The Beliefs Of Religion In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

Several of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels include philosophies and/or “religions” of Vonnegut’s own invention. Take, for instance, the “latter-day Jonah” character of Malachi Constant, who serves as a Messiah for an invented religion in The Sirens of Titan (Freese 148). Also worth mentioning is the fabricated religion that exists on the poverty-stricken island of San Lorenzo, outlined in Vonnegut’s fourth novel, Cat’s Cradle (150). Although Vonnegut demonstrates similar tendencies in many other novels, one novel’s philosophy stands out in particular: Slaughterhouse-Five. Unanimously considered to be Vonnegut’s grand opus, Slaughterhouse-Five contains a philosophy that combines and fictionalizes aspects of Vonnegut’s own life—including his war experiences and spiritual beliefs—and loosely connects the two in a manner that resembles a cause-and-effect pattern.

Writing Billy Pilgrim as something of a mirror for himself, Vonnegut uses Billy Pilgrim’s traumatic war experiences to exemplify the general effect of said experiences upon religious/spiritual beliefs. Thus, in many ways, Vonnegut uses his own personal beliefs and experiences to set the framework for Billy’s denial of organized religion, as well as his seemingly consequent acceptance of other philosophies. In doing so, Vonnegut illustrates the natures of experience and belief as intertwined. He does so by discussing Billy’s “faith journey”, so to speak—beginning with Billy’s mother’s search for an organized religion and his time as a chaplain’s assistant in World War II, and ending with Billy as an outspoken prophet of Tralfamadorian philosophy, which can be argued to be a new religion in and of itself.

I. Billy Pilgrim as Representing Vonnegut

Vonnegut has a habit of refere...

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...ly driven by his memories; his flashbacks and dreams almost always take him back to Germany in 1944, be it in the basement during the bombing of Dresden or in a train car filled to the brim with other prisoners of war. Often, these episodes occur as a result of sensory phenomena that trigger painful memories. Take, for instance, the repeated mentions of certain colors (“ivory and blue,” “orange and black”) or smells (“mustard gas and roses”) that tend to send Billy catapulting into the past (57, 164). Another trigger for Billy includes a siren, heard outside his optometry practice in Ilium, which reminds him of the Dresden air raid alarms. The siren “scared the hell out of him” (57), and, consequently, “he was expecting World War Three at any time” (57). With stimuli that are commonly found in daily life in peacetime America, Billy was, essentially, doomed.