Slaughterhouse-Five - Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut.  His name could have a polarizing effect depending upon which social and political circles you tend to inhabit.  Slaughterhouse-Five.  His most famous novel, perhaps in reality not as polarizing a book as one might expect because of it’s misinterpretation by so many as an anti-war novel.  Published, of course, during the conflict in Vietnam, and, loosely bound to Vonnegut’s eyewitness account of the fire bombings of Dresden Germany during WWII, it’s easy to understand how this anti-war sentiment could take root.  By the time it is written the details of the Dresden bombing were still not ironed out.  Many died horrifically for seemingly less than a military purpose with the number of deaths propagandized to be in the 200,000 range by the Nazis (Vonnegut himself wrote 135,000).  That number almost doubles the instantaneous deaths at Hiroshima for instance.  But those early numbers far exceeded the actual numbers which were closer to 25,000 as later confirmed by German authorities not to mention the eye witness accounts of the military and military industry present in Dresden which perhaps made the bombing necessary.  Not to belittle the atrocious effects of tons of high explosive and incendiary bombing, indeed the firebombing of Tokyo Japan quite exceeded the immediate effects at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I say this not to downplay or apologize for the horrors of war, but to point out that this singular focus on Slaughterhouse-Five, this focus on an anti-war sentiment, distracts us significantly from the far more relevant theme Vonnegut brilliantly illustrated in this book.  Billy Pilgrim suffers from profound mental illness as do most of his characters.  Perhaps those attributes were seeded in war and perhaps some of those Vonnegut possessed himself, however he wrote to us some 20 years after his eyewitness account.  Should one witness such atrocities one would hope a far speedier indictment would follow.

Personally, I did not find the horrors of war (the killing) particularly more disturbing than the mental health of these people whom we become acquainted.  Death is prevalent throughout the novel and Vonnegut's technique of using the phrase, “So it goes” after having written about a death, is invoked over 100 times. The Dresden bombing receives a single “So it goes” for the presumed 135,000 death toll.  The death of his father and the death of his wife each carried the same weight, a single “So it goes”.  The barbaric death of a dog at the hands of a psychotic long before the war received the same “So it goes” as did the discovery of the remaining multitude of deaths, at war and at peace, which occur throughout the novel.  These deaths were deliberate, accidental, or from natural causes.  Vonnegut himself did not seem to discriminate.  Thus, his single most powerful and recurring theme in his novel has no discriminatory bias whatsoever.

The case for mental illness however, while perhaps treated in academic circles, primarily in the writings of those seeking a PhD in psychology, are all but ignored within the mainstream.  Which by and large, continues to be symptomatic of our society's innate ability to ignore mental illness at all costs...even when it’s staring us in the face and beating on our chest with both fists as Vonnegut has done in Slaughterhouse-Five.  Alien’s you say?  Somehow Slaughterhouse-Five carries with it the genre of science fiction. Billy Pilgrim is abducted by aliens after all and dutifully reports back what he has learned. Whether or not this book is anti-war, dark humor, or science fiction there are no real Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five.  Only the fiction of a very disturbed mind, brought on perhaps, by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) no understood to be a huge diblitaror in all wars and a subject that should be discussed thoroughly in high schools throughout the country.  This book, as others that are interpreted incorrectly, are great introductions to the mental health conversation.  Let’s talk about that more and time-travel less.

Five stars for Slaughterhouse-Five.  One star for how society interprets and uses the genius of Kurt Vonnegut.