Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five
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| Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse-Five (London: John Van Voorst, 1839) |
POST-MODERNISM
is a topic I have struggled
to get to grips with over the years. The
search for meaning that Modernism seems so consumed with seems analogous to the
human-condition. The world of information that we live in today seems to be one
geared towards providing the answers to all questions we have to ask of it.
Post-Modernism seems to be characterised by the redefinition of this search as
something indefinable – an indefinable search for something unquantifiable, a something
that will get smaller and smaller as one gets closer.
Yet,
neither the Modernists nor the Post-Modernists entirely discard their literary forebears
– though the relationship may be as antagonistic as a reaction against them, or
as minor as subtle, or even satirical allusion to them. Thus, an effective
reading of a Post-Modern novel would seem to require a knowledge of the whole
literary canon, from the Classics of antiquity, to their elder Modernist
fathers.
Kurt
Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is a
novel that seems to be able to avoid this problem. It is not that the novel stands aside from the
literary canon – though it may be too soon to consider the novel a part of it
despite its acclaim and the fact that it is already a key component of many U.S.
literature courses at Universities. It is the fact that the narrative structure
of the novel is introverted, circular and closed.
The
novel itself begins with the narrator describing the process by which he wrote
the book, describing his haphazard research methods, making oblique references
to some of his motifs and characterisations and even tell the reader, in no
uncertain terms, the beginning and ending of the novel.
It
begins like this:
Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in
time.
It
ends like this:
Poo-tee-weet?
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Chapter 1
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Though
this is definitely satirical, and the first chapter is certainly an amusing
piece of meta-fiction his reference to the “famous book” before he hands it to
his publisher and the little titbits of information about the story suggest
that this narrator figure is somewhat party to the protagonists determinism,
whether this figures to the extent that it was caused by short four-dimensional
aliens or not.
Though, as suggested above, the main
conceit of the novel is that the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, travels randomly
through time at various points in his life, coming to this text without any previous
information aside from its acclaim, I was surprised to find this strangeness superseded
from all points of relativism by the fact that Billy Pilgrim is at one point
abducted by aliens who see all time at once and who put Pilgrim on display at a
zoo on another planet.
The latter mechanism gives Pilgrim a
reason for continuing to live despite knowing every facet of his life - a
change of perspective that allows him to act out the part that fate has allocated
for him without resentment and allows the former to operate in all its
absurdity while still maintaining the semblance of normality required for crafting
characters that the reader still cares about.
The
time-shifting that happens in the novel is, on the face of it, not to
dissimilar to a more ordinary non-linear narrative, except that it creates a
sense of greater immediacy for the protagonist. The time-shifting is not a
flashback or a memory, the character is physically and temporally dislocated back
and forth through time, from prenatal existence and even to after his death. The
time-shifting interconnects all the events within the novel and the cyclical,
self-referential nature of the narrative allows the novel to remain introverted
– to focus upon what is within itself, whatever it draws upon from history or
literature.
The
question then becomes: What does this internal focus actually focus on? There are several slants and motifs
that run through the text, and Vonnegut seems to enjoy subtly contradicting
himself – perhaps leaving it to the reader to make a decision on which way to
decide about a certain issue. The narrator at the beginning describes himself telling
a famous movie-maker unconvincingly and half-heartedly that the text is an
anti-war novel. He also goes on to state
that the novel contains few of the essential elements of a novel:
There
are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic
confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the
listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after
all, is that people are discourages from being characters.
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Chapter 8
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The
main subject of the novel, that is, the subject that the title and subtitle
explicate, is the Dresden Bombing. Thus it seems rather self-contradictory that
the novel can be “I guess”[1] an
Anti-War novel, but at the same time have no characters or dramatic
confrontations etc.
As the quote above suggests, the
reason that the characters of the novel and the war itself fall to the wayside
is the revelation of the fatalistic Universe as described by the Tralfamadorians.
A Universe where everything unfolds according to what is supposed to happen – a
fate defined simply by the course of the events which take place within time,
rather than any external deity. The narrator eulogises on this towards the end
of the novel:
If
what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all
live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not
overjoyed. Still – if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and
that, I’m grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Chapter 10
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Though
this rather ambiguous or on-the-fence attitude towards fate seems to be a
message of overriding importance in the novel, it doesn’t touch on the major
theme of war in the novel on its own, though it does serve as a cohesive, more
relatable message about fate. But then characteristically goes on to tell the
reader that Billy Pilgrim’s happiest time was snoozing in the back of a
horse-cart in the ruins of Dresden.
Similarly contradictory is the way
that the actual bombing scene in the novel is highlighted in the narrative by
the fact that “He did not travel in time to the experience. He remembered it
shimmeringly...”[2]
As if it is something so horrific that it cannot be experienced with the
immediacy that the time-shift would give it – or that, more practically, it
cannot be described in terms that the reader would be able to relate to:
He
was down in the meat locker on the night that Dresden was destroyed. There
were sounds like giant footsteps above. Those were sticks of high-explosive
bombs. The giants walked and walked.
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Chapter 8
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Here
the sense of un-reality about the event is given credence by the fantastical
language he uses to describe the sounds of the bombs, and in the irony and
absurdity of the location that he and the other POWs are taking shelter.
The themes of fatalism and warfare
are drawn together succinctly in Chapter 9 in a short exchange between Rumfoord
and Billy Pilgrim. A sort of “boys will be boys” but for the entire pan-temporal
Universe:
"It had to be
done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden.
"I know,"
said Billy.
"That's war."
"I know. I'm
not complaining."
"It must have
been hell on the ground."
"It was,"
said Billy Pilgrim.
"Pity the men
who had to do it."
"I do."
"You must have
had mixed feelings, there on the ground."
"It was all
right," said Billy. "Everything is
all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on
Tralfamadore."
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Chapter 9
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