A critical analysis of Slaughterhouse-Five
Quinn Lewis

Section One- Introduction
        Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut Junior, was
published in  1968 after twenty-three years  of internal anguish.
The novel  was a "progressive work"  after Vonnegut returned from
World  War  II.  Why  did  it  take  twenty-three  years for Kurt
Vonnegut to write this novel? The answer lies within the book and
within the man himself.
        Kurt Vonnegut served in the Armed Forces during World War
II  and was  captured during  The  Battle  of the  Bulge. He  and
a group  of American  Prisoners of  War were  taken to Dresden to
take  part  in  a  prisoner  work  camp.  Vonnegut and his fellow
soldiers  were housed  in  an  underground facility  when Dresden
became history as the most loss of human life at one time. On the
night of February 13, 1945,  when the Americans were underground,
Dresden was firebombed  by the Allied Air Force.  The entire city
was annihilated  while 135,000 people were  killed. The number of
casualties  is  greater  than  those  of  Hiroshima  and Nagasaki
combined.
        The  bombing  of  Dresden,  Germany  is  why it took Kurt
Vonnegut so long to write this book. The human pain and suffering
is  still fresh  in the   mind of  the author  twenty-three years
later. One  can only imagine the  intense emotional scarring that
one  would  suffer  after  exiting  an  underground  shelter with
a dozen other men  to find a city destroyed  and its people dead,
corpses laying all around.
        These feelings  are what prompted Kurt  Vonnegut to write
Slaughterhouse-Five as  he did. The main  character of this novel
mirrors the author  in many ways, but the  striking similarity is
their inability to  deal with the events of  Dresden on the night
of February 13, 1945.

Section Two- Critical Commentaries
        Kurt  Vonnegut's  work  is  nothing  new  to critics, but
Slaughterhouse-Five is considered to be his best work. Many other
authors and  critics have critiqued  and analyzed his  work, some
coming    to    much    different    conclusions   than   others.
Slaughterhouse-Five  is  a  perfect  example  of  differences  in
critical commentary and how a writer can relay some thoughts when
meaning to share others.
        Tony Tanner wrote an article in American Fiction entitled
"The Uncertain Messenger: A Study of the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut,
Jr.".  In  Mr.  Tanner's  analyzation  of Slaughterhouse-Five, he
originally  sees what  most comprehend  at the  beginning of  the
novel; that  after witnessing the  firebombing of Dresden,  Billy
Pilgrim  can  not  find  a  way   to  cope  with  the  death  and
destruction,   so   he   creates   the   "Tralfamadorians".   The
Tralfamadorians  are an  alien species  that Billy  claims abduct
him. The  Tralfamadorians can see time  in a completely different
way than humans.  They see an entire event  instead of individual
moments like humans. Tralfamadorians  have seen the beginning and
end  of the  universe. They   describe this  ability to  Billy as
looking at  a stretch of the  Rocky Mountains instead of  a small
pebble   of   it.   With   this   new   knowledge  of  time,  the
Tralfamadorians  gave Billy  the ability  to become  "unstuck" in
time. This means that Billy is free to travel to any point in his
life at any time without control.
        Tanner thinks  that the most  crucial moral issue  in the
novel is  this: "Billy Pilgrim is  a professional optometrist. He
spends his life on earth prescribing corrective lenses for people
suffering form defects of vision.  It is entirely in keeping with
his calling, then, when he has learned to see time in an entirely
new Tralfamadorian way,  that he should try to  correct the whole
erroneous  Western  view  of  time,  and  explain to everyone the
meaninglessness  of  individual  death,  because  everyone  lives
forever in the eyes of a Tralfamadorian.
        Tanner  goes  on  to  state  that  Vonnegut's  whole work
"suggests that  if man doesn't do  something about the conditions
and  quality of  human life  on earth,  no one  and nothing  else
will." Tanner also states  that Vonnegut makes several references
to death  and destruction, such  as the concentration  camps, the
destruction of European Jewry, the  bombing of Hiroshima, and the
Children's  Crusade.  The  author  cites  Vonnegut  as  a literal
hypocrite because  the story of  Billy Pilgrim and  Dresden is so
terrible that  Pilgrim can not possibly  consciously face it, yet
he  includes so  many other  instances of  destruction wrought by
man.
        Vonnegut  also  recounts  the  assassinations  of several
famous Americans  and includes his father's  natural death at the
end.  Tanner states  that if  death itself  is the  outrage, then
humans can not be held accountable for it, since it is built into
the very structure  of things. He goes on  to conclude that "This
conflation  of natural  death with  murders of  various sorts  is
a consistent feature of Slaughterhouse-Five."
        Another   author  who   was  fortunate   enough  to  give
a critical  commentary  of   Slaughterhouse-Five  is  Charles  B.
Harris,  who wrote  "Time, Uncertainty,  and Kurt  Vonnegut, Jr.:
A Reading  of 'Slaughterhouse-Five'"  for The  Centennial Review.
Harris believes  that there are three  important crucial facts to
a proper understanding of this novel: (1) the novel is less about
Dresden than  about the psychological impact  of time, death, and
uncertainty on its main character; (2) the novel's main character
is  not  Billy  Pilgrim,  but  Vonnegut;  (3)  the  novel  is not
a conventional anti-war  novel at all, but  an experimental novel
of considerable complexity.
        Harris  focuses more  on, and  successfully accomplishes,
explaining  Tralfamadore as  a psychological  stumbling block  of
Billy  and  Vonnegut.  In  every  possible  way,  Harris explains
Billy's   happenings   on   Tralfamadore   are   related  to  his
subconscious mind. For instance, Vonnegut shows up three times in
the story  of Billy Pilgrim  as the story  teller. Harris notices
that when the paths of Billy and the narrator meet up at Dresden,
there is a  brief period of person shift.  The narrator uses 'us'
and 'we', simply because he is there too.
        Harris  explains  Vonneguts  sudden  change  in person as
this:  "He, too,  had suffered  capture and  malnutrition and the
devastating firebombing. He, too, worked  in the corpse mines and
saw a friend shot for plundering a teapot from the ruins." Harris
was extremely  successful in tracing  Billy and Vonnegut's  trama
back to the bombing in Dresden.

