between Time and Timbuktu (1972) · Make Up Your Mind (1993) · Miss Temptation (1993) · L'Histoire du Soldat (1993) Adaptations Stage Welcome to the Monkey House (1970, 1974) · Sirens of Titan (1974) · Cat's Cradle (1976) · God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1979) · Breakfast of Champions (1984) • Requiem (Stone, Time, and Elements: A Humanist Requiem) (1988) · Slaughterhouse-Five (1996) Film Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971) · Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) · Next Door (1975) · Slapstick of Another Kind (1982) · Harrison Bergeron (1995) · Mother Night (1996) · Breakfast of Champions (1999) Television Displaced Person (1958, 1985) · Between Time and Timbuktu (1972) · EPICAC (1974, 1992) · Who Am I This Time? (1982) · All the King's Horses (1991) • Next Door (1991) · The Euphio Question (1991) · Fortitude (1992) · The Foster Portfolio (1992) · More Stately Mansions (1992) · Harrison Bergeron (1995)