Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse-Five'

Novels are written to give a message to the world; this message can be good or bad, important or superficial, critical or supportive, but every story needs an initial purpose. Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, was published post World War II and follows the life of Billy Pilgrim who witnesses the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany during that time. On the surface, the story seems to be just a jumble of confusion and chaos without any significant insight into life, war, or human nature. However, it is by means of the perspectives and details of the novel that Vonnegut brings about his point. Through Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut portrays both mankind's constant struggle to try to control life and also its inability to actually
change anything when it comes to the past, present, and future. On the most basic level, by looking simply at the novel's written structure and obvious conflict, being the war, Vonnegut shows that life cannot be hindered or changed because a person desires it.
One way he does this is by skipping around in Billy Pilgrim's life at random intervals going anywhere from his childhood to his death. In one part of the story, Billy is a boy caving with his parents and experiencing complete darkness one second and then the next "[he] went from total darkness to total light, found himself back in the war, back in the delousing station again" (86). Though there are a many leaps like this throughout the story, this particular example is significant in how it shows an innocent child becoming a man in the most horrific war of all time in instant sequential order. Seeing it this way, one can acknowledge that nothing was going to or ever would stop Billy from ending up in Dresden, in the war. The random jumps in time in the novel magnify how life itself is random. Through having WWII be the reoccurring backdrop of the novel, Vonnegut also shows that the quest for power and control of one's life is both hopeless and pointless. When people, governments and countries try to have power, they bring
about nothing but useless conflict. When describing the bombing of Dresden, Vonnegut says, "The sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead" (169). This shows just one of the countless moments where countries and their people go to war in order to "win" and to make themselves think they've earned control over life. Yet, Vonnegut portrays that all that this strife causes only more unnecessary death and destruction. He also depicts that there is nothing to be done about it. Mankind will always fight with itself. Wars will never cease to exist, and people would perhaps be better off to just accept that fact. However, even with that message, Vonnegut chose to write the novel itself. Using characters in the novel, Vonnegut satirizes human nature for its incessant desire to control life.
Firstly, he makes Billy Pilgrim a character with the exact opposite characteristic since he seems to have no desire whatsoever to control his life. When Billy is in the hospital in a concentration camp, he meets a man who says he is going to kill him in the far future. To this, Billy responds, "I, Billy Pilgrim, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976" (134). Since time travel is a main component of the story, Billy knows the exact moment of his death, and yet it is still shocking to the reader for Billy to say this. He does not object to the knowledge in any way, nor does he ever try to stop his death when he visits that time. Normally, people have a natural need to try to survive, so most would do anything and everything to change their fate. But Billy does not think of a single idea to stop his death making it seem as if Vonnegut is implying people cannot change their future and Billy has accepted that. Another example of Vonnegut's satire of free will is the alien race from Tralfamadore who literally sees all times together and considers human philosophy about free will as ignorant. When Billy is traveling through space, he talks to a Tralfamadorian who states: "I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will” (82). Vonnegut
purposely includes this part to give a completely new perspective that discredits the idea of human choice as making any difference in life and rather making this idea seem almost childish and illegitimate. Both Billy and the Tralfamadorians introduce a viewpoint that might seem absurd and crazy to people but could also be simply different, maybe even more realistic. Lastly, Vonnegut illustrates how powerless people are to control life through the phrases and metaphor that he uses. The three words "so it goes" are used over one hundred times in the novel and are included at the end of any situation where something terrible happens to both equalize them all and make them concrete in time. One of the many times it is used is when Billy is with the captured British and it talks of the candles and soap the Germans give them: "The British had no way of knowing it, but the candles and the soap were made from the fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the State. So it goes" (91-92). This specific quote is especially interesting because it is clearly shocking and disturbing but then is followed by a nonchalant phrase "so it goes." Vonnegut does not try to make any one death or sorrow seem unimportant, but instead, he is trying to say that there is not anything to be done about it. Bad stuff will always happen, is happening. People take so much time to try to change it but never do and never will. To tie in with this, at the very beginning of the story, Vonnegut metaphorically proves how futile it is to try to stop war or death or disease in this world. He writes about a real interview he had with Harrison Star. They are talking about Slaughterhouse-Five being an anti-war book when Harrison says to Vonnegut that anyone who writes an anti-war book should just write an anti-glacier book instead (3) to which Vonnegut reflects: "What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death" (4). Vonnegut basically accepts life and death the way it is because there is nothing to do besides just accept it. People sometimes think that if evil and fighting stop then all problems will go away too, but the nature of life cannot be altered; someday, everyone dies and another they grow up, and another they are born. To comply with that fact absolutely is what Vonnegut suggests. Arguably one of the greatest human weaknesses is the desire, the need, for things to go the way a person wants them to. Growing up, people learn that what happens to them in the future is up to what they do today. In some ways, that is true, but on a large scale of life as a whole, there is no way to know what tomorrow will bring. There is also no way to stop everything or even most bad things from happening. The majority of people would agree with this, but then will still go their whole life trying to change that absolute fact. Maybe it is a good thing for people to want to better the world and their lives. Or maybe it is a big waste of time-- time that could be better spent enjoying what is. Vonnegut is not forceful in suggesting this thought, but he is simple recognizing it and having the reader think twice about considering that mindset.