Section Three- A Discussion of Vonnegut's Style
        The   unusual  circumstances   of  this   novel  make  it
a peculiar  instance  of  almost  any  literary  topic, including
Vonnegut's writing  style. Throughout most  of Vonnegut's career,
he has put little  consideration and description into characters,
perhaps as  a way to make  the reader more interested  as to what
will  happen  next,  or  what  will  be  revealed  next about the
character.  In  any  case,  the  character  description,  or lack
thereof, of  Kurt Vonnegut is very  simple, so he can  convey his
feelings about  the character immediately without  having to list
every  minute  detail.  For  example,  Vonnegut  describes  Billy
Pilgrim, the main character of the book as "a funny-looking child
that  became a  funny-looking youth-tall,  weak, and  shaped like
a Coca-Cola bottle." Note the fact that  there was no hair or eye
color given;  no facial description;  no personality description,
either, but Vonnegut still very effectively gets his point across
that Billy  is a lanky, akward,  and "funny-looking" person. From
this, Vonnegut's short description,  we immediately form a mental
picture of the character.
        The  diction of  Vonnegut stays  the same  throughout the
narrative sections of the book, but the diction of the individual
is prone  to the individual  character. This is  another literary
tool that Vonnegut has mastered.  Even though the narration stays
constant, the  diction of the characters  is vastly different, so
the reader doesn't  become bored with the same  writing style for
all of the characters of a plot.
        For instance,  Kilgore Trout, the  famous science fiction
writer  in many  of Kurt  Vonnegut's works  is seen  here running
a newspaper delivery  service. He has  just announced the  boy or
girl  who  sells  the  most  subscriptions  will  get  a  trip to
"Martha's fucking Vinyard" for a week, all expenses paid, if they
would just get up and go  sell something for once. A little girl,
ecstatic at the news, askes Trout  if she could bring her sister,
too. His reply is, "Hell no, you think money grows on trees?"

