Death In A Slaughterhouse Essay, Research Paper

From Ancient Greek playwright, Euripides, ("To die is a debt we must all of

us discharge" (Fitzhenry 122)) to renowned Nineteenth Century poet, Emily

Dickinson, ("Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me -/

The carriage held but just ourselves/ And Immortality" (Fitzhenry 126)) the

concept of death, reincarnation, rebirth, and mourning have been brooded over

time and time again. And with no definite answers to life’s most puzzling

question of death being given, it only seems natural that this subject is

further explored. Kurt Vonnegut is one of many modern writers obsessed with

this idea and spends many of his novels thematically infatuated with death.

His semi- autobiographical novel, dealing with his experiences in Dresden

during WWII, named Slaughterhouse Five, The Children’s Crusade or A Duty

Dance With Death, is no exception to his fixation. "A work of transparent

simplicity [and] a modern allegory, whose hero, Billy Pilgrim, shuffles

between Earth and its timeless surrogate, Tralfamadore" (Riley and Harte

452), Slaughterhouse Five shows a "sympathetic and compassionate evaluation

of Billy’s response to the cruelty of life" (Bryfonski and Senick 614). This

cruelty stems from death, time, renewal, war, and the lack of compassion for

human life; all large themes "inextricably bound up" (Bryfonski and Mendelson

529) in this cyclically natured novel that tries to solve the great mystery

of death for us, once and for all.

Billy’s life had revolved around these ideas from the time he was a child.

At the age of twelve Billy "had undergone the real crises of his life, had

found life meaningless even if he could not then articulate that concept, and

was in desperate need for reinventing himself and his universe" (Bryfonski

and Senick 615). These feelings stayed with Billy throughout the strange

occurrences of his life. When still a baby in the eyes of many people, Billy

was sent off to death’s symbiotic partner war, fighting World War II in

Europe. Here he is a depressed soldier who has seen too much death and

destruction in order to function like a human being and wants to die, but

like many other incidents in his life, he ironically manages to maintain his

life while those around him, who want to live, die. It is perhaps during

this time that Billy first visits Tralfamadore, a neighboring planet with a

time warp "so that he could be on Tralfamadore for years, and still be away

from Earth for only a microsecond" (Vonnegut 26). From them Billy learns:

that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive

in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All

moments, past, present, future, always have existed, always will exist? It

is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another

one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone

forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead

person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same

person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when [Billy himself]

hear[s] that somebody is dead, [he] simply shrug[s] and say[s] what the

Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes." (Vonnegut

26-27)

"Death [becomes] an occurrence [that] is neither good nor bad, it just

happens" (Butt 2). Learning this, Billy becomes unstuck in time, no longer

living life in consecutive order, and time travels back to the war where he

witnesses all sorts of deaths. Deaths of friends, deaths of people he has

known for years. Dresden is fire-bombed causing a 135,000 person massacre.

And how does he react? "So it goes" (Vonnegut 188), Billy says as he goes on

with his daily affairs. He spends much of the rest of his life "actively

disseminating that philosophy, first preaching it orally on the all-night

radio program and then writing letters to the Ilium New Leader" (Bryfonski

and Senick 615). But Vonnegut disagrees and "rejects the Tralfamadorian

philosophy? [and] Billy’s total "incapacity to understand the significance

of the death of human beings" (Bryfonski and Senick 615). In Slaughterhouse

Five, Vonnegut has 103 people die all of whose deaths are followed

incompassionately by the Tralfamadorian phrase "so it goes". Vonnegut has a

problem with those who are not concerned with individual death and has to use

this phrase repeatedly to get his point for compassion across. To add to

this Vonnegut tells a quick tale of working in a newspaper where he is forced

to call a woman and tell her of her husband’s death and to get her reaction

because the newspaper unemotionally wants a good article. Even when Billy

traveled back in time to Jesus’ death he simply says: "The Son of God was

dead as a doornail. So it goes" (Vonnegut 203). With his "wild black humor

mixed with his innate pessimism and particular brand of compassion [in his

writing], Vonnegut [goes on to] ask his readers not to give up on their

humanity" (Shepard 5) either. When this is given up, the pain always stays,

and "the condition it exemplifies leads men to take myths that declare

meaning and purpose" (Riley and Harte 453) which lead to the human stupidity

Vonnegut is trying to wage battle against. This happens to Billy when he

starts following all of the Tralfamadorians beliefs. He "becomes completely

quiescent, calmly accepting everything that happens as happenings exactly as

it ought to (including his own death)" (Bryfonski and Senick 607). Vonnegut

rejects this. He wants people to think on their own and not fall into a

pattern of going along with others because that leads to only seeing things

in black and white like a "conflict between good and evil? [It] keeps people

busy, takes their minds off their moral and economic misery" (Riley 503) but

makes them terrible, incompassionate human beings.

