Here are some prompts you might want to respond to for Slaughterhouse-Five:
- Do you believe this is an anti-war book or not? Vonnegut concedes in the opening chapter that trying to stop wars is like trying to stop glaciers. Is he a fatalist, as some critics have charged, or does he think change is possible?
- What are we supposed to think about the Tralfamadorians and their world-view? Does Vonnegut believe (and want us to believe) that the Tralfamadorian philosophy of life is more sane and reasonable than that of earthlings? Or do you believe that Vonnegut satirizes the Tralfamadorian view–that he presents it ironically?
- Talk about the book’s structure and what it means for Billy Pilgrim to “come unstuck in time.”
- Discuss gender and domesticity in the novel.
- Choose a particular scene and provide a close reading of it. You might look, for instance, at the scene when Billy and Roland Weary get captured, at the British officers’ staging of Cinderella inside the prison camp, at a scene from Billy’s childhood, or at something that takes place in the flying saucer or in the zoo at Tralfamadore.
I believe that Slaughterhouse-Five is certainly an anti-war book as it condemns the act of war, the ease with which it is entered into, and the desire man has to legitimize it as a necessity. The constant repetition of “so it goes” throughout the novel, while ringing of a fatalistic tone, served to highlight the atrocity of death in war. With every instance of “so it goes”, I found myself coming to expect it and almost anticipate when it would appear. By the end of the novel the phrase had an almost numbing effect on me as a reader. While the depictions of death were still gruesome and unsettling (the smell of the underground tunnels turned tombs in Dresden, for example), I came to expect them. I think this is part of Vonnegut’s condemnation of war; that society could become anesthetized to death and violence is something that should make us unsettled, even if war itself can’t be eradicated.
However, I don’t believe that this view of war as inevitable makes Vonnegut a fatalist. The amount of time, effort, and years devoted to crafting Slaughterhouse-Five (which Vonnegut outlines in Chapter One) speaks to Vonnegut’s belief that change is possible. Throughout the pessimistic elements of the novel, such as the Tralfamadorian belief of inevitability (“He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way” (121)), Vonnegut’s voice as an author appears, disrupting my emersion in the world of Billy Pilgrim and the inescapability of war. “That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book” (130). By never remaining fully in the fictional world crafted by the narrator, I was reminded that this is a work of fiction based on the very real life of Vonnegut and the real events of World War II. As such, I was forced to think of the atrocities of war not in a theoretical sense but very realistically. War, death, and romantic views of violence are not only problems for Billy Pilgrim in the 20th century, but for the reader in the 21st century as well. I think Vonnegut recognizes these are part of deeply rooted issues in human nature that are not easily done away with. However, like the Tralfamadores and Billy Pilgrim, we must find a way to live in society and attempt to make it a better place, inevitabilities aside. By the end of the novel, Billy is proclaiming his beliefs (the reality of the Tralfamadores) despite others believing he is crazy. Vonnegut as the author is also proclaiming his belief of war as an atrocity in the completion of Slaughterhouse-Five. It is now up to the reader, myself included, to build on Vonnegut’s example and proclaim this truth as well.
At its heart, Slaughterhouse Five is a novel about one man’s struggle with PTSD. Billy Pilgrim’s story jumps constantly between various moments in time causing him to be “unstuck”. It states that “ Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next” (p.29). Billy is constantly reminded by his traumas associated with his time in Dresden, the war, and what occurred after that he is ultimately forced to relive these experiences over and over again. This idea of exploring the mental and emotional ramifications of war compounds upon itself into being deemed an anti-war novel. By the very inclusion of these topics and the expansive hold that PTSD has on the novel and Billy Pilgrim as a character shows us that Billy (and Vonnegut) despise war and all the wreckage to life it causes, both directly and indirectly.
