Slaughterhouse-Five, Chapters 4-6
The first three chapters of Slaughterhouse-Five introduced me to a
few segments of Billy Pilgrim’s life, and piqued my interest. The next three have exceeded my expectations;
as the pieces come together, I find myself more and more engaged in Billy’s
adventures. One particularly interesting
aspect of Vonnegut’s storytelling is that, since Billy time travels, the reader
learns of many events before they actually occur. I find myself, every now and again, thinking
“Spoiler Alert” about something that has been mentioned in passing but not yet
fully explained. I would like to use
this blog to discuss a few moments that have especially stood out to me, some
of which are humorous, and some of which are not.
Backward war movie
Vonnegut states in the first
chapter of this book that it is an anti-war book, but I believe that this is
one of the most effective anti-war scenes thus far. Billy sits down to watch a late-night movie
about war, only to come unstuck in time and watch the movie backwards. He describes things such as the Germans using
miraculous machines to suck all of the shrapnel and bullet holes from American
planes, and Americans taking fires from German towns, putting them into capsules, and shipping
them back to the US to be dismantled, “so they would never hurt anybody ever
again.” This scene is somewhat painful
to read, as the sheer innocence of it contrasts so sharply with the realities
of war.
Tralfamadorian books
All in all, I feel like Vonnegut’s
description of the Tralfamadorian books are something like what he was aiming
to accomplish in writing this book. The “brief
clumps of symbols separated by stars” in the Tralfamadorian books parallel the
short sections in this book, which are separated by dots. Furthermore, the alien books are supposed to
be comprised of many unrelated moments that, when put together, form something
greater than the sum of the book’s parts.
I believe that, although all of the moments described in this book are
related (in that they are all taken from the life of Billy Pilgrim), they too
are supposed to form something greater than the sum of their parts. This is the real reason that Billy is unstuck
in time. Vonnegut needed to be able to
jump around, to juxtapose joy and sorrow, peace and war, solemnity and
absurdity.
“It will never be bombed.”
A British prisoner assured the
Americans, who were to be sent to Dresden to work, that Dresden was of no
military significance, and that the Americans need not worry about bombs. This example of dark irony is somewhat chilling, as the
reader knows the fate of Dresden—that it will be bombed, and that many will
die. The optimism instilled in the
American prisoners by the Englishman is merely false hope. It is humorous in that the reader knows something that the characters do not, but it is hardly the sort of humor that one would laugh at.
These are only a few of my
favorite moments in the book so far. I
found myself making note of page numbers and quotes often as I read, and I
paused several times while reading to simply reflect on what Vonnegut was really
saying through a given scene. I am
looking forward to reading the rest of Billy Pilgrim’s story.
Everything was beautiful, and
nothing hurt.
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