"There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces…"
Kurt Vonnegut, one of America’s popular and controversial
novelists of the 20th century, allows his wartime experiences to loosely form the base of his darkly humorous
meta-fiction Slaughterhouse-Five (published in 1969). Sprawled little over 200
pages, this defiantly complex and deeply ironic novel unmask hardest truths
about the human condition. And Vonnegut does so in the gentlest and humorous
manner possible, with the prose that beams with pragmatism and subversion. Over
the years, Slaughterhouse-Five is faced with the danger of being trivialized as
an ‘anti-war’ novel. Vonnegut does take an anti-war stance, but not by
faithfully reconstructing the elaborate history behind his limited war
experiences. He rather points out to the monstrosity of war by observing the
pointlessness of the entire experience from a disconnected vantage point. This
disconnection allows the author to set forth and examine the existential angst,
inevitability of death, and tragic farce known as ‘modern life’.
Kurt Vonnegut served with the 106th Infantry Division of the
US army during World War II. He was arrested in 1944 during the Battle of the
Bulge and was later sent to Dresden to work in a factory that manufactured
vitamins for pregnant woman. Vonnegut was in Dresden when the allied forces
bombed the city in February 1945. His survival was followed with the repulsive task of
exhuming thousands of corpses. The firebombing of Dresden served as the basis of
his most celebrated novel, released nearly 25 years after the horrific
historical event. As accounted in the opening chapter of Slaughterhouse-five,
the demands of enunciating wartime experience nearly broke Mr. Vonnegut. What
plagued the author is the inability to say anything comprehensible about such a
horrific event (“there is nothing intelligent to tell about a massacre”, quips
the novel’s omniscient narrator). In this prelude, Vonnegut converses with his
war buddy Bernard O’Hare about his never-to-be published 5000 page book on
Dresden. Hence the surreal story of Billy Pilgrim, the author’s alter-ego, is a
means to liberate himself from the weight of hideous personal experiences.
 |
| Author Kurt Vonnegut [photo credit: Marty Reichenthal/AP/npr.org] |
The absurdly funny tale of Billy begins with this popular
phrase: “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time”. The novel, which also
came with an alternative title ‘The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with
Death’, eschews conventional narrative or characterization and unfurls with
deliberately fragmented vignettes. It has to do with the perspective of the
protagonist, who after an accident uncontrollably travels through time to
different phases of his own life. It's like passing through myriad of doors in
a big mansion. He travels from being German prisoner-of-war to his lush
post-war years as optometrist, then back to his aloof teenage years, and so on.
The bizarre thing about Billy’s adventure through time is his encounter with
the ‘Tralfamadorians’, a highly enhanced alien race for whom time is not
linear. For these fourth-dimensional creatures, who exist in all times at once,
death is nothing but a single moment as they are 'very well' in other moments.
Their stoic defiance in comprehending death influences Billy Pilgrim, which is
summed up through his notable, fatalistic phrase: “So it goes.” The phrase is
repeatedly mentioned in the book, whenever a death is recorded. It’s like a
slogan born out of acceptance of a situation whose control doesn’t rest upon
us (humans), and also defiantly tries to dilute the power it (death) has over us. The
most comical yet thought-provoking episode involves Billy being stuck in a
glassed-in zoo on the Tralfamadorian world. He says he was confined there for
months as an exhibit and forced to mate with a starlet named Montana Wildhack.
Throughout Billy’s incredible journeys, Vonnegut makes references
to personal events and historical occurrences. Although, Vonnegut makes us visit
Billy’s life, like the aliens observing life through non-chronological points in
space, he gradually draws the fragmented spaces to actually diffuse through
each event or space, highlighting every spatial or temporal moment as our
relentless attempt to hold on to the world, in which our fates are out of
control and there are no fixed shores to rest upon. Vonnegut’s novels aren’t
simply make-believe tales, but superior tools to reflect upon the assortment of
humanity’s darker side. However the American writer’s works are anything but
didactic. He mostly hopes to make subtle, bemused comments on the big
philosophical questions. While, Slaughterhouse-Five is concerned with the cycle
of war and dehumanization (similar to Joseph Heller’s masterwork Catch-22), the
prevalent theme in the novel discusses the dominating position of determinism
(fate) over freewill in human life. At one point, the authorial voice says, “Among
the things that Billy could not change are the past, the present, and the
future.” Even though, Billy’s journey talks of predestination, the author nevertheless equates war and its inhumane mechanism with the absence of freewill.
 |
| A still from George Roy Hill's movie adaptation of the same name (released in 1972) |
Kurt Vonnegut’s commentary on modern warfare doesn’t assign
blame based on nationalities. Just like the novel doesn’t have a hero or a
villain, the destructiveness of war doesn’t provide a comfortable position to
judge. Subsequently, Billy Pilgrim got to be the classic anti-hero or non-hero character in
literature. His ineptness and lack of valor reminds us of the authorial words in earliest
chapter: “all wars are children's crusades, as all wars are fought by soldiers
barely out of their teens, some of whom have never left home before they were
called upon by their countries to kill and die. So it goes.” The positioning of
Billy between the fissures of surreality and reality, further questions the utter
pointlessness of war. By constantly foregrounding the absurdities of the otherwise
commanding characters – like Howard W Campbell or Wild Bob or Rumfoord –
Vonnegut silently condemns the deception of heroic figures, reeled in to
encourage the war efforts. Altogether, Kurt Vonnegut’s stubbornly imaginative
vision and corrosive wit in Slaughterhouse-Five speaks of our deepest, unspeakable
fears and pains. It’s one of those timeless literary treasures that opens up
fresher perspectives with each process of re-reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment