The Future: Does it change?

When asked by Billy how the Universe ends, a Tralfamadorian tells him that a Tralfamadorian blows it up by pressing a button that makes the whole world disappear, by accident. Of course, Billy wonders why that Tralfamadorian simply can't be prevented from pushing that button, but he is told that "He has always pressed it and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way" (117). Each moment is structured specifically and cannot ever be changed because it simply has always been, is, and will always be that way. If this is so, there is no way to prevent destructive things such as war from happening in the future, unless the future is already structured that way.  Bad things that happen are accepted by Tralfamadorians because they know there is no way to change them. As for humans, we spend most of our lives trying to make sure bad things don't happen to us.
So what I'm wondering is, are our efforts for nothing? Do you believe that the future is ever-changing? That even the smallest of decisions can alter what happens to us and change the course of our lives? Or, do you believe what the Tralfamadorians say, that every moment has already been structured and the decisions we make are structured too, and therefore do not change the outcome of our lives?

Fueling the Fire

Humans have always been destructive. Billy and his friend Trout seemed to know this better than anyone. In one of Trout's books about a money tree, he says about the tree, "It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer. So it goes" (167). When humans fight and kill each other, all we are doing is fertilizing more fights to come. Each death only adds more fuel to the fire of war.
This is also reflected in how Billy dies. He is murdered by someone who promised to kill him for Roland Weary. Roland claimed that Billy killed him, which led Roland to request the murder of Billy. The chain reaction had already started. Roland's death sparked another, and had Billy not been so wise and accepting of his own death, he could have caused another. When will we realize that we are basically killing ourselves? We are feeding the fire that will eventually burn us, yet we can't seem to stop because it's the only way we know how to solve our problems. Billy had found another way, yet everyone called him crazy. So was Billy really crazy/mentally unstable, or was he simply tired of the way humans handle their problems?

When Billy is on the spaceship to Tralfamadore he asks for a Tralfamadorian book to read. The Tralfamadorians give him some, but tell him that he won't be able to understand them. The book is filled with pictures instead of words and they are all meant to be looked at, at the same time because then the message of the book will be clear. 

"There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. 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" (pg.88).

Slaughterhouse 5 was written so that all the moments are happening at once, and by the end all the pieces will come together forming one big moment. There is no beginning, middle, or end to this book making it much like the books on Tralfamadore. Was this book written so that people on earth could see what it was like to read a book in which everything happened all at once? 

The destructiveness of the war is evoked in subtle ways. For instance, Billy is quite successful after the war: he is the president of the Lions Club, works as a successful optometrist, lives in a comfortable modern home, and has two children. While Billy seems to have led a productive life after the war, these markers of success speak only to its surface. He gets his job not because of any particular skills but as a result of his father-in-law. At one point in the novel, Billy walks in on his son and realizes that they are unfamiliar with each other. Beneath the grandeur of his success lies a man too war-torn to understand it. In fact, Billy’s name is a diminutive form of William which indicates that he is more an immature boy than a man.

Vonnegut, then, produces the science-fiction thread, including the Tralfamadorians, to indicate how greatly the war has disrupted Billy’s existence. It seems that Billy may be hallucinating his experiences with the Tralfamadorians as a way to escape a world destroyed by war, a world that he cannot understand. Furthermore, the Tralfamadorian theory of the fourth dimension seems too a way for Billy to rationalize all the death he has seen. Do you believe Billy made up the Tralfamadorians to cope with the war or did he really get kidnapped by aliens?

So it goes

Soldiers are trained to have the mentality "kill or be killed", so that they don't hesitate to kill another soldier. During war soldiers see, so much death around them which makes it hard to understand how they are able to keep fighting, and not just give up. Throughout Slaughterhouse 5 "so it goes" is repeated after every death reflecting the lack of care or interest the author and character has about death. Does having the "so it goes" mentality help soldiers get through war, and help Billy Pilgrim get through all the death that he has witnessed because it leaves them untouched by the feeling of loss?

Optimism or Insanity?

In Chapter 4, the reader is exposed to more Tralfamadorians and more examples of the way they view time. Billy continues to speak so casually about time, as if it isn't anything specific, "It simply is" as the Tralfamadorians say on page 86. Billy becomes "slightly unstuck in time, and saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again" (74-75). The movie backwards starts with destruction and moves in reverse, so people are cleaning up their messes instead of making them. By the end of the movie (which is really the beginning), everything is back in its place and all the damage has been undone.

Billy is able to remain so casual and optimistic because he sees things so differently from other people. If all Earthlings saw everything as Billy did, there would be no need for war. Just a simple shift in time can show things in a much more positive light, as was shown with the reverse movie. What do you think would happen today if we had the ability to see time as the Tralfamadorians did? Would it solve conflicts or just create more?

Death in Slaughterhouse Five

Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, both the narrator and Billy Pilgrim treat death as a tragic, yet inevitable, aspect of human life. The narrator imparts many deaths to the reader, but only in an indifferent tone. The reader, through the narrator's words, sees death as common and uninteresting. The narrator continually uses the phrase, "So it goes.  after telling the reader of a death. Billy Pilgrim has the same attitude toward death, even before he meets the Tralfamadorians and becomes accustomed to their philosophies on life and death. Billy expects and accepts that he will die. He even welcomes death at times. At one point when Billy is in the war with Roland Weary and the rest of the Three Musketeers, a marksman fires at the group while they are walking down a road. The soldier boys run for cover. Billy, however, remains standing on the road, allowing the shooter a second chance. 


Does Billy believe that death is inevitable or does he want to be killed?