A fool and his self-respect are soon parted.
Jailbird is a novel by Vonnegut on the theme of justice, both social and its retribution through the penitentiary system, although life in jail is more directly explored in Mother Night. It relates the story of Walter Starbuck who, although innocent of all things, is involved in various wrongdoings, which he takes as a just burden although he is a collateral observer as opposed to an actor, being less than a patsy in the events. Those have been chosen to be the Watergate scandal, where he was a minor character in the major political scandal of US politics, in the Nixon administration, and a discovery of clarinet parts in his hotel room, as a counterpart of no importance but with similar consequences. We follow the main character as he goes through life with guilt and impotency.
In parallel of the futile accusations on Starbuck, one reads on the more substantial ones of more major cases, more prominently, that of Sacco and Vanzetti. The class struggle also subtends much of the novel. The introduction on the (fictitious, but deeply rooted in reality) Cuyahoga massacre sets the tone of a profoundly socialist and humanist novel: the affliction on man from man.
Another recurrent theme, especially vivid in the Sirens of Titan, is also the handling of fame and power by someone who has or acquires it fortuitly. Here, Starbuck first becomes the protégé of a wealthy tycoon (McCone) who pays for his Harvard education, accessing this condition from being the son of McCone's personal driver and by playing chess with the lonesome industrialist, himself traumatized from his family interactions with the social class. Later, Starbuck also gets command of the all-powerful RAMJAC corporation (the GAFAM of nowadays) by compassionate re-encounter with a former lover, turned homeless old lady in rags. The parallel with Noel and Malachi Constant is almost one to one.
The main inspiration for the book could be seen as the Sermon on the Mount, which opens and closes the book (in an Epilogue, cf. Deadeye Dick). The opening involves the historical figure Powers Hapgood, who is queried by a judge as to the reason of his involvement with the labor movement, given his fine background and education. The narrator makes the same answer to congressman Nixon asking him why he is ungrateful to the American way of life:
Why? The Sermon on the Mount, sir.