Language III Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Graciela Rap

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Vonnegut gives a compelling account of the horrors of war using intricate, clever story-telling
techniques, bringing together the extremes between truth (historical facts) and science fiction
(futuristic imagination). He uses the extraordinary technique of combining the dark humor of Billy's
views of World War II with the serious message from the figment of madness of Tralfamadore to
show the inexplicable occurrences of war and its repercussions. This ingenious combination leads
to a unique tale that is timeless and interesting, that brings the story of Dresden, of Tralfamadore,
and of Billy Pilgrim, into the public eye. Discuss.

The novel opens with two anecdotes: one of them about a man who was shot during the war for
taking a teapot that was not his and the other about another man who threatened to hire
gunmen to kill his enemies after the war. And Vonnegut emphasizes the fact that these stories
really happened, that they are not the product of someones morbid imagination. The writer
himself witnessed them during the bombing to the city of Dresden by the United States in 1945.
The bombing completely destroyed the city and its inhabitants were massacred. Vonnegut, who
had been taken prisoner by the Nazis, was among the few survivors to the catastrophe. The
episode was kept as a secret by the government of the US, as Dresden was not a military target,
and assuming the responsibility for the slaughter would stain their public image as saviors of the
world. So, the first question the author asks himself is how to narrate the horror and the absurdity
of war. And he finds a way to do so by means of Billy Pilgrim, main character of the novel and a
sort of alter-ego of Vonnegut. Billy is portrayed as a mediocre and almost pathetic optometrist
who leads an equally mediocre and pathetic life. However, he has a gift: he can travel in time to
the past and the future- but only within his lifetime. In this way, and although he cannot change
anything, he can predict what life will bring to him: when and how he will die, what his wife and
sons will be like, and so on. He also goes back to the insane destruction of Dresden. In addition, he
is visited by aliens from planet Tralfamadore and eventually taken there as a zoos specimen.
It is through Billys innocent, free of speculation or prejudices point of view that the human
dimension of the tragedy is conveyed: in this book there are no good vs. evil battles, no Jews, no
Nazis, no heroes. The reader will witness a war scene where soldiers from both sides are just kids
or people in their forties and older; the victims, little children who were playing in the streets the
day before. But Vonnegut has an attitude of care towards the readers and helps them - and
himself, too- to digest his story by resorting to elements of black humor, surrealism and science-
fiction: the dialogues between the Tralfamadorians and Billy will attempt to make sense of what is
nonsense; they display a philosophy in which time is not linear but circular, where what has
happened is happening now and will happen ever. Free will does not exist; it is just an illusion of
Earthlings since everything has already been predestined, but there is a way to happiness: to
concentrate more in the good moments than in the bad ones. Yet, there are some other visitors
from the outer space, those created by Kilgore Trout, who believe that it is possible to change the
course of human history, by giving the Earth a new Gospel. The following excerpt from the book
synthesizes both Vonneguts ideals, and the distinctive style he had to express them. The Gospel
went on like this: The flaw in the Christ storieswas that Christ was actually the Son of the
Language III Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Graciela Rap

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Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to crucifixion,
they naturally thought..:
Oh, boy- they sure picked up the wrong guy to lynch that time!
And that thought had a brother: There are right people to lynch. Who? People not well
connected. So it goes
So the Gospel created by the aliens told the story of a Jesus who was a nobody and a pain in the
neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. And when this Jesus died, the Gospel
ended with God adopting him as his son, giving him the privileges of the Son of the Creator of the
Universe throughout all the eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly
anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!