Vonnegut uses a unique structure in Slaughterhouse-Five in which the protagonist Billy Pilgrim constantly drifts between moments in his life at random. He never knows where he will end up next. On stage about to be assassinated. Or in the bombed out ruins of Dresden during World War II. Vonnegut uses this concept of being “unstuck in time” in order to replicate the nature of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The cycle of trauma is relived and can be brought about by the most innocuous events. At any moment he finds himself in a new place transported back in time or forward in time or completely outside of it all together. His trauma has caused him to be removed from the normal procession of life. He is now an outsider and has a more difficult time relating to others because of his experiences. Vonnegut himself struggled with his experiences in World War II especially the bombing of Dresden for which he was present. It never left him. It reappears in his work several times and is something that he continuously drew inspiration from. That is the nature of trauma. It can be almost impossible to let go of entirely and therefore the traumatized are dragged back through it time and again. Time operates differently for those who have experienced extreme trauma.
I will choose a scene from when we find out Billy committed himself to a psychiatric hospital. His mother comes to visit him often, but he is unable to engage with her. He consistently pulls the blanket over his head. In this scene, we find out how he feels when his mother visits.
The passage reads, “She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t like life at all” (pg 58).
To me, this reads like a person who has issues with dealing with the pressures of either being successful or at the very least, making their parents proud. It is hard to say which is which, though, because Billy seems to be in a trance throughout the whole novel. Even when it comes to his fiance Valencia, Vonnegut writes, “Billy didn’t want to marry ugly Valencia. She was one of the symptoms of his disease” (pg 61). He knew he was going crazy when he proposed. I believe after the war, he not only suffers from PTSD but anxiety.
PTSD can stem from more than the war. The book noted the doctors didn’t think him going crazy was from the war, but from his dad throwing him in the pool and taking him to the edge of the Grand Canyon. I believe a person can develop PTSD from all of those things. If a person experiences trauma, they can develop mental illness from it. Maybe Billy is traumatized from all that and he feels he is not living his life like he thinks his mom wants him to. According to Billy, his mother makes him feel that way, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she says these kinds of things to him. Billy even says, “She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high-school education” (pg 58). So, his mother isn’t the problem, it is Billy’s thoughts and pressure he must be putting on himself as he tries to find his place in life after war.
I do believe Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-five is an anti-war novel, and it’s a pretty brilliant one.
There is a fatalist Vonnegut, who accepted that “everything is OK, everything has been OK, and everything will be OK” like Billy, deeply traumatized and desensitized in order to carry on with everyday life; Then there is the activist Vonnegut, who travelled through space and time and poured his heart out writing this book, because he couldn’t just make peace with the excuse that “it had to be done”. He needed the tragedy of Dresden reflected upon by more and more people in this world.
I believe both Vonnegut existed in the author in order to create this book.
While this book could be included in the genre of Sci-fi, I got the feeling that Billy’s special ability to time travel was a dark parody to PTSD. This is exactly what trauma victim felt — time becomes a whirlpool after trauma and the victim never “grows up” from it, instead he or she grows around it — he/she appears jaded and desensitized, but can snap back in the moment of trauma at any random time with the slightest trigger. Billy’s being “unstuck in time” is really being stuck in his nightmare.
Vonnegut also left hints in the book to suggest that Billy’s daughter might have been right all along — he constructed the space alien and time travel theories bit by bit from acquaintances he had, artifacts he owned and books he read in order to cope with the real trauma.
Regarding gender roles and domesticity, I do find it frustrating that Vonnegut built a lot of female characters on one stereotype: they were good looking and stupid. To make matters worse, his female protagonists who didn’t fall in that stereotype had no other redeeming quality than providing a sense of “home” and “belonging” to his male protagonists.
This may be going off on a tangent, but I’m always amazed when I read counter-culture authors, Vonnegut and Kerouac included, an saw how they littered their contempt towards women throughout their books with ease. It is interesting to see how their regressive views on gender issues stood as appalling contrast against their insights on war or corporation culture.