Section Four- A Discussion of Vonnegut's Technique
        Again,  when one  choose to  discuss Vonnegut's  literary
tools  and  how  he  uses  them  in Slaughterhouse-Five, one must
remember the complexities of  this particular novel. Because this
story is a blend of fiction and non-fiction, Vonnegut's narration
can be seen  as both third person and  first person. The majority
of the novel is written  in third person, with Vonnegut narrating
Billy's  life.  When  Billy  arrives  at  the  Dresden work camp,
though, for a brief moment  Vonnegut swings into first person, he
being another soldier  in the group. The effect  of the slip into
first person is a good step  for Vonnegut, because it shows he is
also a member  of these men who fight to  survive, he is not just
an innocent bystander telling a story.
        In the case of this novel, the narrator is not completely
reliable.    Vonnegut-as-narrator    tells    one    of   Billy's
hallucinations and dreams of the Tralfamadorians, and states them
as fact, when in reality, they are created by Billy to escape the
reality of the war and the bombing.
        The literary tool of a flashback technically could not be
used in this  novel, although several references to  the past are
made. The truth of the matter is that no one knows where the plot
begins, so when a jump to another  time made, it is unknown as to
whether it  is a flashback  of a flashforward.  The use of  these
flashbacks  and  flashforwards  is  to  show  one  Billy's mental
instability; that is he travels to  a happier time in life rather
than face reality.
        The   most   notable   part   of   Vonnegut's   character
presentation is the  lack of it; that is he  is not very specific
with character descriptions and presentations to a situation. The
characterization of Vonnegut's characters are neither dramatic or
descriptive: they are  merely there. That is a  large part of the
story  line,  though.  Vonnegut  wants  one  to  think  that  the
characters have  no will of their  own and are led  by a stronger
force: fate.
        Vonnegut is not a very emotional writer, he simply brings
his ideas  to the mind of  the reader and lets  the reader decide
how to feel.  The one technique that Vonnegut  does use is humor,
in  the  form  of  characters  such  as  Kilgore  Trout  and  the
activities  that they  do  and  their dialogue.  Vonnegut's comic
relief   is  greatly   appreciated  after   the  presentation  of
a particularly complex or important story line.

Section Five- An Explanation of Vonnegut's Structure
        Once again, the peculiarity of  this novel has found need
to be explained by its  structure, or complete lack thereof. This
novel could  be seen as having  a circular pattern, but  the plot
line begins at the bottom of the circle, jumps back to the top of
the circle, jumps forward to the right side of the circle, and so
on. Yes, there is an eventual  circular pattern when the novel is
finished. One would think that the events to this story would all
lead up to the bombing of  Dresden, but it is quite the contrary.
There are several separate plots  that survive on their own which
have absolutely nothing  to do with Dresden and  everything to do
with  Billy Pilgrim  and his   life after  the war.  Vonnegut has
visited the  same scene two  or three times  before, but only  to
show the fact that Billy is "unstuck" in time.

Section Six- An Explanation of Vonnegut's Theme
        Vonnegut's entire  purpose in writing  this novel was  to
release  the   feelings  that  he  had   bottled  up  inside  for
twenty-three long  years. He wanted others  to know what happened
and  he wanted  to remove  himself from  the situation like Billy
Pilgrim did, but he didn't have Tralfamadorians to take him away,
so he  did the only thing  he knew how: he  wrote. He wrote every
agonizing word about  the experience that he never  wants to live
through or see  happen again. This was simply  the purpose of the
novel. The theme that Kurt  Vonnegut wanted everyone who read his
book to  know just exactly  how bad war  is. He wanted  people to
know a man was killed for  stealing a teapot. He wanted people to
know that a city of 135,000  can be completely obliterated in the
name of war.  He wanted people to know the  mental scars that war
can carry. All that he was trying to say is that it hurt; it hurt
him inside and out; war hurt Vonnegut enough to write this novel.
He wants people to know the atrocities of war, and that it should
never happen again.

Section Seven- A Conclusion
        It took  Kurt Vonnegut Jr. twenty-three  years to put all
his feelings on  paper. This is an important  novel because it is
not just  a novel, it  also dabbles in  non-fiction a bit,  also.
This would be Dresden and war  for the most part. The reader must
also understand  Vonnegut's background and the  story, because if
the story  is simply taken  at face value,  it was worthless  and
a waste of time.
        Every    time    someone    or    something    dies    in
Slaughterhouse-Five, the narrator says "so it goes". Tony Tanner,
one of  the authors who critiqued  the novel, saw this  phrase as
apathetic  and unsympathetic  towards death.  One could  also see
this as a  phrased used instead of apparent  concern to stimulate
more thought, more sympathy, and  more feeling, so Vonnegut could
get  his  point  across  even   more.  In  the  last  chapter  of
Slaughterhouse-Five,  Kurt Vonnegut  leaves us  with these  brief
paragraphs that one would think pushes  for peace as a last ditch
attempt if nothing else in the book got through:

                 Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles
         away from  the home I live  in all year round,  was shot
         two nights ago.  He died last night. So  it goes. Martin
         Luther King  was shot a month  ago. He died, too.  So it
         goes.
                 And everyday  my government gives me  a count of
         corpses created  by the military service  in Vietnam. So
         it goes.
                 My  father died  many years  ago now--of natural
         causes. So  it goes. He  was a sweet  man. He was  a gun
         nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.
                 They rust.

Go back to