I've read Slaughterhouse-Five many times. Each time the experience is different. Each time I get something out of it that I didn't get out of the previous read. Each time I'm caught off guard by Vonnegut's blend of beauty and horror. He has me laughing one minute and I'm heartbroken the next.
For the most part, I've never like the Tralfamadore sections. I found those moments to be a distraction. I've never been much for science fiction. I'd read those moments and rolled my eyes and eagerly awaited for Billy to flashback to the war or back home to his candy bar-eating wife. But this time reading it, something happened. Maybe I'm burned out on war these days and an escape to a another world or dimension is what I've been needing.
How do you all feel about Tralfamadore? What do you all think of Tralfamadore and the Tralfamadorian way of life? Do you agree with their philosophies? Which one do you like most? What do you not agree with? In a way, they are much like us (look at page 150)--can you locate any other spots where they say something that is quite human?
Vonnegut has based his science fiction on his pulp influences. (I've added some Science Fiction pulp novel covers for you to look at here.) Vonnegut even creates a writer character with the name of Kilgore Trout (who many believe is an alter-ego of Vonnegut). Kilgore writes such titles as Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension which was 'about people whose mental diseases couldn't be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension, and three-dimensional Earthling doctors couldn't see those causes at all, or even imagine them' (Vonnegut 132).
What do you think of Kilgore Trout? Do you see a connection between him and Vonnegut? What do you think of Trout's books? Would you want to read them?
Slaughterhouse-Five is structured much like a Tralfamadorian book. It's a series of random images strung together in no real order. The only narrative the reader can rely on is the war narrative. It moves from the beginning of the war to the end--even if we are interrupted from time to time, we do end up back to where we left off. Billy keeps re-living the plane crash and the death of Derby and he never changes it. He accepts it. Why? Billy is a passive character. He never acts on anything. Or does he?
Bibliography
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell Publishing, 1999.
5 comments:
Let's assume that Billy's tralfamadorian experiences are real, at least to him. Given that, we can assume by his actions that he has adopted their way of seeing things to his own detachment from the human timeline. The tralfamadorians see time with their eyes, which means they see every moment of everything. Death and birth are not beginnings and ends to them, they are objects. or rather, each moment is an object with birth and death being natural attributes of them. To them, mourning death is like mourning blue. My house is blue. I'm not painting it yellow. Billy gets in that plane crash. He does not avoid it because that's what that moment is. he lives the other moments, from time to time he revisits that plane crash. To worry about why he doesn't try to change it is to think of his experience of time as linear. But it's not linear, it's random. He does not move from one moment to the next, rather, he exists in every moment from birth to death simultaneously. Since he is not gifted with the ability to see time like the tralfamadorians, he can only see the moment his consciousness happens to be in at the time. Still, his death - to him - is just a feature of the landscape. He might as well try to re-sculpt a mountain range. It is there, and always will be. This, I think, is Vonnegut's comment on the inevitability of war.
i really like the tralfamadore sections in the story. they're relieving and interesting. and scary. aliens are very scary.
i believe that what billy thinks about the tralfamadorians is true. i can't completely wrap my brain around their view on time and space, but i wish i could. i like the sound of it. or rather, i like the calm way they have about them that goes hand-in-hand with their beliefs. i picture them to be like little buddhas. sagely to the max. they don't panic or freak about life like most of us "earthlings" do. one of my favorite lines from a song is "you are what you are and you ain't what you ain't." i admire that kind of attitude.
that's why i like billy pilgrim. i like his passivity. perhaps i wouldn't like him in real life, but i like him as a character. i love billy's wife. she's absurd but very real. when i think of her it's like, what a sad cow, but i could totally see myself being her. it's great.
i like how vonnegut pieces together the narratives. it works with the tralfamadore's literature, with billy's attitude and views on life, and with vonnegut's conversational style of writing.
this is a non-important comment, but I just want to say that I LOVE the song 'She Blinded Me With Science' by Thomas Dolby. I have a sick passion for 80's new wave music (shhh! Don't Tell!)
Meh. Personally I don't think the Trafalmadorian sequences are Vonnegut's comment on war. That's a really abstract way to say something he already said flat out in the prologue. I always wondered about the Trafalmadorians and if them being able to see a person throughout their lifespan negates the idea that you can affect your future in any way. Like if a Trafalmadorian told a guy he was going to die because he's getting hit by a bus tomorrow, couldn't he just stay inside all day, or is he gonna get hit by a bus no matter what (like a bus loses control and runs over his house or something). It's sort of fatalist when you think about it, that a person's life is entirely laid out in the fourth dimension and every seemingly random decision you make has already been pre-determined. For me the science-fiction parts were entertaining, but not truly part of the story you're trying to get at, which is what happened in Dresden? Maybe Vonnegut couldn't come up with anything plausible to keep the distraction up and he just decided to make up some crazy shit. That's my theory anyway
One of my favorite scenes in the novel occurs when Billy is in Tralfamadore, and he gives a speech about Earth's inclination towards war. He makes, what I thought, was a moving appeal, describing how he saw "the bodies of school girls who were boiled alive in a water tower" (116). He gives some accounts of war here that are truly harsh, and I guess I expected the Tralfamadorian's to see somethin in what Billy was saying. He explains that he "felt that he had spoken soaringly," (116) and I felt he had too. This is one of those few parts in the novel where Billy seems filled with something, not empty, but interested. He gives a damn, asking, "how can a planet live in peace?" (116).
What makes this scene one of my favorite's is an image that comes after Billy asks this question, when he sees "the Tralfamadorians close their little hands on their eyes" (116). Billy explains that this is a sign he has said something dumb. Yet I'm struck though by how human the tralfamadorian's gesture is, covering their eyes in dismay. Like Billy, I also feel a bit disheartened. I thought this might be a chance for humans to shine, to show that eventhough they can't see all the dimensions they've got some kinde of handle on things.
The Tralfamadorian's explanation of how the world ends, and how they won't stop it angers me some. All they have to do is stop someone from pressing a button, and I don't see how their "hippyesque" philosophy of letting things be supports them not doing this. Even if you can see all of time, it doesn't mean it can't still be changed right? Maybe this is just all over my head. This philosophy is probably why Billy never saves Derby. He goes back to it constantly because the human part of him wants to save him, but he never does because of what he knows from the Tralfamadorians.
In general I get a little annoyed with the Tralfamadorians, and their "all knowing" philosophies. I think the things they say are interesting, but I wonder if Vonnegut isn't trying to convince readers that the Tralfamadorian way of thinking is superior.
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