Arters AP Literature 2016-17 discussion

The only book I have read in which the main character watches his/her life play out is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The main character watches his past, present, and possible future actions. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five takes a different position on time travel. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, actually relives his life and yet is not phased by any of the occurrences, nor does he take action to change anything. As I was reading Slaughterhouse Five, I could not help but ask myself, “Would I have changed anything about my life if I were to relive it?”
Slaughterhouse Five is most definitely a wave of confusion. It starts off with Vonnegut as one of the characters. He writes about his own experience of the firebombing of Dresden during World War II as a prisoner of war. He is initially in a cab with another wartime buddy, Bernard O’Hare and both are on their way to Dresden to visit the slaughterhouse that served as their prison. Through his conversations with the cab driver and flashbacks to visiting O’Hare’s wife, it is quite clear that people are opposed to him writing with an anti war stance. However, the traumatic experiences in his life does not allow him to write anything cheery. Vonnegut and his friend stop at a local Boston hotel for the night and this is when one of the stories major symbols come into play. Vonnegut sits down to read the Bible and stumbles on the story of how Lot’s wife turned around to see the destruction even when she was warned not to. She immediately gets turned into a pillar of sand. Vonnegut, however, applauds her actions and says that it was so human of her to do so. This is where the story’s protagonist, Billy Pilgrim is introduced-the perfect foil to Lot’s wife.
The book itself is an antiwar novel but it tends to warn audiences about the war through the experiences of Billy Pilgrim. While I was reading, I was initially confused as to why the author would choose quite an uneventful man like Billy to represent the horrors of the war. Billy, in fact, is special for one reason: he does not care. He simply is not worried about the horrors of tomorrow or the mistakes of yesterday.
Billy Pilgrim was born in Ilium, New York. After graduating with honors from his high school, he enrolled in the Ilium School of Optometry. Soon after, however, Billy was introduced to a new horror as he was enlisted in the military. There, he was introduced to a world of mishaps, torture, selfishness, greed, etc. The way Vonnegut describes Billy’s life is quite confusing. He initially explains that, “Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and his trips aren’t necessarily fun.” but even I was not prepared for the amount of jumping around that would occur within the text. This warping of time is just due to the fact that Billy was kidnapped by the aliens of Tralfamadore. Yes, indeed, aliens are included in this antiwar novel. Tralfamadore is an interesting planet, and is nothing like Earth. All humans who visit are kept in cages, and there are five different genders for all of them. Humans are described to look like “giant millipedes with legs of babies on one end and legs of elderly people on the other.” The books of Tralfamadore have texts that consist of symbols, such as stars, separated by dots. Tralfamadorians have no care in the world and do not even mourn death because they know that in another parallel universe, the man/woman who died is just being born or is as fine as ever. Billy’s frequent trips to Tralfamadore opens his mind to be more accepting of fate as it comes.
Vonnegut includes many symbols in his novel that introduces meaning and substance to Billy’s life and elevates Billy as the only sane person in the otherwise insane world. In chapter four, Billy is depicted as watching a documentary of World War II play backwards and forwards and yet he has no emotion any time a gruesome scene comes on. This demonstrates his approach towards life. Despite all the bad occurrences-his death after his accident at Sugarbush Mountains, the death of his own wife, Valencia, his imprisonment in prisons and mental institutions-he has lived his own life too many times and despite knowing something bad would eventually happen, he does not react the way Lot’s wife did. This brings up a major question: “Would you even bother to change courses of events if you already knew what would happen next?” Personally, I would definitely work to change the events in my life to bring a more positive outcome. I would not have enough willpower to simply accept my fate as it was.
Vonnegut’s novel takes an interesting stance on war and although the sequence of events that occur in the book are jumbled, the reader would still continue to be actively engaged in the book. In Vonnegut’s own words, “There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.” And although in chapter one Vonnegut tells the reader how he would begin and end his book, I still had an array of questions in my mind. “I've finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this: Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet?” Why did he end the story with a bird singing? Vonnegut ended it like that to make his point clear; writing against war is like bird-talk: both are pointless but in both cases, someone must speak up. He makes his point that war is meaningless but books will always be published about it or against it.
Vonnegut’s confusing book can either be revered or rejected by different audiences. There is one thing audiences must appreciate: Vonnegut’s attempt to make sense in a nonsensical world filled with bloodshed, angst, and sorrow.