1110 Vonnegut, Kurt
the mud that got to sit up and look around.” Link-
ing humanity to the mud in this way, Bokonon,
who is allegedly “against science,” offers a reminder
that humans are inextricably linked to the planet,
so when seeking to control nature, people must be
conscious of the full consequences of their actions.
Margaret Savilonis
voNNEGuT, kurT Slaughterhouse-
Five (1969)
World War II veteran Billy Pilgrim recalls vari-
ous tragic and incomprehensible moments of his
life during and after the war. Pilgrim literally
travels through time without control, alternating
between brief moments of happiness and their
sudden upheaval by ironic twists of fate. During
wartime, soldiers fighting on the same side as Pil-
grim try to kill him, while enemy soldiers save his
life. Those who befriend him die soon afterward.
Pilgrim thus lives in a constant state of anxiety and
fear, not knowing whom to trust or rely on. After the
war, he lives a most ordinary life, marrying a woman
no one else would and taking up her father’s dental
practice to make a humble living. Yet domestic peace
is disrupted by tragedies similar to those of war.
Pilgrim’s family members die in bizarre accidents
while he miraculously survives, physically unscathed.
Psychologically, he suffers from wartime memories,
especially the bombing of Dresden. Recollections of
war during peacetime juxtapose happiness and trag-
edy throughout his life. His confused existence is
best exemplified by his fantastic abduction by a race
of alien beings, in whose zoo he remains a prisoner.
Although Pilgrim finds some happiness even while
imprisoned, he never finds a lasting happiness or a
time line that he can stay in for long. His unexpected
jumps among time periods match the troubled
mood of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel. The novel’s fatalis-
tic refrain, “So it goes,” reiterates the narrator’s belief
that this war story holds small hope for lasting hap-
piness or a comforting moral in human existence.
Tim Bryant
etHIcS in Slaughterhouse-Five
Given the centrality of profoundly immoral actions
to the narrative, ethics is an important but difficult
theme of Slaughterhouse-Five. From the bombing
of the civilian population of Dresden during World
War II to the consistently dishonorable actions of
vengeful soldiers, examples of unethical behavior
during wartime seem to eliminate ethical prin-
ciples from consideration. Moreover, the tragedies
that plague Vonnegut’s protagonist during times
of peace suggest an amoral universe where suc-
cess, failure, and even death are all accidents that
frustrate attempts to find a moral order to life. Billy
Pilgrim appears more often a victim of a disordered
world than a conscious champion of ethical conduct.
Rather than present a simple and clear code of ethics
for the reader, Vonnegut’s novel hints at an ethical
code in its narrator’s participation in the story and
various characters’ attempts to order their lives.
Chapter 1, in which the narrator describes his
preparations for writing about the war, previews
the book’s general ethical framework. The narrator
agrees with his friend O’Hare that the book will
be antiwar, even though such a book would be as
ineffective at stopping wars as an “anti-glacier” book
would be in preventing glaciers from forming. The
narrator’s ethics prompt him to tell the truth about
war, including its seeming inevitability. Thus, the
narrator promises O’Hare’s wife, Mary, that he will
not write a book that glorifies war like Hollywood
war movies of the time. His idea to call the book
The Children’s Crusade suggests an ethical code that
believes in a truthful depiction of the horrors of war,
from which children should be protected. In one of
the few direct statements that resembles an ethical
mandate, the narrator explains that he has, since the
war, told his own children not to partake in mas-
sacres or to feel pleasure at news of massacres. The
ethics of truth-telling thus seek to promote a more
humane attitude toward war, rather than stories that
turn war into pleasurable drama. The first chapter
of the book establishes an ethics of storytelling
that does not glorify actions leading to human
suffering.
Billy Pilgrim’s experiences throughout the rest
of the book demonstrate a pervasive absence of
honorable ethics in wartime. A fellow American
attempts to kill Pilgrim after two other soldiers
abandon the two to the Germans. When Weary dies
from wounds ignored by his captors, Paul Lazzaro,