Slaughterhouse-Five by Kilgore Trout
At first glance, Billy's hospital stay with Rumfoord may appear to be another depiction of Billy acting crazy and contemplating aliens, but it is much more than that. In Rumfoord, for the first time externally, Billy finds solace. Having his wife recount all of the details about the Dresden bombings and World War II, Rumfoord makes these events real to Billy. They are no longer mere points to which he travels in time occasionally, but actual events experienced by many people other than himself. This realization becomes therapeutic for Billy, allowing him to slowly begin to recover and straighten his mind out. Eventually, once Billy has regained enough consciousness and sanity, he says to Rumfoord, "I was there," speaking about the Dresden bombings (Vonnegut 191). Living in imaginary worlds can no longer comfort Billy; he needs sympathy from another human that lived through the same hell he did. Rumfoord provides that. Following Billy's first utterance to another person about his time in Dresden, he does not make a complete recovery. He still utilizes time travel as a coping mechanism as explained in a previous blog, but at least now he knows that what his own personal horrors are not unique. He is not a suffering anomaly, but rather one of many people victimized by the nasty business that is war. Ultimately, that knowledge is what Billy needed to truly begin to recover from his time as a soldier.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Influence of Kilgore Trout
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Throughout the novel, I struggled with the idea of Billy Pilgrim time traveling. Aside from that detail, and the Tralfamadorians it brought with it, the rest of the novel was quite realistic and grounded. This led me to believe that time travel represented something else for Billy. After reading about the plot lines of Kilgore Trout's novels, my suspicions were confirmed. One of Trout's novels, The Big Board, revolved around "an Earthling man and woman who were kidnapped by extra-terrestrials" and "put on display in a zoo on a [foreign] planet" (Vonnegut 201). Remarkably, Billy claimed he lived out the same scenario with Montana Wildhack. Another of Trout's novels involved a character in possession of a time machine, which explains Billy believing he can actually travel through time. The similarities between these science fiction novels and Billy's personal accounts of time traveling and alien encounters point to an interesting conclusion. Billy utilized the works of Kilgore Trout as an escape from the cruelty he had so often encountered in the world. Immersing himself in Trout's worlds served as a form of escapism for him. Accepting that he could time travel allowed him to deal with his traumatic memories without actually reliving them. In this manner, namely choosing a fictitious reality over his own life, Billy Pilgrim lost part of his sanity. The point Vonnegut aims to make is that without his traumatic memories, without his experiences with war, Billy Pilgrim would have lived a normal, happy life.
Throughout the novel, I struggled with the idea of Billy Pilgrim time traveling. Aside from that detail, and the Tralfamadorians it brought with it, the rest of the novel was quite realistic and grounded. This led me to believe that time travel represented something else for Billy. After reading about the plot lines of Kilgore Trout's novels, my suspicions were confirmed. One of Trout's novels, The Big Board, revolved around "an Earthling man and woman who were kidnapped by extra-terrestrials" and "put on display in a zoo on a [foreign] planet" (Vonnegut 201). Remarkably, Billy claimed he lived out the same scenario with Montana Wildhack. Another of Trout's novels involved a character in possession of a time machine, which explains Billy believing he can actually travel through time. The similarities between these science fiction novels and Billy's personal accounts of time traveling and alien encounters point to an interesting conclusion. Billy utilized the works of Kilgore Trout as an escape from the cruelty he had so often encountered in the world. Immersing himself in Trout's worlds served as a form of escapism for him. Accepting that he could time travel allowed him to deal with his traumatic memories without actually reliving them. In this manner, namely choosing a fictitious reality over his own life, Billy Pilgrim lost part of his sanity. The point Vonnegut aims to make is that without his traumatic memories, without his experiences with war, Billy Pilgrim would have lived a normal, happy life.
