All this happened more or less.
Billy Pilgrim became unstuck in time. Billy Pilgrim is ,was and always will be a friend of Kilgore Trout, kidnapped by Aliens and a prisoner of war who witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden . Billy Pilgrim survived to tell the tale. This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of the tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace.
A review must address the question: What is Slaughterhouse-Five ? Slaughterhouse-Five is not an anti-war book. Vonnegut expounds his position in chapter one, "that writing an anti-war book is like writing an anti-glacier book," both being futile endeavors, since both phenomena are unstoppable. Slaughterhouse-five is not just science fiction, the author keeps the protagonist rooted in existential reality. It is certainly not funny, how can a massacre be funny? It is a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears. The best way out would be to go and read the book ofcourse. Then why the review?
Why ?
“That is a very earthling question to ask Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?”
“Yes”. Billy, in fact had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three lady bugs embedded in it.
“Well here, we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.
Vonnegut explores the themes of fatalism and irrationality in his somewhat meta-fictional and post-modern (whatever that means) account. The encounter with the aliens leave Billy Pilgrim more accustomed to “non free will”.
On an average 191,000 new babies are born each day in the world. The population Reference Bureau predicts the worlds’ population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000.
“I suppose they will all want dignity,” I said.
“I suppose,” said O’Hare.
Most of humanity is insignificant. They do what they do, because they must. That is the way the moment is structured. To the tralfamaldorians everything exists simultaneously. They suffer from wars and tragedies and mishaps just like the earthlings, but choose to concentrate on the happy moments. Human action is irrational. Wars have been and always will be there. There’s one thing thing the earthlings might learn to do , if they tried hard enough. Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.
The flaw in Christ’s stories said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the sun of the most powerful being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out again:
Oh boy- they sure picked the wrong one to lynch that time!
And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who ? People not well connected. So it goes.
[From the Gospel From Outer Space by Kilgore Trout]
The destruction and oppressiveness of the war dominates the book. The inhuman sufferings and the widespread destruction, the ubiquitous poverty and deprivation torment the soul of Billy Pilgrim. Amongst all this brutality and suffering, the death of Edgar Derby underlines the bizzareness in our actions. Time is taken to punish one man. Yet, the time is taken, and Vonnegut takes the outside opinion of the bird asking, "Poo-tee-weet?" The same birdsong ends the novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, as the protagonist gives away his fortune to the plaintiffs of hundreds of false paternity suits brought against him.
The cattle are lowing,
The Baby Awakes.
But the little lord Jesus
No crying he makes
In all his moments of torments Billy Pilgrim always found solace in one thing :
The serenity to accept
The things I cannot change
Courage
To change the things I can
And wisdom always
To tell the
Difference.
I don’t believe in God. So it goes.
PS: If you happen to visit Cody, Wyoming , don’t forget to ask for Wild Bob.
Rosewater said an interesting thing to Billy one time about a book that wasn’t science fiction. He said that everything there was to know about life was in the The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
“But that isn’t enough anymore”, said Rosewater.
PPS: If you have nothing better to do then check out my blog- arbiit.wordpress.com
Credits: The italicized stuff is the genius of Vonnegut. The other rudimentary misunderstandings are all mine.
I think that Slaughterhouse-Five is Kurt Vonnegut's way of rationalizing a mad and haywire universe. He tries to make sense of the pain and suffering during the war and particularly during the bombing in Dresden. I agree with Sukrit on the fact that it is certainly not an anti war book but what needs to be highlighted is that this is how Kurt Vonnegut makes sense of the incomprehensibility and enormity of the barbarities commited in the war.
ReplyDeleteAnshuman Dubey
2009PH10706
First I would like to say that there is nothing I would agree more with than - “Slaughterhouse Five is a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears”. This petty line encompasses the whole gist of the novel into itself. Ironically, the brilliance of the book lies in the futility of the book itself; asserting that wars are inevitable like glaciers, it reinforces what it attempts to impress upon the readers. The very fact that the bombing of Dresden, even after being the central theme, itself is evaded conveniently by the narrator evinces Vonnegut’s opinion of wars, and of the attempts at stopping them.
ReplyDeleteI must say that the reviewer has, although in a very informal way, succeeded in addressing the essential of a review that is; why the book? But I would like to draw the attention to certain trivialities of the plot which I daresay, the reviewer might have overlooked. Firstly, as noticed easily, narrator is not Billy pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim doesn’t even qualify as a regular hero (Vonnegut himself says that there are no heroes in this novel). Why Billy Pilgrim then? Perhaps, what our bumbling good-for-nothing Billy stands for is the human race itself, trapped in the cycle of time, getting “unstuck” to be hurled back again; aware of its fate but still helpless. Secondly, the narrator rightly calls this war as the children’s crusade; hardly is anybody aware of the cause they are fighting for in the novel, or rather anyone ever is. Never has the narrator clearly expressed his opinion of wars throughout the novel. All that can be deduced is that, wars are inevitable; life goes on and the brightest moments of our lives should be reminisced and cherished by us, just like the Trafalmadorians.
Who would not remember Billy Pilgrim watching the war movie backwards, but sadly, the moments of even deeper emotions have lost their poignancy in the myriads of farces that Vonnegut has so shrewdly laid as traps for the simpleton. Well all I hope is that the plain fluidity of the narrative is not mistaken as the grossness of the Author; Let us not succumb to the deceptive simplicity of the novel. The novel is not a failure as asserted by the author himself; it is rather an epitome of the meaning of life, speaking volumes about it.
- Sanskar Jain
2008TT10701