Satirical fiction has a proud tradition in American literature. Beginning with the winking cynicism of Mark Twain, this tradition was picked up by several American authors in the twentieth century, but none more bitingly than Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Growing up as the son of German-Americans during a time (the aftermath of World War I and then World War II) when many Americans harbored ill will toward them, and with his family suffering the privations of the Great Depression, Vonnegut saw in a matter of a couple of decades most of the very worst that humanity can inflict on one another. In 1969, he wrote Slaughterhouse Five, a treatment of the firebombing of the German city of Dresden during World War II. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, represents Vonnegut’s own experiences as a soldier during the war. The story presents Vonnegut’s views about war; the convoluted structure of the tale mirrors not only Vonnegut’s own difficulties writing about this devastating day, that he personally witnessed, but also the destruction that war can wreak on humanity itself. Released during the Vietnam War, Slaughterhouse Five was a major statement against the waging of that conflict – in which massive bombing campaigns also took place, with the aim of destroying the enemy’s morale – never mind the civilian casualties. One of the major themes in this novel is the illusion that we all have about possessing free will. If one uses the story of Billy Pilgrim as a guide, it is clear that free will is a luxury waiting to be snatched away at the whim of fate.
The toilet plunger-shaped Tralfamadorians give Vonnegut’s answer to the question as to whether or not we as humans possess free will in our lives. Because they live with awareness of the fourth dimension in an analogous way to how we view the third dimension, to the Tralfamadorians, all events are happening simultaneously, with the result that not only is time non-linear, but also that there is no reliable system of causality, wherein one event leads to another (Simpson, p. 262). As a result, the determinant in life is random and arbitrary, which means that free will is powerless. The Tralfamadorians laugh, in fact, at Pilgrim’s notion that there should be such a thing as causality and free will, given their more complete view of the way that events actually intersect (Simpson, p. 264).
The image of Billy Pilgrim ensconced in amber and sent around his existence, in sort of a pinball machine of fate, is one of the more grim reminders that free will is indeed a precarious notion. Billy happens to be below ground when the bombing of Dresden takes place, instead of above ground like the thousands and thousands of casualties. There was no real reason for him to be underground at that particular time, down in the slaughterhouse; while he was performing a task, there was no reason for him to be there at that specific time. If we add this non-specificity to the Trafalmadorian notion that the intersections among events are indeed random (Edelstein, p. 137), then the absence of free will is not indicative of a divine power in control; it instead suggests that there is no force or being guiding our planet.
The phrase “so it goes” goes from being a casual aside to an oft-repeated refrain throughout Slaughterhouse Five. The purpose of this begins as almost a joke (and doesn’t everything, in Vonnegut?); however, the more it is repeated, the more firmly the notion that most of what happens in life is inevitable (Cacicedo, p. 361). Also, the more difficult it is to accept a particular event – as happens to Billy as the bodies he must incinerate pile up higher and higher in his mind – the easier it becomes to rely on a simple phrase as a palliative.
The existence of free will implies a certain level of hope – hope that one can shape one’s fate in some way, that one has a certain degree of control over one’s future (May, p. 37). However, the fact that Billy, with his poor level of training, can survive the bombing of Dresden and make it home from the war, when so many vastly superior soldiers did not make it home, is used as an example that no one can trust free will, that no one has control. Without this hope, life indeed becomes bleak and dreary.
Even the protagonist’s name belies the possibility of free will, or even much contentment at all, resulting from existence. While the name “Pilgrim” bestows on Billy a semi-mythic status, the first name (“Billy”) is a diminutive form, the child’s form of William. Using the diminutive name reflects Billy’s smaller stature, in comparison to mythic heroes in earlier literature (McInnis, p. 388). As a result, what readers receive is the anti-story of an anti-quest, told in anti-chronological order, with the specific events spinning around each other instead of proceeding in a line, confusing the reader.
All textual considerations aside, though, the mere existential torture of living through this sort of bombardment, with death totals in the six figures, would annihilate most people’s sense of free will or divine providence. Vonnegut himself lived through a situation much the same as Billy’s, barely surviving the Dresden bombing, and emerging into a ruined city marked by stacks and stacks of the dead. The melancholy that had to live within Vonnegut leaches into his creation of Billy Pilgrim – and into his pacifist readers (Hume, p. 22). As with many authors, Vonnegut’s emotional take on the setting of Dresden’s bombing comes through to the reader.
Ultimately, it would be difficult to believe in divine providence and free will after growing up reading about the mustard gas attacks and huge casualty totals associated with World War I; watching the ascendancy of Adolf Hitler, only to learn about the horrors he unleashed on the Jews and other minorities; learning about the destructive power of the atomic bomb; seeing the American government refuse to learn the lessons from two world wars, instead pursuing combat in Vietnam. Slaughterhouse Five is a dramatic rendition of the chaotic, confusing nature of war, and a clarion call for its abolition.
Works Cited
Cacicedo, Alberto. “’You Must Remember This’: Trauma and Memory in Catch-22 and
Slaughterhouse Five. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction Vol. 46(4): 357-
368.
Edelstein, Arnold. “”Slaughterhouse-Five’: Time out of Joint.” College Literature Vol.
1(2): 128-139.
Hume, Kathryn. “Vonnegut’s Melancholy.” Philological Quarterly Vol. 77: 18-31.
May, John R. “Vonnegut’s Humor and the Limits of Hope.” Twentieth Century Literature
Vol. 18(1): 25-36.
McInnis, Gilbert. “Evolutionary Mythology in the Writings of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.” Critique:
Studies in Contemporary Fiction Vol. 46(4): 383-396.
Simpson, Josh. “’This Promising of Great Secrets’: Literature, Ideas and the (Re)
Invention of Reality in Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,
Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions "Fantasies of an Impossibly
Hospitable World": Science Fiction and Madness in Vonnegut's Troutean
Trilogy.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction Vol. 45(3): 261-272.
