Max Kapur
AP Lit P5
1/30/13
Review: Slaughterhouse Five
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five is a novel best categorized as science fiction or
magical realism. However, it's thematic content fits in right alongside modern literary
fiction. Vonnegut's protagonist, Billy, resembles in some ways the archetypal "crazy old
man", but also dimly suggests that there may be a type of solace in insanity and
delusion.
The plot does not follow the arc that most readers are used to. Billy experiences his life
in vignettes taken seemingly randomly from his past or future. That is, he is immune to
chronology. At first this was totally confusing, but as the book progressed, I couldn't
help but appreciate the format. Billy's life sucks really badly from the moment he
comes of age. Drafted to fight in WWII, Billy has trouble getting along with his fellow
infantrymen. Later in life, he manages to set himself up with a wife and loving family,
but flashbacks from his war experience keep coming back to haunt him, and he is
rejected by those closest to him, including his wife and the friends he has a habit of
calling late at night.
Take note, though, that the story isn't told like that. A given section of the book reads
like utter chaos because Billy has become "unstuck in time". Billy relates that the first
incident of this was during the war, when he was left behind by his few comrades and
was lost in a forest. His perspective suddenly changes to that of Billy many years later.
The rest of the novel proceeds in similar jumps, occasionally returning back to the
battlefield, where Billy later becomes a POW.
Stylistically, Vonnegut is know to be a master at balancing the "known" and the
"unknown". Billy tells the reader that he learned to be unstuck in time when he was
abducted by aliens who see in four dimensions–that is, they perceive the entirety of
time in one moment, much as humans can perceive three spatial dimensions at the
same time. This is the alleged reason for Billy's disconnectedness. That story is lent
credibility by the fact that the story is told from Billy's perspective. Billy seems honest
and genuine, and many passages read with a tender sense of defeat such that the
reader feels compelled to sympathize. The story about the aliens is also written in a
lucid style that inclines the reader to think of is as more than a dream. Billy describes
passionately (at least, more passionately than usual) four-dimensional books, which
seem to each have their own kind of enlightenment between the pages, even though
the individual pages make no sense.
That passage seems to reference Slaughterhouse Five itself. The alien book just has
odd clusters of symbols and stars that only an alien–perceiving it in four dimensions–
can interpret. Vonnegut's novel similarly has idiosyncratic clusters of short stories from
the protagonist's life, without an overwhelmingly satisfying plot. Vonnegut suggests
that it might take something more than a human–someone like Billy Pilgrim–to
understand. Incidentally, this isn't the only example in the book of Vonnegut elevating
his own writing as superior. At the POW camp, Billy is captivated by the writings of
Kilgore Trout, who is the protagonist of another (otherwise unconnected) Vonnegut
novel, Breakfast of Champions.
This portrayal of Billy Pilgrim, as a man who has been enlightened by a transcendental
experience, is charming and romanticized But Vonnegut also offers the reader another
story between the lines: That Billy is just a crazy old man with PTSD, telling his life
story like a crazy old man with PTSD. Occasionally the reader is presented with
scenes of Billy in a nursing home, which shows that he is perceived at least by others
as mentally ill. Before Billy is "unstuck", we know that he's a little socially awkward
because he has trouble getting along with his fellow soldiers and is frequently berated
for his lack of manliness (recall that during this time period, mental illness was often
ascribed to a poorly formed sense of gender identity or bad parenting).
The reader is actually presented with the single event that may have unlocked such
insanity in Billy. At the POW camp, Billy is actually presented with the alien view of
reality in the books of Kilgore Trout. In Billy's desparate and traumatized state, he may
have adopted that fictional reality as his own. As much as the alien abduction story
makes Billy seem credible, it can also be held against him. The story is told in
unusually perfect chronology and somewhat longer sentences than the rest of the
novel, suggesting that it took a while to come up with. The story also includes a scene
in which the aliens make Billy have sex with a famous human actress, suggesting that
it was all a dream lining up with Billy's fantasies.
It's hard to say whether such a wild, disjointed novel will appeal to any reader.
Vonnegut makes no attempt to satisfy the reader with a climax or even an ending. He
never tells us which of the two realities suggested is the correct one. Much like the
novel that Billy encounters aboard the alien spaceship, the reader may walk away
utterly confused and frustrated or feel enlightened because the rearrangement of
Billy's life is so profound. Time is only what you make it, urges Billy–but is Billy to be
trusted?
Works Cited
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Slaughterhouse-Five.” SparkNotes.com.
SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 17 Jan. 2013.
You caught me. The structure of the novel was really confused me, so I consulted the
whole-novel summary from Sparknotes, because they rearranged everything in
chronological order.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five. New York: Delacorte Books, 1969.
I didn't have my book in class, so I couldn't include direct quotations.