Analytic Outline

Book: Slaughterhouse Five

Thesis: Through the implementation of nonlinear narrative discourse, metafictional citations, the creation of multiple worlds, instances of repetition, and the absence of closure, Vonnegut asserts the ideal that it is impossible to live a normal life after participating in warfare, thereby associating a negative connotation with combat and deglamorizing war itself.

Outline:

I.) Introduction- Thesis

II.) Nonlinear Narrative Discourse

A. Displays PTSD tendancies

B. Disjointed Life = Disjointed Narrative

III.) Metafictional Citations

A. Tralfamadorian literature holds not beginning, middle, or end, and allows for one simultaneous picture of event

B. Vonnegut forms novel in such a fashion–trying to create meaningful picture from meaningless disaster

IV.) Multiple World Creation

A. Tralfamadorian situations in novel are not real, displaying “hallucinogenic” PTSD

B. Mixup of nonreal world with real world–instances of Trout’s books that collide with real life

V.) Repetition

A. So it goes- displays situational apathy, and equalizes death

B. Children’s Crusade- emphasizes ludicrousy of sending young men to war and war itself

VI.) Absence of Closure

A. novel does not end with definitive closure —absence of closure in novel displaying insignificance of war itself

VII.) Conclusion

War’s Impact on Life

It would be agreed that a strong assertion concerning the impact of war on life can be made when analyzing Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five; The assertion being of course that it is nearly impossible to live a relatively normal life after participating in warfare.

There are several literary forms Vonnegut used in relation to the context of the story that support this claim, the most noted being his nonlinear writing style in relation to various references to Tralfamadorian literature. Traldamadorian narrative has no beginning, middle, or end, it is all simply there, easily seen like a photograph, never altering or changing times. Vonnegut writes his novel in a similar manner, arguably for this reason, so that a meaningful whole can be inferred from something as destructive, chaotic, and fragmented as the firebombing of Dresden. He argues in various parts of the novel that there is nothing meaningful to say about a massacre, that nothing should be said about a massacre. I believe this is the reason Vonnegut has constructed a Tralfamadorian novel, not to say anything about Dresden, but to display a picture of the disaster. This nonlinear form of narrative sequence can also assert Pilgrim’s PTSD  tendencies in the novel, illustrating the effects war has on those after they return home.

The Children’s Crusade

Billy Pilgrim felt the heat before he actually saw the flames. Staggering up the steps from the bunker, clothed in cape and silver shoes, he reminded himself of a weaker version of his future son’s commando figurines, dressed by his unborn daughter as Cinderella. He thought this was appropriate; Dresden was as unfamiliar as a land from a fairytale. Upon reaching the bunker door, Billy was overcome by a wall of heat. The bunker had been refrigerated, and the sudden shift forced him to clamp shut his eyes. He knew he was traveling.

————-

He was still hot. He was so hot. He felt like he was cooking. Billy opened his eyes and found himself curled before the fire in his childhood home. He was thirteen years old. From the kitchen he could hear the soft sounds of his mother crying. Not able to hold back his natural childhood curiosity, he followed the sobs until he came upon his mother, sitting at the kitchen table with a newspaper, hastily attempting to control her emotions with a tissue as her son walked into the room.

“What’s the matter, momma?” Billy inquired. Billy had very rarely seen his mother cry. She wasn’t like the other mothers Billy had come across that raised his friends. Those mothers were simple and barren, impelled to cry upon a scrape on their child’s knee. Billy’s mother was different, calm and collected in varying situations of importance. Billy was concerned.

“Oh it’s nothing, Billy,” his mother sputtered hurriedly, dabbing at her eyes to little avail. The tears kept flowing “Go back into the living room and I’ll bring in marshmallows. Wouldn’t you like to roast some marshmallow’s, dear?”

At this Billy’s mother rose from her chair and hastened her son out of the room with her hands, but not before Billy could catch a glimpse of the paper’s headline, resting on the table in front of his mother’s abandoned seat. “Poland Invaded. Nearly 75,000 Dead, Many More Missing.” A very perplexed Billy left the kitchen.

Some time later, roasting marshmallows with his mother by the fire in their living room, Billy questioned, “Momma, do we know anyone in the war?”

Looking quite calm now and barely sniffling, Billy’s mother evenly replies, “No. No one has been sent overseas yet.”

“Then why were you crying over all those people that got killed?”

Billy’s mother looked sadly down at her son, brushing the hair at the nape of his neck with her fingers, moving forward to trace his cheeks still ripe with baby fat, soft with peach fuzz he had not yet lost. For a moment, Billy thought she would kiss him.

“Because, Billy,” his mother began, “all those men out there who died had mothers just like you. I was just thinking about the way they feel. I was thinking about what it would be like if I lost you.”

“But momma, I’m just a kid.”

Slowly a tear began to form at the corner of Billy’s mother’s eye. It rolled down her cheeks and softly hit Billy’s arm. To him it felt like a bullet. “So were they, baby,” she whispered. “So were they.”

————-

Billy was back in 1945. Back in Dresden. Back in the unfamiliar fairytale land it had become.  He was walking with his hands behind his head, in a line of other survivors who were roaming aimlessly along this barren planet, looking for signs of life. Signs of civilization. Signs of endurance Gazing at the ground, at the fire, at his feet, Billy noticed something in the distance. “Hey!” he yelled to the guards. “Hey, I think there’s someone over there!”

Following Billy’s outstretched arm and fingers, a guard trudged over debris towards the object Billy had seen. Watching closely, Billy saw the guard squat down in the distance and pick up a large figure. It looked like a child from where Billy stood, but the guard was holding it with one hand. Returning a moment later, a doll was thrust into Billy’s grasp.

It was small and untouched by the bombing. It held a small face with brown hair, large eyes, and a forever-fixed smile, seeming content in the midst of chaos. Billy wondered to whom it had belonged. Obviously a child. An incinerated child. A dead child.

Billy suddenly remembered what his mother had said some six years earlier. Tears formed at the corners of Billy’s eyes, and he let them fall. They exploded upon the ground like missiles, hit the doll squarely upon its middle. And just for a moment, Billy felt like a child.

Speaking on Massacre

I’m not at liberty to speak to Kurt Vonnegut. I will never know the exact reason he has created and published, Slaughterhouse Five. I am at the will of my own inferences and beliefs, all of which point me to believe that Vonnegut wrote this novel with the intention of deglamorizing every aspect of war.

In the body of the novel, Pilgrim states, “There is nothing to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is…” (Vonnegut 19) Reinforcing this statement is the fact that the novel was written and published during the Vietnam War, one of the least supported actions in American history. It is only logical that one would believe this is an antiwar novel based on the era in which it was published.

This novel actually reminds me very much of the modern movie “Across the Universe,” a movie in which the main characters express their protest of the Vietnam War through famous Beatles songs. It conveys the uselessness of war through dramatic yet matter of fact images of wounded soldiers, protest, etc, just as Vonnegut describes in his novel. Also a similar point between these two modes of expression is the ideal that the individuals shipped into the war are not grown adults, brave and noble at heart, but simply children, barely out of school, immature and naïve to the vast carnage of war.