1112 Vonnegut, Kurt
Weary, a fellow soldier, saves Billy’s life even when
Billy himself no longer wishes to live. Yet Weary’s
potentially honorable actions are undercut by his
talk of sadistic murder and his eventual attempt to
kill Billy after they are both abandoned by two other
soldiers. The fact that Billy is saved from this attack
by the arrival of German soldiers, who stop Weary,
demonstrates the futility in determining friend
from foe. Weary dies of gangrene on a train full of
soldiers, one of whom, Paul Lazzaro, vows to avenge
Weary by killing Pilgrim. However, Lazzaro dies
before making good on his promise of vengeance.
On the same train another soldier, Wild Bob, dies
after telling his fellow soldiers to look him up in
Wyoming after the war. Thus, attempts to save or
take life, for honorable or dishonorable reasons, are
rendered equally futile by the circumstances of a
soldier’s life.
The expression “So it goes” repeats through-
out the novel to express the futility of characters’
situations and of attempts to make sense of those
situations through storytelling. Frequently these
situations rely on an ironic juxtaposition of events
that are extremely tragic. For example, in civilian life
Billy is the sole survivor of a plane crash, but his wife
dies accidentally while he recovers in the hospital.
This ever-changing sequence of events, in which
death and survival alternate rapidly, suggests the
futility of reaching firm conclusions about life, either
optimistic or pessimistic. Instead, the narrator’s
favorite three-word expression indicates that life and
death are topics too arbitrary for making clear judg-
ments. The novel’s implication is that any attempt
to make sense of historical tragedies beyond a very
minimal point of certainty would be a futile effort.
Billy’s encounters with the alien Tralfamadorians
demonstrate the futility of human existence by explic-
itly denying human free will. Literally, he is taken
against his will when the Tralfamadorians capture
and keep him on their spaceship. In discussion with
Billy, the aliens state that, out of over a hundred plan-
ets they have visited or studied, only Earthlings talk
about having free will. Free will is therefore presented
as a mistaken perception about reality unique to
human beings. Confirming the aliens’ judgment that
the human belief in free will does not make sense,
given the realities of human existence, Vonnegut ends
the book with the words of a bird, “Poo-tee-weet?,”
reminding the reader of the narrator’s own sense of
futility in making sense of the war. Humans like Billy
Pilgrim can make as much sense of existence in their
own words as unthinking animals.
Tim BryantvIoLence in Slaughterhouse-Five
Violence pervades the world of Kurt Vonnegut’s
novel in many forms, both ordinary and unusual.
Wartime violence includes conventional attacks
on enemy soldiers as well as unexpected attacks
by allies. Physical violence is often accompanied
by subtler, psychological violence that comes from
the situations soldiers find themselves in as prison-
ers of war. The legacy of war brings violence into
peacetime, persisting in wartime memories and the
disruptive tragedies of everyday life. The human
condition is a violent one, due to both intentional
and unintentional acts of violence against human
bodies and minds.
Billy Pilgrim refuses to participate in willful
violence against enemy soldiers. Ironically, this act
of pacifism causes him to become the target of
violence by his fellow soldiers, who ridicule him as
a coward. Furthermore, his decision not to commit
violence instigates one of the clearest examples of
willful violence against an individual. Two of his
fellow soldiers, Weary and Lazzaro, threaten to kill
Pilgrim because they blame him for their capture
and detention by the Germans during the war. Laz-
zaro’s pledge to revenge Weary after he dies empha-
sizes this kind of individual violence as willful and
vindictive.
Yet violence is also senseless. Lazzaro dies, a
victim of wartime violence, before avenging Weary’s
death. Pilgrim thus survives threatened violence at
the hands of his allies and returns home from the
war. The ubiquitous nature of violence, however,
means that he continues to suffer in peacetime as he
watches his family fall victim to senseless violence.
His wife and father-in-law both die in violent,
senseless accidents soon after Pilgrim settles into
what appears to be a normal, mundane life. As a
survivor of the violence of both war and peace, he
cannot escape the potential harm of both intentional
and unintentional violence.