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Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is essentially an anti-war book. The historical context of this book centers around the bombing of Dresden on the nights of Feb. 13 and 14 in 1944 during World War II. Hundreds and thousands were killed at locations like Dresden, which were non-military in nature but served as methods of weakening Axis morale. Vonnegut himself was present at Dresden when it was bombed. This book is his way of releasing emotional turmoil caused by war. Slaughterhouse-Five, much like other Vonnegut books, shows his strong disgust of war and the ironies of contemporary society in attempting in vain to answer the question Why war?
Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five, is the mirror image of Vonnegut. Billy is trying to reconcile with the guilt of being the sole survivor of the Dresden bombing. The events that led to his survival are modeled after Vonnegut's own experiences during the war. After the war, Billy is greatly traumatized.
He views his survival as a curse rather than a blessing. Billy is so distraught that he rejects the life that is granted to him. This mirrors Vonnegut's own rejection of contemporary society (Tanner 13). Vonnegut's view comes from his belief that society tries to justify war. Billy goes to the point of mental insanity looking for a justification for war. He looks for happiness in searching for a reason that he experienced the terrible atrocities that transpire under the auspices of war.
He finds relief through his unusual way in which he views time. Billy is unstuck in time which allows him to shift to different times in his life. Vonnegut uses this as a plot device. The book is written in an anecdotal structure, with sections separated with spaces. The sections are not arranged in chronological order, for each separation represent a shift to a different time in Billy's life. Although confusing at first, this plot device makes complete sense in the novel as a whole.
Different times are not arbitrarily strung together either. Transitions to other times in Billy's life is marked by different sensations or reoccurrence's that shown up at separate times. Vonnegut is able to concoct a story out of paragraphs, which are disoriented and disordered; yet the story remains coherent as whole. Billy uses this factor to reconstruct his life and attempt to alleviate himself from guilt. The purpose this serves to the plot is that it allows Billy to view the life with more objectivity than any other human could.
Through this objectivity, Billy is able to find that there is no answer his own question Why me? but rather, it just is. As unsubstantial as that answer is, it shows the pointlessness in attempting to justify war. Vonnegut's effort to make a point on the senselessness of war is further exemplified by the books secondary title: The Childrens Crusade. This title is an allusion to a holy war that was aimed towards destroying the Muslim people. However, this war was only a scheme to sell Christian children into slavery.
Entrepreneurs sent thousands of children to their deaths on the way to the slave market. The reference is stated in the beginning of the book when the Vonnegut that appears in the book meets the wife of his war buddy Bernard OHare. The wife denounces the idea of such a book, thinking that it will glorify war. She also makes the statement that all men go to war as children. This immediately spawns the idea in Vonnegut's head to name his book The Childrens Crusade. A parallel is drawn here between war and the historical reference.
The depiction here is of children who are sent off to die. Vonnegut's point is that such is the act of war, one that trivializes the gift of life. Billy's search for justification leads him to a place called Tralfamador. Tralfamador is a world that is created for Billy to alleviate his guilt.
In Tralfamador, life and death are meaningless. The beings on this planet, the Tralfamadorian's, are able to view time in the fourth dimension, much like Billy. They expose him to their philosophy, which views life with the utmost objectivity. Such objectivity, takes away the all the conventional ideas of life and death, for everything already is and just is.
Having been exposed to their philosophy, Billy is freed from his own guilt. In this new world, Billy reinvents himself, as well as the world. The severity of his guilt has lead Billy to create a world in his mind. Billy's intent here was to recreate a better world. Some refer to this part of the book as a Biblical reference. This new world is an allusion to the Garden of Eden.
This is fitting for the creation of a new world, one in which there is peace and innocence. This view is further supported by the addition of Montana Wildhack, which is Billy's mate on Tralfamador. The two were taken to Tralfamador to be exhibits in the Tralfamador Zoo. As they run around naked and copulate, one can easily draw a connection to Adam and Eve. This is a manifestation of Billy's (and consequently Vonnegut's own) idea of a world in need of reform. Vonnegut is drawing sympathy from the reader to Billy who goes through the insanity of creating his own world to relieve his guilt, and creating a sense of resentment to what is at fault: war.
Indeed, Billy is the innocent Adam, who is introduced to the 20 th century concept of war, and Tralfamador represents his return to a world of innocence. Furthermore, the book is riddled with Biblical allusions. Vonnegut tries to make Billy into a modern-day version of Christ. Throughout the book, Billy is portrayed as one who suffers unjustly. There are many points in the book where one can easily tell that the author is deliberately trying to make Billy seem like Jesus. Billy is unjustly made into a scapegoat.
