Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

"All this happened, more or less."

You know, I'd like to apologize to Mr. Vonnegut for avoiding his writing for so long. As an undergraduate literature major, I got so sick of the more pretentious students in my classes constantly referencing him like some sort of post-modern "I'm smarter than you and I read better books" qualifier to their own ideas, that the thought of any of his books caused me to merely roll my eyes. I allowed my association of these other students to his works to give me an excuse to pass judgement on books/an author that I have never read.

I'm a few years late for Mr. Vonnegut to ever actually know ("So it goes."), but here I go anyway: I'm sorry.

And I was wrong, because I really enjoyed reading Slaughterhouse-Five (which I feel weird saying because it's not the sort of novel you really enjoy; it's supposed to make you feel uncomfortable). I didn't really know that much about the book before going into it -- just that it was a post-modern anti-war novel with some science fiction elements to it. Nobody told me there was a huge element of metafiction in it. I love metafiction.

Somebody should have told me.

There's even an interesting reference to a discussion about "the death of the novel" -- ironically a novel that has endured for decades.

The first and last chapter (with a few lines here and there throughout) are told first person from the narrator's perspective. The narrator continuously refers to himself as the author of this, his Dresden novel.

"That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book."

Many readers will assume that this voice is Vonnegut speaking directly to the reader; however, there is nothing to concretely label the narrator as fiction or nonfiction. He never identifies himself by name. A lot of the details parallel facts about Vonnegut himself (POW in WWII, survived the Dresden bombing, wrote a novel centering around the bombing of Dresden), which is one of the things that makes this slight ambiguity so fascinating.

It causes confusion about factual and fictional aspects in the book, making everything seem more real (because the fact is that the bombing of Dresden happened, and it was a massacre) and making the themes and ideas presented in the book more poignant and thoughtful. You find yourself believing it all as human experience.

Because maybe all of it was. "...more or less."


Metafiction. It makes you second guess the meaning of everything.


Structurally, the book is also really interesting. As mentioned above, the first and last chapters (the frame story) are written from the narrator's first person perspective, but everything in between is the narrator telling us Billy Pilgrim's story from the third person.

It's written with a similar set-up to Catch-22, jumping back and forth through time in a disjointed order. Both the frame story and Billy's story are told this way (Billy's because he is "unstuck in time").  We often know all about some event before we ever actually see it because at some point Billy Pilgrim (Should we consider him the main character? Or is it the narrator?) is in the future remembering his own past before we are shown it.

If Billy Pilgrim's story is one with the attempt to piece together some sort of meaning from all of these events in his life (especially the Dresden bombing), and the frame story mirrors this structure, can we then view the narrator as making the same attempt with his own life? And thus Vonnegut too? There's that metafiction again. Just like I don't think we get an answer about whether we can extrapolate all the way to Vonnegut, I don't think we (or Billy Pilgrim or the narrator) find or are given a meaning.

Instead, we get a discussion of free will and a whole lot of fatalism. The Tralfamadorians, the aliens that abduct Billy and cause him to be "unstuck in time," assert that free will doesn't exist:

“If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will.’ I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”

They insist that every moment is always happening -- thus the future is happening right now and can't be changed. Billy knows everything that is going to happen to him and experiences it over and over again as a result from being "unstuck in time," but he is powerless to change any of it.

This complete collection of the tragic moments of his life (which this novel amounts to) are ultimately out of his control and seem to be meaningless. Thus, the fatalism.

As much as I don't agree with many of the sentiments and ideas in this book (fatalism is one of them), I thought it was masterfully crafted and the ideas well thought and communicated. Vonnegut is certainly a masterful writer, and I'm sorry that I avoided him for so long.

Most of the books that I really enjoy are the ones where I can step back and look at the whole work as a piece of art and say "Wow, that is the work of a master." That's how I feel about this novel. I think it has certainly earned its place on reading lists.

And it gets bonus points for being an anti-war novel that isn't preachy, but rather intimate. Those types are so rare and usually wonderful when you can find them.