Throwing Chronology out the Window
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
In a conventional novel, significant events occur in a linear fashion, one after the other, with the occasional flashback to provide exposition or expound on why a particular event holds meaning. However, Slaughterhouse-Five is not a conventional novel. After laying the basic sequence of events in Billy's life toward the beginning of the novel, Vonnegut takes his reader on a temporal roller-coaster ride, describing Billy's sporadic time travels to important moments in his life. This unconventional chronology helps to support Vonnegut's overall purpose of opposing war in the modern world. The chronology emphasizes the disorderly state of Billy's mind and the psychological scarring he endured from his time in the army. His time travels reflect the scattered thoughts of man broken by atrocities. Frequently, Billy time travels back to the war to experience a scene relevant to his current situation. For example, after attempting to open up to Rumfoord in the hospital, "Billy closed his eyes, [and] traveled in time to a May afternoon, two days after the end of the Second World War" to experience the aftermath of Dresden once more (Vonnegut 193). He finds comfort in observing the events again, rationalizing them as significant to his present life rather than being meaningless scenes of horror and death. Furthermore, by traveling through time, Billy is better able to cope with the mass amount of death he faces. Rather than mourning each death and allowing the culmination of it all to crush him, Billy must acclimate himself to the idea. He does so by adopting the Tralfamadorian perspective on death so that when a person dies, he does not see them as lost, but merely existing in a different state. The person is still alive to Billy, but at a different moment in time, a moment which he can visit as often as he likes through the mentally fabricated gift of time travel.
In a conventional novel, significant events occur in a linear fashion, one after the other, with the occasional flashback to provide exposition or expound on why a particular event holds meaning. However, Slaughterhouse-Five is not a conventional novel. After laying the basic sequence of events in Billy's life toward the beginning of the novel, Vonnegut takes his reader on a temporal roller-coaster ride, describing Billy's sporadic time travels to important moments in his life. This unconventional chronology helps to support Vonnegut's overall purpose of opposing war in the modern world. The chronology emphasizes the disorderly state of Billy's mind and the psychological scarring he endured from his time in the army. His time travels reflect the scattered thoughts of man broken by atrocities. Frequently, Billy time travels back to the war to experience a scene relevant to his current situation. For example, after attempting to open up to Rumfoord in the hospital, "Billy closed his eyes, [and] traveled in time to a May afternoon, two days after the end of the Second World War" to experience the aftermath of Dresden once more (Vonnegut 193). He finds comfort in observing the events again, rationalizing them as significant to his present life rather than being meaningless scenes of horror and death. Furthermore, by traveling through time, Billy is better able to cope with the mass amount of death he faces. Rather than mourning each death and allowing the culmination of it all to crush him, Billy must acclimate himself to the idea. He does so by adopting the Tralfamadorian perspective on death so that when a person dies, he does not see them as lost, but merely existing in a different state. The person is still alive to Billy, but at a different moment in time, a moment which he can visit as often as he likes through the mentally fabricated gift of time travel.
No More War
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Concluding Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut makes his literary intentions clear: to denounce war and its horrible consequences. In narrating Billy Pilgrim's descent into madness and partial recovery when recounting his tale of the Dresden bombings, Vonnegut personifies these consequences. War traumatized Billy, leaving him in a state of mental disarray. It desensitized him and the world he lived in to the idea of death as a necessary means to an end. This desensitization manifests glaringly in the Tralfamadorian saying, "So it goes" (Vonnegut 210). Instead of feeling pity and sorrow for the deceased, Billy explains early on that Tralfamadorians meet death the simple phrase "So it goes" to show how death is meaningless because all moments in time are essentially the same moment (Vonnegut 210). There is one singular state of existence through which time does not pass, but simply is. The narrator, which I believe champions Vonnegut's personal political views, displays aversion to this phrase. He states, "If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed," (Vonnegut 211). He dislikes the idea of life being meaningless and there being no greater purpose than to exist and have existed. Therefore, Vonnegut, through the narrator, condemns war for eliciting this perspective on life.