One of my favorite scenes in the novel occurred early on before the time travel and Tralmalfadorians and more absurd content in the novel. It’s the scene with the O’Hare couple when the protagonist reveals that he is going to write a war novel. Mary is immediately disgusted with him because she feels that he is going to glamorize the war which will lead to more wars and then more babies (like the ones upstairs) will have to go fight the wars and the killing will continue. Then he appeases her by reassuring that this is going to be an anti-war novel.
An aspect of the novel that I found particularly compelling was the novel’s depiction of death. Of course, there’s the constant refrain of “so it goes” every time death is mentions. “So it goes” could be interpreted as Vonnegut’s disregard of death, but I think it goes much deeper than that. Vonnegut seems to suggest that death isn’t the point. Everyone is going to die. Vonnegut seems more interest in preventing violence or at least encouraging against it. This became evident to me when our protagonist’s death is literally revealed halfway through the novel. It’s not his death that’s the big climactic end of the novel–it’s the Dresden bombing.
Billy positions the Tralfamadorian philosophy of time and life as opposite to any Earthling view of life; certainly, a nonlinear understanding of time, one that supposes that a person was, is, and always will be sounds different from anything on Earth. At first, the Tralfamadorians seem to present a solution to the problems of Earth. No true death, no true choices which means no true mistakes, and no true problems as everything terrible was always meant to happen. When I read this novel at the beginning of the year, some of the ideas felt revolutionary; however, as I read the Tralfamoadorian ideas this time I received the distinct impression that the Tralfamadorian philosophies were just another version of human religion. The beliefs of the Tralfamadorians align closely with Earthling religion as they both appease a person’s fear of death. If Earthling religions have heavens or reincarnations, Tralfamadorians negate death entirely. I believe the Tralfamadorians philosophy represents all Earthling philosophy but in the simplest terms. Rather than portraying a debate about free will and predestination, there is simply no free will. Ultimately, they know how the Universe will end, in an attempt to push the limits of progress and science, yet Tralfamadorians suggest they can do nothing to stop it. Their world view is hopeless in the sense that nothing can be done because nothing can be done, so then there is nothing to do. I read the Tralfamadorians worldview as another version of Christianity but with weird aliens and different words.
I think Vonnegut satirizes the Tralfamadorian view of time as a way to present time as a social construct. We are supposed to believe their way of life is shell-shocking, making our emotions feel insignificant because we’re able to venture off somewhere else in time. I truly don’t think it’s saner than that of earthlings — I think it’s an alternative view that takes a lot of dissociating to accomplish. It’s also unrealistic for humans to believe in the Tralfamadorian’s way because most are unable to unstuck from time. Tralfamadorians believe we have no free will, everything happens for a reason, and that death is ultimately inevitable — which matches some beliefs on Earth. But overall, their way of life is unattainable because of our humanity. We would have to detach from ourselves, the ones we love, and our souls to achieve their belief system. Vonnegut ultimately uses this as a craft to criticize our feelings of insignificance and need to find a purpose in life. When fate is involved, we’re able to release our accountability and our need to own up to our actions. Nothing matters, ultimately, if our lives are decided for us – if we are using their philosophy, they we allow ourselves to give in to yet another belief system that isn’t necessarily proven to be true.
