Vonnegut’s novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five”, written in 1969, puts together the author’s personal experience – the bombing of Dresden – and a more general view upon life after a traumatic experience. The novel gives the reader a glimpse on the postwar world, a schizophrenic one, in which the only way of coping with past events is to create an alternative, secure world.
In his novel, Kurt Vonnegut intertwines three narrative plans: the metafictional, the autobiographical and the fictional plan. This mix is more prominent in the first chapter which functions as a guide for the whole book. Here, the narrator- identifiable in the person of the actual Kurt Vonnegut, the author- gives the reader some clues on how to read the book, corresponding to the metafictional plan. Firstly, it is an anti-war book, one which will speak about real events, though masked under the fictional pact:
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn’t his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I’ve changed all the names. (Vonnegut, 1)
Secondly, it introduces to the reader the very process of writing, even though, at the end, the schematic way in which the author says to have planned his book is contradicted by the lack of suspense and of a true plot of the actual book:
As a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontations, I had outlined the Dresden story many times. The best outline I ever made, or anyway the prettiest one, was on the back of a roll of wallpaper. I used my daughter’s crayons, a different color for each main character. One end of the wallpaper was the beginning of the story, and the other end was the end, and then there was all that middle part, which was the middle. And the blue line met the red line and then the yellow line, and the yellow line stopped because the character represented by the yellow line was dead. And so on. The destruction of Dresden was represented by a vertical band of orange cross-hatching, and all the lines that were still alive passed through it, came out the other side. (3)
This whole process of writing results in fact in an accumulation of pieces of information, memories, references to other fictional and non-fictional texts, just as Billy Pilgrim’s life is formed of cut out moments. On the one hand, the very title: “Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death” gives a glimpse on the fragmentary structure of the novel. The story has accumulated its vital energy from various sources and it is defined by them. On the other hand, the story line is dispersed all through the events in which Billy takes part and which he reiterates by means of his time travels. On the fragmentary, somewhat schizophrenic way of conceiving the book, Vonnegut’s announces us from the beginning: “This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from.”
In terms of autobiography, the author gives us some pieces of verifiable information such as taking anthropology courses at the University of Chicago or working as a reporter. However, when describing aspects of his private life or commenting on events that he took part in, the autobiographical elements and the fictional plan intertwine. For example, the smell of “mustard gas and roses” (2) which in chapter 1 refers to Vonnegut’s drunken breath, while later on, it appears in the context of Billy’s own perception. The tralfamadorian leitmotif phrase “So it goes” it occurs in Vonnegut’s vocabulary when he is referring to the dead people in Dresden or the death of the veteran in the elevator, though Billy is the one who learns it on Tralfamadore.
Chapter two marks the traditional dividing line between reality and fiction, introducing the character and the story by using the verb “listen”. From now on, the reader considers himself to be totally on the ground of fiction. The omniscient narrator declares his objective perspective by employing the phrase “he says” whenever referring to Billy and his time travels:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between.
He says.
Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next. (15)
Here, the narrator tends to distance himself from the character inferring that Billy Pilgrim should not be mistaken for the author-narrator:
The skeptical comment (he says) separates him from Billy, but it also serves as a link between them. It is as if Billy were telling Vonnegut the story of his life, and it is this story that constitutes the fiction in Slaughterhouse-Five. (Pettersson, 242)
In fact, a second interpretation could be developed.
The alternative world of Tralfamadore that Billy creates is the prototype of a protective womb in which he feels secure. The simultaneous perspective on time abolishes the anxiety of death which no longer makes sense as it is only a moment in a person’s life. The idea of his own death no longer threatens him, as well as the destruction he witnessed in Dresden as both he and Dresden will continue exist in other moments in time.
As well as Billy, Vonnegut puts himself at the shelter of fiction and objectified perspective in order to write his anti-war book: “It is not callousness or indifference but merely a defense mechanism that allows Vonnegut to smile through his tears and to continue to live and to write”. (Schatt, 59)
The fictional and the autobiographical plan collide as Vonnegut signals his presence a couple of times during the story: “That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.” (Vonnegut, 62) He is the author of this anti-war book, the omniscient narrator who tells us the story of Billy Pilgrim, but at the same time an episodic character from whose perspective we can better understand and give credit to the story:
From the distance dissimilarities create Vonnegut is able to face the atrocities of war. (…) But in his story of Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut can also tell a tale with wider allegorical implications than any autobiographical accounts might convey (Pettersson, 244). Vonnegut’s declares himself, by this, as being both inside and outside the story. His relationship to Billy can be defined on this coordinates. The status he has in relation to Billy is that of creator, the creator of a fictional character, but at the same time, besides the visible effort of differentiating himself from Billy, there is a feeling of identity between them.
They are in fact, instances of two human beings connected by the same traumatizing experience of war. Vonnegut uses Billy Pilgrim as a mask through whose eyes he can better give the reader a glimpse of what the experience of war can mean and what are the consequences.
Though after the war, both Vonnegut and Billy go on with their lives being successful, the events they witnessed continue haunting them. While Billy develops schizophrenic behavior as an attempt of finding peace of mind, Vonnegut proceeds at writing his anti-war book, as a duty he has to accomplish.
The post-war world is one dominated by this fragmentary structure, the deranged minds of ex-soldiers and which anticipates the terrors of another war to come, the Vietnam war.
Works cited list
• Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
• Schatt, Stanley. “Vonnegut’s view of war and death”. Bloom’s guides: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2007
• Pettersson, Bo. The World According to Kurt Vonnegut. Åbo: Abo Akademi University Press, 1994