The Death of Heroism

After finishing Slaughterhouse-Five (my first Vonnegut novel! Even I’m surprised at myself, but I suppose it’s never too late to jump on the literary bandwagon), I can say that I’m thoroughly impressed. Every choice Vonnegut makes, from the bizarre Tralfamadorians to the surprisingly candid prologue, has clear driving intention towards his “thesis” (the creation of his war novel, or, shall we say, anti war novel). Mr. Mitchell put it in terms of excellent wordplay -- Vonnegut manages to write an anti-war novel within the bounds of the less-definable anti war-novel. My favorite aspect of the novel is perhaps the most obvious: the removal of free will. By simply obliterating the human concept of freedom and choice, he creates the perfect antithesis to the traditional war story. 

Billy Pilgrim, firstly, is perhaps the polar opposite of the traditional Sinatra-esque war hero that Mary O’Hare so despises. He’s blissfully passive, through both his own human-level interactions and his Tralfamadorian “time-jumping” (neither of which, I suppose, is separate from the other). He is constantly described as weak and sickly by the other soldiers, and is perhaps the least “worthy” among them to survive the war and lead his affluent life in the 50s. The readers never fully feel he is an adult, either (at least, I never did), as we spend a disproportionate amount of time with characters who also feel he is still a child. Even in the scenes where he is speaking with his fully-grown daughter, his traits are still those of the war-era Billy who “looked like a filthy flamingo” instead of a soldier. His lesser counterpart, Roland Weary, is perhaps the other half of the anti war-novel's anti-war character (I wouldn’t call him significant enough to be a hero). He spends the majority of his energy creating a heroic war story for himself, imagining his life to be one of life-saving, three-musketeer-ed soldier fantasy. At the end of the day, however, he is no less of a child than Billy, and he dies cold and mostly alone before they even reach Dresden. It was simply fated that Billy survived the war and he did not. 

The Tralfmadorian way of writing is also highly passive, as it removes all narrative tension from the events of the novel. From the moment we are introduced to him, we know poor old Edgar Derby is going to die. As such, we don’t really feel any sense of loss when he perishes in the aftermath of the bombing (especially given that, according to the Tralfamadorian point of view, death is meaningless except as a marker for life). He was simply fated to die at that point in time, by way of a stolen teapot -- "so it goes". Through such passivity (as well as the more in-depth sci-fi explanation of the 4th dimension of time), Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorian ways of writing demolish all sense of choice, consequence, or free will. War is said to be won by men, by heroic acts of duty, by heroic choices -- but no, in Slaughterhouse-Five, war is simply won by fate. Nothing ever comes out of heroes. Neither the war nor the bombing of Dresden was a result of anyone’s choices so much as the result of fate (especially given that we as readers know what happens in the Dresden bombing from the very first few pages), and as such, the emotional hatred and pride of war is suspended. Human effort is an illusion, therefore the driving emotions of war are illusions. Through his removal of the human variable, Vonnegut creates both the perfect anti-war novel and the anti war-novel -- there are no war heroes, and no praise for the war hero to deserve. So it goes.