During his time back as a prisoner of war Billy finds himself caged up with

many men like himself on grueling train rides. So many men that they cannot

move and when someone dies, which happens frequently, it takes days before he

is located and even longer before the corpse is taken out of the train. He

and the other stoic soldiers are viewed as "ridiculous [American] creatures"

(Vonnegut 150), "incapable of concerted action on their own behalf" (Vonnegut

131). The Germans are "filled with a bleary civilian curiosity as to why one

American would try to murder another [person] so far from home, and why the

victim should laugh" (Vonnegut 51). The lack of compassion or care for

death continues after Dresden is destroyed, when "absolutely everybody in the

city was supposed to be dead, regardless of what they were, and that anybody

moved in it represented a flaw in the design" (Vonnegut 180). This incident

in Dresden "becomes to Vonnegut, the example of the horror of the war, the

epitome of man’s inhumanity to man, and the terrible pain with which life

confronts the human being" (Riley and Harte 453). Now Billy is left

shameless to clean up the corpses who can "never say anything or want

anything ever again" (qtd. in Shepard 5) in "a terribly elaborate [and

sanguinary] Easter egg hunt" (qtd. in Shepard 4). Vonnegut laconically

describes all of this in a dry but brutal way which emphasizes his

disagreement with war. But even though he feels this way he still

understands that "there [will] always be wars [and] they [are] as easy to

stop as glaciers? [And] Even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there

would still be plain old death" (Vonnegut 3). The Tralfamadorians agree.

They know that there isn’t anything that they can do about war so they

"simply don’t look at them. [They] ignore them. [They] spend eternity

looking at pleasant moments? [They say to] Ignore the awful times and

concentrate on the good ones" (Vonnegut 117).

Aside for wars death tends to occur in the most ironic and often unfair ways

which leaves the reader questioning what the significance of human suffering

is and "whether life has any intrinsic meaning or [if it] is simply

haphazard" (Bryfonski and Senick 614). Edgar Derby, for example, is killed

for stealing a teapot:

"The irony of it is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands

and thousands of people are killed. And then an American foot soldier is

arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot. And he’s given a regular trial,

and then he’s shot by a firing squad. (Vonnegut 5)

Another soldier is depicted as being "shot for cowardice" (Vonnegut 45), shot

for not killing enough people while fighting in a war. Later, when Billy is

in the hospital, after again being the sole survivor (his wife even died in a

car accident on her way to visit him), this time of a terrible plane crash,

he witnesses a man die who had ironically been a marathon runner. All of

these unfair deaths juxtapositioned with Billy’s survival makes one wonder

what decides who will die when. "The ability to go on, to escape fixity by

motion in time" (Bryfonski and Mendelson 529) plus "fate, and a feeble will

to survive," (Vonnegut 151) responds Vonnegut through Slaughterhouse Five.

Billy is "bleakly ready for death" (Vonnegut 32), for a long time and even

resents a man who saves his life during World War II. When death finally

happens to him, he is stupidly killed by someone seeking revenge on him for

making his friend mad during the war. To Billy "it was all right somehow,

his being dead" (Vonnegut 148), and he tells everyone, "it is time for me to

be dead for a while- and then live again" (Vonnegut 143) as he has learned

from the Tralfamadorians. During his life there already were a few times

when he didn’t know whether he "was still alive or not" (Vonnegut 90). "How

nice- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive" (Vonnegut

105), Billy would be told by people who metaphorically described how someone

missing so many key human emotions could still live and be called a human.

His final death he described as a "violet light. There wasn’t anybody else

there, or anything. There was just a violet light- and a hum" (Vonnegut 43).

Death was a good thing, ending the suffering and cruelty of life, and one

could still live on enjoying the good moments over and over again just as one

had before. Even scholar "Charles Darwin? [had] taught that those who die

are meant to die, that corpses are improvements" (Vonnegut 27).

"Truth is death" (Vonnegut 21) says Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five and no

one will know the truth behind death until one dies, he realizes throughout

the novel, and the book shifts from a search of the meaning of death to a

"statement of hope" (Riley and Hart 452). But Vonnegut does offer some

suggestions. Perhaps no one ever dies and instead lives on repeating his

life forever like the Tralfamadorians think. Perhaps death is an improvement

like Darwin thought. Perhaps it does all boil down to fate and a strong will

to survive. Anything is possible. Maybe even one day glaciers and wars will

end altogether even though right now they cannot be stopped. But this is not

the point of the novel. All Vonnegut is saying and knows for sure is to be

compassionate and kind. He wants people to stop looking for meaning and to

not fall into the Tralfamadorian trap of viewing individual death as

unimportant and meaningless. "Poison their minds with humanity" (qtd. in

Gurton and Stine 445), says Vonnegut and hopefully he will be able to

convince everyone to be kind and caring and treat life and death with

concern. "He started his account of the adventures of [Billy] Pilgrim with

the single word- ‘Listen’. This is to alert us. We are being messaged" (

Bryfonski and Senick 607). "This is what his book keeps whispering in its

quietest voice: Be kind. Don’t hurt. Death is coming to all of us anyway"

(Riley and Harte 451). So perhaps Vonnegut couldn’t find out any more about

death than the others who have tried, but does he really care? The quest

will probably go on. So it goes.

886

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