Classics Corner: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; Vonnegut's Brilliant and Confusing Classic About War, Love, Death, and Time Hopping Aliens
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
PopSugar Reading Challenge: A banned or challenged book you read during Banned Books Week
Spoilers: Once and for all, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a masterful storyteller.
A storyteller that grabbed you with weirdness, eccentricity, and oddball characters. A storyteller that enjoyed subverting expectations and confusing the hell out of his Readers. A storyteller that often had conflicting views and loved shocking people with his forthright upfront opinions. A storyteller who loved to provoke thought and discussion with his brutally violent and sexually honest books. But a storyteller nonetheless.
Certainly the acme, highest point, of Vonnegut's gifts is his novel, Slaughterhouse Five, a brilliant and purposely confusing classic about the evils of war, the existence of intelligent life on other planets, and the fragility of time and how fate, memory, and action play into our knowledge of time. It's Kurt Vonnegut's Brief History of Time (if Stephen Hawking stepped aside and let Vonnegut write his book.) It's satire, serious, tragic, thought provoking, bizarre, and an exciting challenge to read.
Once we are told at the beginning that "All of this happened, more or less," the Reader knows they are in for one weird and wild ride indeed. The prologue explains that the author/narrator, more than likely a fictional version of Vonnegut, talks about his time studying at the University of Chicago, fighting in WWII, his research on the Children's Crusade, and his travels through Cold War Europe. Oh yeah, he incidentally mentions a buddy of his, Billy Pilgrim, from the town of Illium, New York who, by the way, was abducted by aliens from the planet, Tralfamadore and became "unstuck in time." Crazy huh? Friends and the darndest things they say.
After the prologue, we get to experience Billy Pilgrim's story in all its bizarre, confusing, yet enchanting glory. Since we are warned in advance that Billy has become unstuck in time, we know the story is probably not going to be a traditional chronological linear narrative and Vonnegut does not disappoint. The narrative skips from Billy's time in WWII, to his old age living with his adult daughter, to his young adulthood in Illium courting his future wife, Valencia Merble, to his abduction and time on a Tralfamadorian zoo, to his death during an assassination while speaking in front of thousands of people about time and flying saucers, to his youth with his parents, and back around in a strange cycle that Billy recalls all that had happened and will happen.
Slaughterhouse Five is an exercise in postmodernism and recognizes how authors can manipulate plot and setting to entice Readers to follow them. Since there is no sense in the chronology, the Reader knows that they are in Vonnegut's yard, so they might as well sit back and enjoy the show. Because of the book going back and forth in time, there is a fatalistic sense to Billy's story and the novel as a whole. As the Trafalmadorians observe Billy's interactions with the people around him: friends, family, fellow soldiers, enemies, one gets the sense that they are observing all of human nature: our lives, our loves, our hatreds.
The Trafalmadorians observe Billy and other Earthlings with a sense of detachment. They don't want to destroy or change the planet, just study it. Their oft-repeated mantra is "And so it goes," especially when someone dies. Death is just something that happens without much concern. The subtitle to the book is The Children's Crusade and it makes sense. To the Tralfamadorians, we are nothing more than children, to be watched and monitored as we make our youthful mistakes.
Because of the fatalism, Billy makes no motion to change or alter his destiny. Like the Tralfamadorians, he is a mere observer in his life. He knows that fighting in WWII, he will come face to face with death and be held captive by the German army, but he continues. He knows that Valencia will be killed in a horrific accident, that his son will be a shiftless layabout to later become a Green Beret, and that he will end up living with his daughter's family, but he has no desire to change these things. He even knows the circumstances of his death and who it is that will administer it. He makes no effort to stop it and gets to know the man who will later kill him. Since his life runs out of sequence, he sees that his past, present, and future as inevitable. After all, it is very easy to be non committal to your death, when after it happens, you zip back into your life as a 12 year old. Billy takes on the Tralfamadorians' view of detached acceptance looking at his life with the same view: "And so it goes."
Vonnegut has a bit of fun in his writing. He is fond of clever one-liners such as in the intro when the narrator writes that he wants to write an anti-war book, his publisher asks "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?" (Because I guess glaciers are like wars, they will always be there? Of course the added unforeseen irony is writing an anti-glacier book calls to mind another controversial topic: climate change.) There's the fact that Billy is "unstuck in time" not traveling in time, but unstuck, as though time itself was a mere construct that one could come in and out of voluntarily. Even onamatopeia gets the Vonnegut treatment with a bird's call "poo-te-weet" during the bombing in Dresden calling to mind a death knell, as though the end were imminent.