Concluding Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut makes his literary intentions clear: to denounce war and its horrible consequences. In narrating Billy Pilgrim's descent into madness and partial recovery when recounting his tale of the Dresden bombings, Vonnegut personifies these consequences. War traumatized Billy, leaving him in a state of mental disarray. It desensitized him and the world he lived in to the idea of death as a necessary means to an end. This desensitization manifests glaringly in the Tralfamadorian saying, "So it goes" (Vonnegut 210). Instead of feeling pity and sorrow for the deceased, Billy explains early on that Tralfamadorians meet death the simple phrase "So it goes" to show how death is meaningless because all moments in time are essentially the same moment (Vonnegut 210). There is one singular state of existence through which time does not pass, but simply is. The narrator, which I believe champions Vonnegut's personal political views, displays aversion to this phrase. He states, "If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed," (Vonnegut 211). He dislikes the idea of life being meaningless and there being no greater purpose than to exist and have existed. Therefore, Vonnegut, through the narrator, condemns war for eliciting this perspective on life.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Time Travel or Active Memory?
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
From early on, Billy's time travelling did not appear legitimate, or at least as legitimate as time travel can be at this point. He would travel abruptly to seeming unrelated points in time, experience the anecdote that moment had to offer, and then return to the period from which he traveled. Sometimes, Billy would make multiple detours before returning to his original time period. Also, he did all this traveling without providing any explanation of how it was possible. Billy simply became unstuck in time and gained the ability to time travel. Rather than accepting Billy's ability to warp spacetime, one may entertain a more logical explanation: Billy has adopted the Tralfamadorian concept of time. A Tralfamadorian explains this concept when he says, "All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is," (Vonnegut 86). Viewing time as such, Billy would see all moments in time as the same moment. To time travel, then, all Billy would have to do, in essence, would be to remember a different aspect of this one moment, this single existence. In that way, Billy's memories, traumatic and joyful alike, give him the ability to time travel. This would also explain Billy's questionable sanity because in order to truly time travel through this method, Billy would have to view the past and future as the present just as much as he experiences the actual present as such. Living without any sense of now, or perhaps with a ubiquitous sense of the present, Billy would appear crazy to others, yet sane to himself. Hopefully Vonnegut will explain Billy's time traveling later in the novel.
From early on, Billy's time travelling did not appear legitimate, or at least as legitimate as time travel can be at this point. He would travel abruptly to seeming unrelated points in time, experience the anecdote that moment had to offer, and then return to the period from which he traveled. Sometimes, Billy would make multiple detours before returning to his original time period. Also, he did all this traveling without providing any explanation of how it was possible. Billy simply became unstuck in time and gained the ability to time travel. Rather than accepting Billy's ability to warp spacetime, one may entertain a more logical explanation: Billy has adopted the Tralfamadorian concept of time. A Tralfamadorian explains this concept when he says, "All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is," (Vonnegut 86). Viewing time as such, Billy would see all moments in time as the same moment. To time travel, then, all Billy would have to do, in essence, would be to remember a different aspect of this one moment, this single existence. In that way, Billy's memories, traumatic and joyful alike, give him the ability to time travel. This would also explain Billy's questionable sanity because in order to truly time travel through this method, Billy would have to view the past and future as the present just as much as he experiences the actual present as such. Living without any sense of now, or perhaps with a ubiquitous sense of the present, Billy would appear crazy to others, yet sane to himself. Hopefully Vonnegut will explain Billy's time traveling later in the novel.
Questioning Sanity
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
In the first fourth of the novel, Billy Pilgrim comes off as a man of questionable sanity. His own daughter believes he is senile and rambles on for hours about aliens from Tralfamadore. Perhaps within the confines of the novel, these aliens actually exist, but further evidence in chapter five would suggest otherwise. While with the English officers, who were also German prisoners of war, Billy enjoyed a rendition of Cinderella put on by the Englishmen. He enjoyed it so much that he laughed hysterically, ultimately sending himself into a state of mania. After this episode, "Billy was put to bed and tied down, and given a shot of morphine," (Vonnegut 98). Obviously, his fellow prisoners of war and the Germans thought Billy insane. Furthermore, while sedated, Billy experienced a flashback which further supports the argument for his lack of sanity. The flashback was actually an instance of time travelling, but that is another discussion entirely. Anyway, the flashback brought Billy to the period of time when he "had committed himself in the middle of his final year at the Ilium School of Optometry," (Vonnegut 100). At that point, Billy thought he was going insane. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for Billy, "The doctors agreed: he was going crazy," (Vonnegut 100). While Barbara intimated it earlier, that sentence confirms it: Billy is crazy, at least from another human's perspective.
