Slaughterhouse-Five an Analysis of Vonnegut\'s

Slaughterhouse-Five

An Analysis of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut has a wry sense of humor that comes through in Slaughterhouse-Five. One might label it absurdist because it oftentimes makes humans look absurd for the things that they do -- but there is in Vonnegut a kind of heart as well and he is able to mingle sadness with joy in the experiences of Billy Pilgrim, Kilgore Trout, and the rest. In this paper, I will examine my reactions to the book as well as some of the book's back-story and what I think about Vonnegut after having read this tale.

Vonnegut claims right away that "all this happened, more or less," but then he qualifies this start with: "the war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his" (1). He goes on to list other incidents that have a foothold in reality, but the reason he lists these is that there are elements of the narrative that are purely fantastic -- such as the time-traveling and the alien kidnappers. Yet, Vonnegut delivers this admission with a matter-of-fact shrug and concludes his reminiscences with an anecdote about how he got the inspiration for the subtitle "The Children's Crusade" from the wife of an old friend from the war (19). Her anxiety over his writing about the events is palpable to say the least, and Vonnegut records it without extraneous commentary and simply and subtly concedes that she has a point -- they were just children back in Dresden.

Then the novel proper picks up with an odd call to attention -- "Listen," writes Vonnegut, "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time" (29). This is a slightly shocking statement, and what follows fits in with this initial shock. Billy is of course a kind of modern-day pilgrim, ala Dante or Chaucer -- but, of course, Vonnegut is writing a sort of post-modern, post-Christian novel and the result is that Billy is not making a linear pilgrimage through time and space to make obeisance before his God -- but he is a Pilgrim on a non-linear journey in which his Fate is well-known to him ahead of time, which allows Vonnegut (in the fashion of, say, Mark Twain) to make ironic jabs about free will, nerve, courage, idealism, and anything else that comes to mind.

I enjoyed Vonnegut's commentary on the strangeness of humankind's foibles and I was not shocked by some of his matter-of-fact depictions. Indeed, when Vonnegut draws on his own real-life experiences, the novel takes on an air of authenticity. This authenticity coupled with Vonnegut's wry, black humor makes the novel seem caustic and ironic, but at heart it is neither -- it is simply a record of things both real and imaginary told with the same kind of remove that Voltaire employs as he pushes Candide along on his ridiculous adventures.

I hesitate to say that I was enlightened by reading the novel. I might say I was as enlightened as I was entertained, and cannot say I found it to be the most entertaining novel I have ever read. The non-linear narrative is so full of false-starts and proceeds in fits that it is difficult to truly become engaged in it. Whatever enlightenment is gleaned must be gleaned at a remove, just as Vonnegut writes a remove. That said, reading "So it goes," after every time a death is reported is amusing at first, but the joke quickly wears thin.