Perhaps the most despicable character in Breakfast of Champions, and the only character to get “what is coming to [him] in the end.” Don Breedlove, a white man, is a married father of three and works as a gas-conversion unit installer. He rapes seventeen-year-old Patty Keene behind the George Hickman Bannister Memorial Fieldhouse, and he is the father of Gloria Browning’s “destroyed fetus.” Don Breedlove is so hateful that the neighborhood kids pour maple syrup in the gas tank of his car, and when it can’t be fixed, he accuses Dwayne Hoover of selling him “a lemon.” He is at the Holiday Inn servicing a gas oven the night Dwayne goes insane, and he is rendered deaf after Dwayne punches him in the ear.
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Don Breedlove Character Timeline in Breakfast of Champions
The timeline below shows where the character Don Breedlove appears in Breakfast of Champions. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 15
...book “about Chinamen.” Around this time, she “lost her virginity” when she was raped by Don Breedlove, a white gas-conversion unit installer, behind the Bannister Memorial Fieldhouse after a basketball game....
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...age of twenty-five after a “botched abortion.” Ironically, the father of her “destroyed fetus” was Don Breedlove, the married father of three who raped Patty Keene behind the George Bannister Memorial...
(full context)
Chapter 24
...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...
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Dwayne didn’t actually sell Don a “lemon”—the neighborhood kids had poured maple syrup in the gas tank—but Dwayne had tried...
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