Kurt Vonnegut Essay, Research Paper

It is hard to ignore a writer such as Kurt Vonnegut. His works, described by Richard Giannone as “comic masks covering the tragic farce that is our contemporary life,” hold a mirror to the face of today’s society in an attempt to show us the absurdity of the human condition. It is Vonnegut’s belief, as is demonstrated by almost every major character of his writing, that people are unable to affect their own lives. However, although his writings are mostly pessimistic, he does not leave us with this bleak conviction without a solution. He also shows us, through characters such as the Tralfamadorians and concepts such as Bokononism, that life can still be blissful through either acceptance or disillusionment. Another opinion of Vonnegut, and he has many, is his anti-war conviction. This opinion, derived from his own time spent in World War II, led to the writing of one of his most famous novels, Slaughterhouse-Five.

In writing Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut succeeded in writing a war novel that was anything but typical. This, I belief, was exactly what his goal was. Distortion, one of Vonnegut’s favorite tools, which he utilizes in his writings, comes to play throughout the novel. The layout of the entire novel does not even follow a traditional story line, and instead jumps around to different events in the main character’s life, revealing the entire plot line during the second chapter. At the start to the book, Vonnegut explains his reasoning behind this:

“It is so short and jumbled and jangled… because there is nothing

intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead,

to never say anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very

quite after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do

the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like ‘Poo-tee-

weet?’” (Vonnegut 19).

In fact, even the ending of Slaughterhouse-Five is completely different and very thought provoking. He concludes the novel with the aftermath of the bombing in Dresden, which he himself experienced, and the birds saying “‘Poo-tee-weet?’” (Vonnegut 215). This is to emphasize the worthlessness of the total destruction that occurred in Dresden. He could simply describe the scene and incredible loss of life, but all he writes is an ignorant and simple statement made by a creature which is not able to comprehend in the slightest what had happened there. This ending is used to make the author’s point that there is nothing truly intelligent to say about the bombing, or any battle or war, for that matter. No matter how much he discussed what had happened, there would still be nothing intelligent to say about the event, which was simply a massacre intended to kill everybody and everything in the city, as the author implied in the first chapter (Vonnegut 19).

With the Tralfamadorians, the alien race who time does not exist for and “All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist,”(Vonnegut #) Vonnegut conveys the story so that the reader looks at war as absurd, rather than the aliens. This in itself is notable, because Vonnegut is accomplishing his goal, which is to shake our immunity towards war in order for us to see how ghastly it is.

Vonnegut’s comic sense is also shown in this novel. Contrasting the character, Valencia’s, distress over choosing the right silver patter to the images of war, Vonnegut forces the reader to laugh while at the same time realizing how inconsequential our common worries are in contrast to the viciousness of war. The message of Slaughterhouse-Five is clear, as is Vonnegut’s talent for writing eye-opening works and that is that to glorify war is criminal, and war is entirely wicked and futile.