In the first fourth of the novel, Billy Pilgrim comes off as a man of questionable sanity. His own daughter believes he is senile and rambles on for hours about aliens from Tralfamadore. Perhaps within the confines of the novel, these aliens actually exist, but further evidence in chapter five would suggest otherwise. While with the English officers, who were also German prisoners of war, Billy enjoyed a rendition of Cinderella put on by the Englishmen. He enjoyed it so much that he laughed hysterically, ultimately sending himself into a state of mania. After this episode, "Billy was put to bed and tied down, and given a shot of morphine," (Vonnegut 98). Obviously, his fellow prisoners of war and the Germans thought Billy insane. Furthermore, while sedated, Billy experienced a flashback which further supports the argument for his lack of sanity. The flashback was actually an instance of time travelling, but that is another discussion entirely. Anyway, the flashback brought Billy to the period of time when he "had committed himself in the middle of his final year at the Ilium School of Optometry," (Vonnegut 100). At that point, Billy thought he was going insane. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for Billy, "The doctors agreed: he was going crazy," (Vonnegut 100). While Barbara intimated it earlier, that sentence confirms it: Billy is crazy, at least from another human's perspective.
Hilarity in Vulgarity
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
At times, Vonnegut's novel becomes somewhat difficult to follow, what with Billy's constant time traveling and discourses with aliens. It can also become fairly serious, as Vonnegut focuses in to convey his message about humanity. In order to entertain his audience, provide comic relief, and ensure his message is received as slap on the cheek rather than a violent castigation, Vonnegut incorporates vulgar, yet humorous, scenes. He also handles well how he writes these scenes. For example, after Roland Weary proclaims to all that Billy Pilgrim killed him, Billy felt understandably on edge. Billy became anxious to the point of "shitting thin gruel" when someone entered his boxcar, an act which Vonnegut comically relates to Newton's Third Law of Motion and rocketry (Vonnegut 80). This vulgar image elicits humor, lightening the overall mood of the novel, while not digressing too far from Vonnegut's purpose. Later in the novel, Vonnegut utilizes a similar image to describe the hell that is war. He describes a moment where a captive Billy, having eaten a large welcoming feast from other prisoners of war, comes upon the latrine the prisoners are to use. He witnesses men expelling "everything but [their] brains" and retreats in disgust (Vonnegut 125). Vonnegut writes specifically that after coming upon the men, "Billy reeled away from his vision of Hell" (Vonnegut 126). As such, he paints war out to be a disgusting, nasty business but also allows for laughter a such a ridiculously unfortunate scene.
At times, Vonnegut's novel becomes somewhat difficult to follow, what with Billy's constant time traveling and discourses with aliens. It can also become fairly serious, as Vonnegut focuses in to convey his message about humanity. In order to entertain his audience, provide comic relief, and ensure his message is received as slap on the cheek rather than a violent castigation, Vonnegut incorporates vulgar, yet humorous, scenes. He also handles well how he writes these scenes. For example, after Roland Weary proclaims to all that Billy Pilgrim killed him, Billy felt understandably on edge. Billy became anxious to the point of "shitting thin gruel" when someone entered his boxcar, an act which Vonnegut comically relates to Newton's Third Law of Motion and rocketry (Vonnegut 80). This vulgar image elicits humor, lightening the overall mood of the novel, while not digressing too far from Vonnegut's purpose. Later in the novel, Vonnegut utilizes a similar image to describe the hell that is war. He describes a moment where a captive Billy, having eaten a large welcoming feast from other prisoners of war, comes upon the latrine the prisoners are to use. He witnesses men expelling "everything but [their] brains" and retreats in disgust (Vonnegut 125). Vonnegut writes specifically that after coming upon the men, "Billy reeled away from his vision of Hell" (Vonnegut 126). As such, he paints war out to be a disgusting, nasty business but also allows for laughter a such a ridiculously unfortunate scene.
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