Regarding the portrayal of domesticity in Slaughterhouse Five, I would point to two particular instances in the timeline: the zoo on Trafalmadore with Montana Wildhack and the party where Billy gives Valencia the sapphire. In the zoo, Billy becomes comfortable with his body for the first time in his life, he is brought Montana Wildhack to mate with, and though they recognize their roles, they take some time to connect physically. They eventually conceive a child (who is not mentioned much) and seem to exist in domestic bliss despite their close quarters, isolation from humanity, and the constant exhibition of thier lives for the Trafalmadorians. Perhaps this bliss exists simply beacause they occupy the same psychological level of isolation, and being on the same page about the futility of their existences due to having been abducted and shown this larger truth about the universe. In other timelines, Billy reflects on her fondly, almost as if their time together is a wacky but fulfilling side story (I’m thinking now of the erotic bookstore, witnessing her old films on display in the back room but remaining oddly detached). Meanwhile Billy’s earth-wife Valencia also appears in his life as a convenient, though not unhappy, match rather than a love connection. He benefits from their union with the dentistry business, and she worships him for having married her. This is most on display during the party where he presents her with the star-centered sapphire, after she dotes on him concernedly when he experiences a flashback caused by the music. Even in this space, on earth in his normal home with a wife who loves him, he is off-kilter. It seems there is never peace for Billy Pilgrim, as he is always questioning the duration of the reality he occupies and the illusion of happiness.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Slaughterhouse-Five is how the concept of one’s lack of ability to change their fate. We are told, “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future” (63). The Tralfamadorians explain that time “does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is” (89), and that “Billy Pilgrim… will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976” (146). This sentiment leads me to the question: If the point of living is to die, then is there even a point? We also hear that “later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones” (199).
I was thinking back to our class discussion last week on existentialism, and when Rosewater says, “I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living.” (105). I do not believe the novel attempts to state that humans lack free will but that the act of war takes it from us. The time-travel experiences of Billy are a metaphor for his PTSD. They show he is left fragmented from his experiences as a prisoner of war and a witness to the destruction of Dresden. The war becomes his point, and therefore Billy must come to terms with the impending death that war promises. Even though he does not die until February thirteenth, 1976, Billy travels through his life with the idea that he is already dead. Then the question becomes, how do we choose to remember the things we cannot change? Is that how the novel defines free will? Is it finding a point to something when there is none?
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 raises questions of sanity also asked in Cat’s Cradle and Mother Night. The Tralfamadorians have a specific worldview of Christianity that Vonnegut uses for social commentary. The Tralfamadorian’s purpose in researching Christianity is to understand “why Christians found it so easy to be cruel” (138). What they learned from the Gospels is “before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected” (138). This answer has humor since it is a lesson that could be derived from the resurrection. Here, Vonnegut also comments on reader-response criticism as the same event signifying compassion to Christians justifies cruelty to the Tralfmadorians. Meanwhile, the Tralfamadorians show a shortage compassion by putting humans in a zoo. The Tralfmadorians do not experience loss, but this is justified by their experiencing all of time at one time, the dead being as alive as the living.
Vonnegut presents their anthropological curiosity to make the reader pause and reflect, not necessarily to cast judgement on whether or not the Tralfamadorian way of life is more logical than that of Earthlings. That being said, Billy Pilgriam is permanently altered by the interactions. Vonnegut satirizes Tralfamadorians to a larger degree than Bokonists, but there is still an element of truth in his darkly humorous assertions.
During my personal reading of the novel I found trauma to be the most poignant element within the narrative rather than an anti-war sentiment; however, the struggle with trauma demonstrated by Billy Pilgrim’s character is a direct by-product of his experiences with war. The aspects of trauma (derived from war) seemed to be the primary focus throughout the book with war as the context of their origins, rather than a direct statement against war–the people/characters involved in the wars are placed first and foremost in the narrative, with Vonnegut highlighting the different ways in which war is perceived, experienced, and defined.
Billy’s experiences and alternate perceptions with time (coming “unstuck”, time traveling, etc.) registered as trauma responses more so than as statements on the construct of time. Billy’s present is almost always intermingled with his past or future, blurring the lines between the three almost completely. Rather than reading this as a critique on our perception of time, I read it as vestiges of trauma that impose themselves on one’s ability to perceive time as distinctly and linearly as is common. Billy’s struggle to experience time linearly demonstrates one of the major ways in which PTSD affects its victims, altering their sensory perception of time, and countless other stimuli, while operating at an insidiously overt manner. Billy’s character seemed to occupy a dissociative state throughout the entire narrative, whether it be in regard to his lack of response to negative stimuli or his alternate perception of time.
I really appreciated Vonnegut’s ability to reveal how PTSD and trauma become the person rather than attaching to the person.