Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five, Or, the Children's Crusade: A Duty-dance with Death. New York: Dell, 1991. Print.
In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut tells a story that may be semi-autobiographical. Vonnegut was in Dresden during WWII. He begins the story with the nameless character narrator who is presumably Vonnegut. After the first chapter he moves into the narrative with Billy Pilgrim as the protagonist. Billy becomes unstuck- which means his time is moving and he is able to go in and out of time. Billy is weak and unwilling to fight. Billy gets captured by the Germans. The narrative is told out of time sequence. Billy is simultaneously living his life out of the conventional linear order we are used to reading in books. Billy was at some point captured by Tralfamadorian aliens and now he loops in and out of time. Billy spends most of the story retelling the events in Dresden, suffering under the abuses of the Germans. Being hungry, wearing women's clothes, being constantly rejected by other American Soldiers.
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In his life outside the war, he goes to Optometry School. Marries a wealthy but unattractive woman named Valencia. Becomes a wealthy Optometrist. Has two children, Barbara who annoys him as he ages because she wants to manage him, and Robert who became a Green Beret. I thought from the start Robert would be a chance for Billy to live vicariously, but Vonnegut never showed their relationship in that way. I think, it was more to show that not only was Billy a child in war but that he had passed the reins (as Americans did) from father of WWII to son of Vietnam. Billy meets his writerly hero, Kilgore Trout, who is obsessed with time travel.
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In his Tralfamadorian life, he is in a zoo. The Tralfamadorians ask him questions and leave him without privacy because they are interested in seeing him completely in his natural habitat. The Tralfamadorians believe in a circular life, they see earthlings as great centipedes. They see things like war inevitable and are just happy they aren't in war now, but they know their future includes an end of the world. They provide him the opportunity to mate with a porn star called Montana Wildhack. He has a child with Montana.
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I had a really difficult time in determining the controlling idea of the story. Every time, I thought I found it, I realized I didn't really know the premise of the story. It is subjective, I believe. I have been caught up in the stories architecture, or synthetic register. I could take the story, and assume that Vonnegut is showing Billy flipping through time so that we will realize time doesn't matter, death comes and goes. (And so it goes...) I could take it that Billy is creating a psychological fantasy life where he believes he is having adventures with porn stars in a foreign planet. Is he avoiding living a boring life, or avoiding looking back on the painful and humiliating war? I have read where some people have analyzed the biblical and religious aspects to say that science wins over religion, Jesus doesn't matter as much as the science fiction writer- in fact, maybe Jesus is the science fiction writer. But after reading it I am stuck with a few lines that resonate with me.
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And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that because it was so human. |
O'Hare tells the character narrator (Vonnegut) about population, how many die for hunger, how many die from other reasons, how many new births, how they are expecting the population to double before the year 2000. The character narrator responds:
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"I suppose they will all want dignity," I said. |
When Billy's daughter, Barbara, was taking over the role of parenting him, because he was talking about aliens and forgetting to turn the heat on he thinks.
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In the beginning chapter the character narrator introduces an idea that he then later repeats at the end of the novel. He is writing about the novel to his friend Sam, who gave him a contract for the novel about Dresden.
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It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. |
Vonnegut chose to end the novel with the war being over. The men all walk out onto the street. There was nothing going on.
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Birds were talking. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, "Poo-tee-weet?" |
I chose the premise to be, there is nothing good to say about war so you might as well create an elaborate fantasy. My rationale for the premise was about how Mary told the character narrator that TV and books chose to glamorize war. I thought about how when Billy was in the hospital bed and he overheard Rumford talking about the secrets kept about Dresden, that it was a necessary thing but that the government had to keep in secret because of bleeding hearts.
After seeing that as a possible premise I got stuck on something I had read. Billy is talking to the Aliens. |
That is one thing Earthling's might learn to do if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good times. |
When I considered that premise I was able to see the controlling idea: Wars will happen and children will fight in them. There is no escape from the abuses of humanity. You must look back to be human, but focus on the good times to have serenity. Ultimately, you can never do both, I mean unless you happen to be able to time travel to a distant planet to reflect on life with a stolen porn star. The Counter idea is you must be brave or you will be a fool. I'm not sure it lines up perfectly but, to me it seems that bravery in this book is the opposite of humanity. Billy is not brave, he is made a fool, but he is very much a human in his moments of degredation
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In "The Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters," Jane Gallop speaks to the projections we read for in a text. I show in my blog: Introducing Slaughterhouse Five, my first projection. I read the beginning smokey, boozy chapter of a POW from WWII and saw a story that could have belonged to my own smokey, boozy POW from WWII Grandfather. I wanted to read a memoir that would make me understand how horrible the experiences of war were. Instead Vonnegut gave me a literary jumble of confusion that I would only ever be able to question at the meaning.
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In reading for "what is surprising," it became difficult because I saw most of the novel as surprising. However, I found the odd placement of the character narrator (or Perhaps Vonnegut) appearing like a cameo in the novel particularly odd. I felt the only way to properly analyze this would be to look at the moments this happened and see what projections I was bringing to the piece (Like perhaps that it is Vonnegut and not a character narrator.)
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Somebody behind him in the boxcar said "Oz" That was I. That was me. The only other city I'd ever seen was Indianapolis, Indiana. |
Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, IN
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Robert Kennedy whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. |
So if I see these places where the Character Narrator pops up. It is clear that he is saying pay attention! I was there, I know these things and I am choosing to live a life without guns. Why the repetition of So it goes? Throughout the story every discussion of death has "So it goes." It is reportedly said 106 times in the text. If every death gets a "so it goes," than no death outweighs another. Is it horrific the Robert Kennedy and MLK were shot? Yes, but Vonnegut puts no more weight on that than the death of his father- a sweet man. It creates in death harmony that is not seen anywhere else in life.
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