Slaughterhouse Five Rhetorical Analysis

War is a bad habit that mankind has never been able to quit, despite many governments efforts to maintain peace, war happens. In his novel, Slaughterhouse Five, author Kurt Vonnegut expresses his thoughts on the absurdity of war and what it does to those who must take part. On the surface the novel is a bizarre sci-fi novel about a time traveling blockhead, but deep down, it’s a bizarre sci-fi novel about a time traveling blockhead. Vonnegut utilizes an absurd tone, passage of time, and narrative point of view to create an entertaining and satirical view of war in the modern era.

Much of the novels absurdity comes from its main character, Billy Pilgrim, a war veteran who can time travel and has been abducted by aliens, which in the real

world is the signature mark of a person gone bonkers.

Billy is not even a war hero, his role in the war is almost completely passive, as he is incompetent due to the whole time travel thing. “He was a valet to a preacher, expected no promotions or medals, bore no arms and had a meek faith in loving Jesus which most soldiers found putrid.” (Vonnegut, 30) Vonnegut has created Pilgrim this way to show us the absurdity of war itself, the US sending people like Billy to fight in World War II, not heros like we all like to think, but fools that have little to no purpose other than cannon fodder. Vonnegut’s portrayal of death in the novel is also absurd. Most deaths are presented ironically and in an undramatic manner. Roland Weary dies of gangrene because of ill fitting clogs, a hobo freezes to death after perpetually claiming he’d dealt with worse, and Edgar Derby gets shot for stealing a teapot from what’s left of Dresden. Nobody is glorified, and little death is shown actually on the battlefield, unlike most war novels. Vonnegut also uses the aliens to point out our own absurdities, he says Tralfamadorians have no

interest in Jesus Christ, but instead are interested in Charles Darwin, as he teaches that “corpses are improvements.”(Vonnegut, 210)To some this may sound strange and backward, but this statement is reflective of how human kind has come to utilize war. We use it to grow and progress, other people die to drive progress forward, including many people who die for no reason, the Roland Wearys and Edgar Derbys of the world. All of Vonnegut’s seemingly drug induced out of this world craziness is actually poking fun at human kind as a whole, our flaws and how we like to think our world works.

Vonnegut utilizes time travel in a different manner, it is the effects of the tragedy of war on a humans mind, akin to PTSD.

The first time Billy time travels is during the war, after about of traumatic events. He goes back to yet another traumatic point in his life, just after his father attempted teaching him how to swim utilizing the “sink or swim” method. After this, nearly every other “time travel” event is relating to some kind of emotion heavy moment in Billy’s life. Vonnegut is using time travel to portray a broken mind, the way a veteran might feel after having been through an event as horrific as Dresden and the rest of World War II. Billy feels isolated and disconnected because of his ability, “(Billy) has no control over where he is going next… He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next.” This fear and disconnect are something that a person with PTSD would have to deal with when having flashbacks, they feel like they are on a separate plane of existence than everybody else, and jump back and forth from reality and reliving the terrors of their past. Billy still has no control over the stream of time, however, so despite all the horrific things he has seen, he cannot change their occurance what so ever. This is a theme that Vonnegut expresses throughout the novel, a lack of free will, which is shown mainly through Billy and the Tralfamadorians. Both can see their downfall,

but do nothing to change the outcome, despite their ability to be in both the past and the present as well as the future. Tralfamadorians even ultimately destroy the entire universe, and know exactly when, why, and how, yet they do nothing to stop it from happening. This also appears to be Vonnegut’s view on war itself, that we will continue to destroy ourselves, build bigger weapons, and ultimately decimate everything we know simply because we could. Despite this being an anti-war novel, it is also a novel about the inevitability of war amongst human kind.

One of the most important things Vonnegut did to make his novel anti-war was to make it not about him. Choosing to go with a mainly third-person perspective sci-fi novel rather than a first person autobiography gave him to the freedom to express his messages in an entertaining and informative way. Billy Pilgrim and his experiences are completely fictional outside of the war, and used to comment on war and human kind. Yet, Vonnegut also dabs reality here and there, adding himself and his experiences occasionally. By inserting himself within the world of the novel, Vonnegut grounds the more tragic and depressing parts of the book in real life. He is telling us that, no there aren't really 4th dimensional aliens who come down and snatch up time traveling lunatics in real life, but yes Dresden did happen and people did die, war is real. Without the fictional side of the novel, it may have been too boring and dark for audiences, and his message would have been lost. Without his own interjections and his real existence mentioned, however, the book wouldn’t be taken seriously.

Slaughterhouse Five is certainly an anti-war novel through and through. Its depiction of absurdity, time travel, and a fictionalized world all work together to create a satirized view on war. Though Vonnegut expresses throughout the novel that war is inevitable, he is also clearly trying to tell us that just because we can’t stop war, it doesn’t mean that war is not a horrible thing, or even a necessary evil. Vonnegut would likely agree with this exchange from Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front: