Seminar Reflection Slaughterhouse Five
India Waller
Reaction:
In seminar we were asked whether Slaughterhouse 5 is an anti-war novel. At first it was banter of yes’s and no’s based on events in the book, but then we began to look closer. Someone, not quite sure who, said that maybe Vonnegut’s truth of war for this book was not in the events but in the undertones of the book. This got me thinking about how we are affected and how we are influenced. It brought me back to propaganda and how we are affected by words and images. There is direct order but there is also a less obvious way to manipulate. Leaders can make people do things out of fear or love but it is most effective when people are doing it because they believe in it. When we read Slaughterhouse 5 we are being affected in ways we don’t even know. The best of writers are able to manipulate us in ways we are unaware of. The phrase “passive aggressive” was used to describe Vonnegut. Instead of stating his truth of war outright Vonnegut gives us subtle nudges and hints and lets us figure it out for ourselves. An example of this is when Billy is at his anniversary and has a break down. Vonnegut doesn’t tell us directly what the break down is about, he wants us to come to a conclusion ourselves. It seems to me that every piece of good fiction is propaganda of some sort, expressing the authors opinion in one way or another.
Detailed Response:
Billy is a strange character; he gets abducted by aliens, travels through time and looks like a flamingo. He’s dull, emotionless and matter of fact. The question is does he have these adventures because he’s insane, or is it the truth, or maybe he just made it up? I believe Billy needs to believe he has no control over his life, and that things will happen no matter what he does. On page 115 of Slaughterhouse 5 Vonnegut writes: “Whatever poor Billy saw through the pipes, he had no choice but to say to himself, “That’s life.”” This passage really shows how Billy transfers his emotions into inevitability. Billy does this because he can’t stand the responsibility of free will. It is so much easier to transfer that responsibility to fate.
Vonnegut uses Billy to show a part of human nature that is in all of us but we don’t want to acknowledge it. That attitude of, “I’m just one person so I can’t make a difference”. “Billy fled up the stairs in his nice white house.”(Vonnegut, p. 176) This was when he had the breakdown on his anniversary; I believe that Billy is realizing that he’s telling himself this lie. This quote shows how having a “nice white house” doesn’t mean much in the end, it’s what you do for other people that makes your life worth living. Maybe Billy realizes this after the plane crash and that’s why he finally shares with other people about his experiences. What I love most about Vonnegut’s novels is that he leaves them open for interpretation.
Connection:
In the seminar we talked about whether Billy’s “so it goes” attitude was a good or bad thing. I connected this to when my 7 year old cousin died and my aunt and uncle had two different way of grieving. My aunt was the opposite of Billy, she wouldn’t let go of him or more over wouldn’t let go of the grief. My uncle on the other hand refused to grieve and just wanted to move on. I used this to show that things are never good in the extreme. You need to be able move on but you also need to be able to grieve. Billy doesn’t do this he never really takes the time to acknowledge his feelings, bad or good, he just is. Kind of like the idea that one needs to go back to go forward. I don’t think Billy is ever really happy in his life because he’s never really sad in his life. There is no happiness without sadness.
Lori’s Choice:
The main characters in both the books take on this unfeeling attitude. Billy because of his experiences with time travel and the Tralfamadorians, and Paul because the horrors of war were only bearable if he disconnected himself commpletly. “When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad conditions in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes.’” (Vonnegut, p. 27) In this passage we see the belief of the Tralfamadorians, and how it affects Billy’s emotions. “Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more.” (Remarque, p. 291) This shows how war sucked the feeling out of Paul. Both characters went through experiences that caused them to become robots. Maybe Vonnegut used Billy and the Tralfamadorians to show how experiences and knowledge shape our character. Slaughterhouse 5 is full of many hidden meanings, it might be that Billy made up all the time traveling and aliens so he could escape the truths of the horrors of war. Billy and Paul are quite similar. One escaped into darkness, and the other into insanity.