On the train to the German camps, Billy is forced to remain in the corner of the car, holding himself up by hanging his arms around a crossbar, modeling the crucifixion of Christ. Vonnegut conveys the idea of Billy being a modern-day Jesus Christ because he believes of a world in need of salvation. Indeed, Billy tries to offer salvation to people in the book. He even goes on a local radio show to reveal his idea of time and his experience with the Tralfamadorian's. Billy, an optometrist, believes its his job to "prescribe corrective lenses for Earthling souls. So many of those souls were lost and wretched, Billy believed, because they could not see as well as his little green friends on Tralfamador. " (Vonnegut 25) He thought he could free all people from pain and suffering by teaching them to look at life with the same objectivity.
And like Christ, his ideas were not well taken. Of course, Billy is more of a mockery than he is a true savior. One idea that Vonnegut often satirizes is religion. Here, Vonnegut is making a mockery of the idea of a messiah, who can supposedly solve all of the worlds problems. Perhaps Vonnegut is insinuating at the fact the problem of war cannot be solved and that war just is. Nonetheless, this fact cannot deter Vonnegut from his view that war is absurd.
The Tralfamadorian's themselves contribute greatly to the plot as well the anti-war message of this book. They are extraterrestrial beings, which are also unstuck in time like Billy. In fact, the Tralfamadorian novel is written in a peculiar way to demonstrate this effect. "There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time. " (Vonnegut 88) Ironically, Slaughterhouse Five is also written in such a manner. Being able to view all of time simultaneously, the Tralfamadorian philosophy is defect of the concept of guilt and remorse because one has no control over ones actions at other times, because what is always has been and always will be.
Billy adopts this new mindset, therefore, he frees himself of the guilt that one feels when one is locked in time and responsible for all his actions. His being saved from the bombing always was, and always will happen. There is no reason to feel remorse or guilt because there is nothing that can be done about war and death for they are as easy to stop as glaciers (Vonnegut 3). Billy finds peace in his new mindset, but at what expense?
Billy becomes void of sympathy and emotion, marked by the phrase So it goes every time someone passes away. He is no longer angry or upset at the idea of war. This new viewpoint has come at the price of Billy's conscience and concern for human life (Klinkowitz 30). At a deeper level, the Tralfamadorian view nulls the concept of free will. Billy is freed from his guilt but has removed any feeling of sympathy or remorse. Billy led an unhappy life thereafter because he was unable to live life, but rather he let life happen to him as it was predestined.
When he dies, his epitaph says, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. While this sounds perfect on the surface, this actually points to all the shortcomings in Billy's life (Tanner 76). In the end of his life Billy is "unenthusiastic about living, while stoically enduring it, which may be a sign of the accidie which settles on a man with an atrophied conscience. " (Tanner 199). The price for Billy's release from guilt, was his release from humanity (Bloom 23). Vonnegut has essentially presented the problem, then a solution, but just then, the reader is allowed to realize that such a solution is not without its consequences. Yet, hints of such consequences were etched throughout the book.
Billy settles for his unhappy marriage to a woman who doesnt attract him emotionally or physically. Billy finds no happiness in his life of material wealth. The reason is because he believes it was predetermined. Billy has in effect applied so it goes to every waking moment in his life, causing him to live a life of indifference, which is consequently unfulfilling.
Slaughterhouse Five is Vonnegut's expression of his outrage over the Dresden bombing. Through his stylistic approach, which lacks chronological order, Vonnegut draws you deep into the Tralfamadorian world. There, Billy finds the solution to his guilt but at the cost of his humanity. Showing the evils of war, Vonnegut has shown the life of a man which is wrecked by war and becomes yet more disorganized searching for the answer to his question Why me? Vonnegut was never able to find an answer to his own Why me? and perhaps Vonnegut believes there is no answer.
War is so unjustifiable that it is beyond reason, and the search for an answer is pointless or otherwise leading to a point where once becomes void of sympathy. In accordance to his underlying theme, Vonnegut makes the statement that such a point is not human (Tralfamadorian). Vonnegut's masterpiece compares the pointlessness of the atrocities of war to one mans search to find justification for war.
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Research essay sample on Critical Analysis Of Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five