Characters also get a skewering from Vonnegut's savage writing. Ronald Weary, a fervent patriot and fellow soldier, has a predictable pattern for friendship: pretend friendliness with someone and then later "he would find some pretext for beating the s#@t out of them." Weary also becomes a catalyst in Billy's death, when after he dies, another soldier vows that someday he will make Billy pay.
When Billy first meets Valencia, he isn't exactly smitten with the love bug, but knows that he will marry her. ("Billy didn't want to marry ugly Valencia. She was one of the symptoms of his disease. He knew he was going crazy when he heard himself proposing marriage to her, when he begged her to take the diamond ring and be his companion for life.")
Montana Wildhack, an adult film actress and fellow abductee at Trafalmadore, is partnered with Billy so their abductors can see Earthlings procreate. Montana is one of the few to understand Billy's time travels and can always tell when he is unstuck. During one of Billy's returns to his future, he tries to look her up only to learn that she is reported dead, even though he knows she's on Trafalmadore with their baby.
One of the more interesting aspects of Vonnegut's writing is the shared universe mythology of his works. This book goes full out by having Billy encounter Vonnegut's other characters like Harold
W. Campbell Jr., an American Nazi from Mother Night, and Eliot Rosewater, a science fiction fan and conspiracy theorist, from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It's fun reading this team of oddballs and curmudgeons bounce off each other and ramble about their weird philosophies and theories. (Yes, the guy who was abducted by aliens and is unstuck in time is the normal one in the group.)
One of the more fascinating members of Vonnegut's Not-Exactly-The-Avengers is Kilgore Trout. Trout is considered one of the worst science fiction authors in the world and only can boast of one fan, the aforementioned, Eliot Rosewater. Billy later reads Trout's work and soon he becomes the only author that he likes reading (so Trout's fandom rises to a mighty two. Kilgore-Con must be fun.) Once Trout befriends Billy, he keeps bugging him to hear details about his time travels and abduction, no doubt hoping for more material.
Besides Slaughterhouse Five, Trout would also appear in Vonnegut's other novels, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Breakfast of Champions, Jailbird, Galapagos, and Timequake. He is a fourth wall breaking character who thinks he might be a fictional character in someone's world. Because of his eccentricity and self-depreciating sense of humor, some consider Trout to be Vonnegut's mouthpiece. Vonnegut was so enamored with the character that in 2004, he actually prepared Kilgore Trout's obituary, announcing that the character "committed suicide" when a psychic informed him that George W. Bush was certain to win a second term in office.
By far, the most memorable passages in Slaughterhouse Five, occurs during Billy's time in WWII, particularly during the Battle of Dresden (which Vonnegut himself encountered). Slaughterhouse Five has been described as an anti-war novel, by some as even the best anti-war novel. (Personally, Johnny Got His Gun, Catch 22, and Farewell to Arms share that distinction for me). But Slaughterhouse Five is certainly graphic and honest about the brutality of war and the human monsters that it creates.
A huge chunk of Billy's memories and time travel occur during his time in WWII. There are many unforgettable moments where Billy, originally supposed to be a chaplain's assistant, is thrust into a war and the realities of battle in which he is unprepared: the marching with ruined shoes, the bombs exploding in the distance, the anxiety of never knowing which moment is your last (except Billy for obvious Tralfamadorian-sized reasons), the transformation of other human beings into an enemy to be hunted and destroyed.
Billy's acceptance but concerns about war contrast with Weary's over the top obnoxious jingoism. Billy sees war as cruel, but inevitable while Weary is the "kill 'em all and let God sort it out later" variety. Weary views the Germans as enemies and ironically holds much of the same views the Nazis had.
It is no coincidence that Billy and his fellow American soldiers were made prisoners of war inside a slaughterhouse (hence the title). Nor is it a coincidence that the Bombing of Dresden (in which Americans attacked civilian targets, not just soldiers, including children.) occurs in the book. Besides Vonnegut being an eyewitness to this battle, these passages show the real brutality and fanaticism that war brings.
Vonnegut's writing shows that fanaticism can be found on all sides and when it comes to war, inhumanity is not exclusive to one army or one country, but can be found anywhere and by anyone. While some think of WWII as a good war against Hitler and Nazism, in truth no side was above horrific actions. Vonnegut reported the Bombing of Dresden as he saw it and what he saw was truly monstrous, no matter which side was responsible.
Slaughterhouse Five is a memorable novel that combines the horrors of war with the wonder of space and time travel. It is often challenged and sometimes banned? However, it is frequently bizarre but also brilliant. It is a masterful story told by a gifted storyteller.
And so it goes.
