Slaughter-House Five Finding the Individual

Slaughter-House Five

Finding the Individual in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut presents his story, Slaughterhouse-Five through a unique literary technique, using short vignettes of episodes. Without subscribing to the usual literary progression of events showcasing cause and effect, Kurt Vonnegut chooses to present Billy Pilgrim in his entirety rather than presenting him moment by moment so that readers understand Billy Pilgrim through the usual progression. It is precisely through the same manner that Kurt Vonnegut chose to presents the idea of the Self. The Self is the entirety of all the moments in a person's life -- the entirety of a person's past, present, and future.

The Self is the totality of how a person is in all the given moments of his or her life. Although equally important in the idea of the Self is the concept that the true description of a person's Self is how a person is at a given moment of his or her life. In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, readers understand the idea of the Self through their understanding of the totality of Billy Pilgrim's person. Vonnegut presents Billy's past, present and future right away so that readers understand all of him right away without having to speculate what happened to him or what lies for him. In knowing Billy's history, readers get to understand him more as they recognize that each given moment in Billy's life is part of a bigger picture, of a wider scale; each given moment in Billy's life is part of his life -- of what his Self is.

In a larger scale, this idea of the Self which Vonnegut presents in Slaughterhouse-Five gives us an alternative understanding of our experiences. Too often we judge an experience singularly; we forget that an experience is only a small component of our Self. It only tells us that to understand experience we must recognize that it is but an element of our Self and that our Self cannot be determined by a single experience alone. The Self is determined by the totality of all that we have experienced in the linear progression of our lives.

Taking into account all that Billy have experienced in his life, readers understand that his accounts of his kidnapping by the Tralfamadorians could possibly be a result of his mental instability. Readers understand that this mental instability might be due to the horrific events he witnessed when he went to war. As he was traumatized by things he had seen and experienced, he could not understand the destructiveness the war has brought. Making up the Tralfamadorians and their philosophies can be seen as Billy's way of coming to terms with the things that he cannot understand, a way of silencing the dissonant thoughts in his head. He was shaping his thoughts so that he could live in a world where he understands how it works. It was his way of escaping the things he has experienced, or perhaps also a way of making sense of the things he has experienced.

What this means to our understanding of the Self is that our past experiences shape our present Self. And in the same way, our past experiences shape our future Self. The Self is the totality of our past, present, and future experiences. How we define our Selves now is a product of all our experiences in the past and in the present. The experiences of the people around us also shape our Self. The experiences of the people who came before us shape our Self. History shapes the Self. History is a part of the Self. And if history shapes the Self, to a great extent, as the Tralfamadorians argue, there is no free will.

Kurt Vonnegut also explores the idea that people have no free will. They cannot change life. Any attempt to change the past, present and the future is futile since history has forced people to be in a given moment. In this way, fate exists and it is what shapes the Self and life.