The Comet's Flame

I recently read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Published in 1969, this is one of Vonnegut’s most well-known works (Cat’s Cradle being another one).

First of all, a note of warning… this is not a family-friendly book. Vonnegut typically has an extremely vulgar/crude writing style, and this novel is no exception.

However, negative aspects aside, I am a fan of this book for a lot of reasons (which I will enumerate shortly).

The novel re-creates some of Vonnegut’s experiences in World War II (centering around the horrendous fire-bombing of the German city of Dresden) using the character of fictitious American soldier Billy Pilgrim. Billy is a chaplain’s assistant stationed in Germany in the winter of 1944-1945. He’s exhausted and confused, wandering aimlessly after his regiment has been annihilated by the Germans. But there’s an interesting twist… Billy has “come unstuck in time.” In some bizarre way, Billy has become a migrant time traveler whose journeys between past, present, and future are governed by nothing but random chance.

Billy is also able to travel to another dimension, where he meets a strange alien race called the Tralfamadorians. These creatures have a very different view of time and space than “earthlings” do. The Tralfamadorians don’t see time as a linear progression of events — they see it as a three-dimensional landscape that they can traverse at will. Thus, to them, the World War is insignificant. Death is insignificant. If they don’t like a current event, they simply move to a more pleasant part of the “landscape” of time.

Needless to say, this new philosophy “revolutionizes” Billy’s life.

The main thing that I like about this book (and Vonnegut’s work in general) is that it is absolutely and inexplicably bizarre. It’s a weird conglomeration of stream-of-consciousness introspection, social commentary, and science fiction.

The other thing that I find fascinating about this book it’s bleakness and morbid sense of humor. We learn early on in the book that the Tralfamadorians don’t mourn when something bad happens… they simply say “so it goes.” As the book unfolds, Vonnegut uses the phrase incessantly, usually after someone dies. So the book espouses a terrible outlook on life, but I think there’s a lesson to be learned. I like Slaughterhouse-Five for the same reason I like the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible — it presents an excellent picture of a life without Christ, and it reminds me how much I have to be thankful for.

I also like the fact that Vonnegut paints a clear picture of the atrocities of war. Dresden was a complete massacre (performed by the Americans and the British). Over 20,000 innocent citizens were incinerated by fire bombs in less than 15 hours. I’m not sure whether this book was intended to be an anti-war novel, but it certainly doesn’t improve one’s opinion of war (which is good)!

I’m not necessarily recommending this book to you (I have a feeling that most of you readers would NOT enjoy it). I’m simply writing about a novel that I find interesting, and introducing some of the thought-provoking issues that the book brings out.