“Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut is a unique and unconventional novel that explores the impact of war, mainly focusing on the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. Told in a non-chronological manner, the novel focuses more on the aftermath of the battle than on the battle itself. Vonnegut’s non-chronological narration, the tragic end to characters glorifying war, avoidance of any direct representations of the battlefield, and the lack of war heroes testify to his antipathy towards warfare.
One way by which Vonnegut shows his antipathy towards warfare is seen in the limited number of characters glorifying war. In this book, Roland Weary dreams of grandeur and is obsessed with gore and vengeance. He fantasizes about himself as a great soldier. In his fantasies of “The Three Musketeers, ” he is constantly saving Billy not out of duty or compassion but because he believes that this heroic act will see him decorated with medals. Another character who seems to glorify war is Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, the history professor who wants to celebrate the Dresden firebombing as “a howling success.” As a testament to his antipathy towards war, Vonnegut represents these characters as villains whose efforts are futile. Vonnegut uses Weary’s character to satirize and critique the misguided glorification of war. He depicts Weary’s obsession with gore and vengeance as absurd and tragic, highlighting the disconnect between war fantasies and the harsh realities of combat. Despite Weary’s grandiose dreams, he does not get to achieve them, and his misguided efforts to achieve heroism harm himself and his compatriots.
Vonnegut avoids a traditional, linear narrative of the battlefield or combat scenes. Instead, he focuses on the aftermath of the Dresden bombing and the psychological impact it has on Billy Pilgrim. Vonnegut’s goal in avoiding direct representations of the combat scenes and focusing more on non-combatants like the war prisoners is to draw the reader’s attention to the suffering that war causes. Vonnegut does not indulge in gory details of war to challenge the traditional war narratives whose direct stories of the battlefield seem to glorify war (Loeb, 58). Vonnegut seeks to emphasize the lasting trauma and absurdity of war. Vonnegut’s avoidance of direct depiction of the battlefield also reflects that this novel is a metafiction. He cannot depict the combat scenes objectively because his own perception of the event might lead to biased narration (Ilhamdi,5). The novel’s unconventional structure and focus on the aftermath rather than the battlefield itself might not effectively depict war. However, this depiction aligns with the author’s goal. Kurt War is a time of chaos and disorder when events unfold too quickly, but the consequences of the war are long-lasting and appear to be lived in slow motion. Vonnegut’s defiance of conventional chronology in the story keeps it faithful to the disordered history depicted (Jordison). Vonnegut’s presentation of the horror of war through the lens of Billy Pilgrim’s fragmented experiences captures the disorienting and dehumanizing aspects of conflict.
That a book about World War II focuses so much on non-combatants is not absurd. World War II literature can focus on virtually anything, from the causes of the war and the technologies employed to its economic impact, without going into the details about the battlefield. It all comes down to the author’s goal in writing the book. Vonnegut’s goal in writing “Slaughterhouse-Five” was not to tell how World War II went down. Instead, he meant to show that wars destroy humanity in totality because, besides the injuries and massacres on the battlefield, survivors become psychologically dead with terrible memories of the war experiences. Hence, his choice to focus on noncombatants aligns with his broader critique of war as a destructive force that affects all aspects of society.
In my own opinion, “Slaughterhouse-Five” has no hero. While the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim’s survival and ability to cope with trauma may be seen as a form of resilience, he is not a hero in the traditional sense. While heroes in literature are ones of an iron will, courage, and strong moral compass, Slaughterhouse-Five has a reluctant, flawed hero who despises life itself, picks the worst boon, and has nothing to offer except just intentions (Raj and Kumar,251). The Billy seen in this novel is a synonym of weakness, laughter, and an incompetent soldier who, despite surviving where many of his war companions did not, is better off dead than living. Billy becomes “unstuck in time,” nonlinearly experiencing moments of his life. The hallucinations of his traumatic experience make him think that being dead and living have no difference because while he dies a hundred times in his life, the dead are not troubled by memories (Mala et al., 5). He remains a man whose conscience is at war, often weeping in private without reason, and he weeps for turning away the disabled people but lacks the courage to act (52). Billy’s detachment and passive reaction to these events make him an observer of his own life rather than an active participant in control of his life. This passivity makes Billy come out as “an unheroic hero “in need of saving more than his followers. Save for lacking the redemptive, sacrificial death, Billy is a Christ figure who resembles Jesus in many ways (Louis et al., 173). Thus, the novel’s presentation of a protagonist who doesn’t conform to conventional expectations of a hero is more reflective of the novel’s overall anti-war message.
Overall, I think Vonnegut was effective in making “Slaughterhouse-Five” an “anti-war” novel. While he includes a few characters that glorify war, he employs satire, irony, his ineffectiveness as a soldier, and the negative consequences that occur to him to undercut and criticize this glorification. In addition, history has no hero in the conventional sense, bringing out war as a futile and senseless one that benefits no one. Thus, through satire, character development, and non-linear narrative challenges, Vonnegut succeeds in challenging the romanticized ideals associated with warfare, contributing to the novel’s overall anti-war theme.
Works Cited
Jordison, Sam. “Slaughterhouse-Five Is Told out of Order – in Line with the Experience of War.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 12 Mar. 2019, www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/mar/12/slaughterhouse-five-is-told-out-of-order-war-kurt-vonnegut.
Mala, Khals, Soran Abdulrahman, and Bülent Tanrıtanır. “The Violence of Warfare and Traumatic Experiences in Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.” Canadian Journal of Language and Literature Studies 2.2 (2022): 1-6. https://doi.org/10.53103/cjlls.v2i2.33
Raj, Ankit, and Nagendra Kumar. “The Hero at a Thousand Places: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five as Anti-Monomyth.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 62.2 (2021): 239-252.
Louis, Dolores K. Gros, and K. Dolores. “The Ironic Christ Figure in Slaughterhouse-Five.” Critical Insights: Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut (2011): 164-78.
Loeb, Monica. Vonnegut’s duty-dance with death-theme and structure in Slaughterhouse-five. Diss. Umeå universitet, 1979.
Ilhamdi, Hafiz Sofyan. “THERE IS NO GOOD WAR”: THE FIREBOMBING OF DRESDEN AND KURT VONNEGUT’S VIEW TOWARDS WORLD WAR II IN SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. Diss. Universitas Andalas, 2019.
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