Nihilism In Slaughterhouse Five

What would happen if one possessed the ability to travel through time without any limitations? What kind of person this person would become? Time travel has been one of most thrilling topics in the science fiction novels. Questions about time travel always provoke readers’ deliberate thinking about their own lives.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five has been always a popular book that probes into these questions about time travel. In the book, the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is a World War II veteran who “has come unstuck in time”. Pilgrim travels through time between war period and post war period back and forth. He knows that he will be the only survivor after the bombing of Dresden. He knows that he will survive after the airplane crash.

Such ideology rooted in his mind exacerbates his indifferent attitude toward life. The philosophy of Tralfamadorians becomes Billy Pilgrim’s tool of the justification of his idea to be indifferent. Without judging the validity of his philosophy, readers are able to perceive that Billy Pilgrim’s transition to embrace a new faith representing Nietzsche’s nihilism. His indifference toward life is the epitome of the collapse of old faith in his mind. He denies what old faith advocates such as compassion mentioned above. However, Vonnegut may disagree with Billy Pilgrim’s new faith taught by Tralfamadorians that rejects any emotions. His indifference at least causes the death of poor old Edgar Derby and the people on that airplane. Indeed, it is infeasible for Billy Pilgrim to prevent events like the bombing in Dresden in World War II from happening, but he at least has to be responsible for not telling poor old Edgar Derby not to steal that teapot and not stopping the flight from taking off because he is fully informative about upcoming events and capable of preventing them. Here, Vonnegut tries to lead readers to question whether Billy Pilgrim’s new philosophy that regards everything meaningless is genuinely applicable to human society. Therefore, Kurt Vonnegut

Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.” (Vonnegut 109) As what that Tralfamadorian said, if there is only one civilization that has free will, it will reasonable to call it absurd to compare with civilizations on other planets. For all other creatures in this enormous universe, it may be a norm to merely passively accept the fate; however, human, we, are absurd in their way, believing that we have juggernaut to change the path of our own fates. Our free will resembles Camus’ notion of accepting the absurdity, then revolting and creating meanings for ourselves, as Martin Coleman argues that, “The answer is not by changing unchangeable facts, but rather by continuing to explore meanings of such facts and more importantly the possibilities in one’s experience.” This notion of exploration shows that human is not limited by any predetermination and the end point of human civilization should not to be fixed by any kinds of fates. Thriving future of human race is not achieved by mere fates but continuous exploration. However, for Billy Pilgrim, his indifference hinders him to understand the importance of revolting. His realization of absurdity that life is meaningless is futile and uncompleted because of the lack of elements of revolting in his