Literary Assignment

Elliot A. Cantor

Slaughterhouse V

Final

“Well here we are Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment.  There is no why.”  This quote in Slaughterhouse V by Kurt Vonnegut singlehandedly explains the main theme of this novel and shows the ideas Vonnegut was thinking of as he wrote this novel.  The main theme in the text is Fate Vs. Free Will.  Billy Pilgrim believes there is no free will and that everything that happens was fated to happen and will always happen.  Also the novel shows how the concept of time is not steady and sequential as many of us believe, but that time is simultaneous.  Everything happens at once.  This is shown when the Tralfamadorians abduct Billy and they explain how they can see into the fourth dimension which is time.  This allows them to be in every moment and essentially be able to time travel.  Billy asks the Tralfamadorians how the universe ends and they say “We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers.  A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses the start button, and the whole universe disappears.”  This is a prime example of a absence of free will as when Billy asks them why they can’t stop the pilot from hitting the button they say the moment is structured so that he will always hit the button and will always hit the button.  The Tralfamadorians also tell Billy how only humans even mention free will and that the idea is very illogical and is not based on anything at all except for an illusion.  It is shown in this quote “If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings I wouldn't have any idea what was meant by ‘free will’.”  When Billy becomes unstuck in time when he is hiding from the Germans behind a tree he shows how he doesn’t have free will, especially in all the times he travels too.  In the novel Billy believes in free will until the Tralfamadorians show him otherwise, but since he was unstuck in time he has always believed in free will and in fate at the same time because everything is happening at once.  When Billy goes to the moment where he gets on the plane that will crash he knows that it will crash but does nothing about it because he knows he can’t because the moment was structured that way.  Vonnegut shows how this book is an anti-war piece as well as science fiction when he shows the horrors of war in Dresden and how insignificant war is when the Tralfamadorians tell Billy how Earth is insignificant in the overall scheme of things.  The last main theme is how nobody deserves any dignity because there are so many people and that all of them are insignificant in every way so that there is no point to give them any dignity because they don’t matter.  

Billy Pilgrim who is the main character represents a sort of blank slate in the story, which Vonnegut uses to help develop his ideas and themes.  For example Vonnegut uses the irony of Billy being an optometrist who helps people see, but it unable to see into time like the Tralfamadorians to show how helpless and how little control he has over his life and what happens to him.  The Tralfamadorians are used by Vonnegut to help develop the more advanced ideas and elaborate on them.  Such as helping explain their concept of time and fate vs. free will to Billy as well as the reader so they can understand the novel in a more advanced way.  As mentioned before Billy represents a blank slate in a way as he rarely shows any complex emotions and he only becomes and turns into the person he became by becoming unstuck in time and learning from the Tralfamadorians.  Billy is unbiased as he just accepts everything for what it is and does nothing about it and barely even thinks about it.  this makes him perfect for introducing themes and ideas as none of the ideas or themes need to be distorted around a character’s biases which would make them less clear.  

The writing style and tone of the text is ever changing and steady at the same time.  For instance, many of the objects in the novel also show how nothing changes in full.  For example, Vonnegut writes “Somewhere a dog barked” when Billy is getting abducted by the Tralfamadorians, and when a soldier is getting surgery in a POW camp.  But most importantly the birds show the steadiness and unchanging world that Billy lives in.  Billy sees the birds tweeting when he was working as an optometrist in Ilium, and at the very end of the book after Dresden was bombed he sees a bird and it says “Poo-tee-weet?” just like the one in the beginning.  So the objects are still the same but the scenery is different which mixes the tone of the text but keeps the same style.  When the bird tweeted in Ilium it showed the calmness and the unchanging properties of his life and showed a melancholy tone.  But when the bird tweeted in Dresden it showed the calm after the storm, and displayed a tone which was like a horrific surprise, as nobody could imagine such wreckage.  The tone in most of the book would be blank and lackluster most of the time if it weren't for other characters like Roland Weary.  This is because Billy is such a blank character and not much emotion comes from him so that the tone needs to be developed by other characters.  Weary makes the tone very serious and dangerous as he is showing of his weapons and talking about killing and war, and how deadly he is.  Billies wife makes the tone very blissfully ignorant and innocent as she is very ignorant and just loves Billy and that is all that matters to her.  

The writing style relates the to the central ideas and the themes because as in the previous paragraph explained, the repeating phrases and objects in the story help show the idea of nothing changes.  The writing style of Vonnegut that makes his book very unbiased for or against something helps the reader make up their own mind about how the book is an anti war book when he explains the horrors of war with unbiased clarity which makes an  even larger impact on the reader compared to a biased anti war book.  This is because when people read a normal anti war book they already know what is coming and the book is usually preaching to the quier.  The writing style also helps with the fate vs. free will theme because if the story went in order Billy wouldn’t be able to show how he already knows what is going to happen but can’t do anything about it.

Lastly, Slaughterhouse V gives a unique point of view that changes the readers’ perspectives dramatically.  When the Tralfamadorians explain how time is simultaneous and free will doesn’t exist to Billy it causes the reader to actually analyze the topic as a legitimate idea and think about the idea in their own life and see if it makes sense.  This changes their perspective in a very meaningful way of time and free will.  Slaughterhouse V is a very deep and introspective novel that not only explains time and free will, but also uses tone and writing style to change the readers’ perspective while getting the message of anti-war out at the same time.