The Experiences of Billy Pilgrim: A Non-Fictional Story

Brian Bockelman
10/20/10
Zachery Gall
Interpretation of Literature

Alien abductions and time-travel have both been described by post-modern and modern scientists using many of the same words such as “improbable,” “crazy,” and “absurd.” A lot of these same words can also be used to describe war. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter-house Five, Vonnegut uses two dimensions, one of war and one of science-fiction, to illustrate the absurdity of war; how it’s inevitable, unstoppable, and unexplainable. The science-fictional planet of Tralfamadore is an outlet for Vonnegut to give his serious views about the unexplainable realities of war. The variety of seriousness through the war and light-heartedness through Billy Pilgrim’s story allow Vonnegut to show that war is absurd, making it an anti-war novel.

Billy Pilgrim becomes abducted by the alien race Tralfamadorians about half way through the novel. The alien craft that abducts Billy is described as a “saucer” (75) with “portholes around its rim” (76) that pulse purple, and he is brought up to the saucer by a “ladder that was outlined in pretty lights” (76). Billy becomes paralyzed by a zap gun and not until he’s aboard the craft is he able to think again. His abductors were “two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber’s friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm. The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions” (26). Based on this description it seems that Vonnegut has a rather dull imagination, as his fictional alien race is very cliché. But this is Vonnegut’s intent. He doesn’t want the reader to be focused on the alien race themselves, but rather the messages that they give to Billy. At this point in the story, it’s unsure whether Billy’s becoming more and more delusional or if the events occurring are real. Based on the ridiculousness of them, however, it’s easier to assume that Billy’s insane. But while the idea of someone being abducted by an alien race and being able to travel through time seems ridiculous to us, the idea of killing hundreds of thousands of people with a single bomb was also believed to be ridiculous at one point. Yet the U.S. government amazed us when they dropped the first atomic bomb and did what we thought was impossible, which was killed hundreds of thousands of people with that single bomb. The uncertainty of Billy’s mental state and his absurd experiences function as a representation of the absurd experiences of war within our world and how those absurdities are becoming a reality, just as Billy’s perspective on time is becoming his reality.

When Billy is abducted by the Tralfamadorians, he asks them “Why me?” (76). Why had they chosen him to abduct? They respond by saying “Why anything? Because this moment simply is.” (76–77). They describe time as amber, trapping us into each moment and explain that “there is no why.” (77). This description of time completely rejects the idea of free will, so Billy becomes consumed in the belief that he is forced into doing everything that he does and that any sort of resistance is futile. This is ironic, however, because this new revelation of Billy’s excites him so much that he becomes determined to share it with the rest of the world, which he does under his own personal will. This contradicts the idea that there is no free-will. Even though Billy is contradicting his own beliefs, he is still blind to the fact that a world with no free will would be impossible and even dangerous. This is illustrated by a German soldier knocking down an American prisoner when Billy and the other American soldiers are being assigned to their prisoner camps. The prisoner that got hit asks the German, baffled, “why me?”(91) and the German replies “Vy you? Vy anybody?” (91). This response is the same as that of the Tralfamadorians to Billy Pilgrim when he asked them the same question. The Tralfamadorians would simply say that the moment was structured for the guard to knock down the American, but by putting these words into the mouth of the brutal German guard, it becomes obvious that this philosophy is flawed. If there were no free will then nobody would take responsibility for their actions and they could easily blame everything and anything they do on the “higher-being” of fate, such as for the governments’ participation in war.

Since Billy takes on the Tralfamadorian belief that everything is inevitable then he would conclude that his going off to war was unpreventable, for he was forced to go by a “higher-being.” Because Billy believes that nothing is preventable, he allows his death to happen, despite knowing when and how it will occur. His death appears to be the result of nothing short of delusion and pride on Billy’s part. Attributing Billy’s beliefs to the government, it could be said that their reason for going to war is because they are forced to by a “higher-being,” just as Billy was forced to participate in the war by the same “higher-being.” Thus, war is seemingly a similar result of delusion, pride, and ignorance just as it was in Billy Pilgrim’s death, only on a much grander scale and resulting in a much larger number of fatalities and aftermath. This illustration by Vonnegut demonstrates that governments have no justifiable reasons for engaging in war because just like Billy contradicts his own beliefs by expressing free will, the government has the freedom to act in ways that they want to. But because of their pride and ignorance wars continue to, and will always continue to, rage on.

While in the Tralfamoadrian zoo, one Tralfamadore tells Billy that the Tralfamadorians ignore all of the bad moments and “spend eternity looking at pleasant moments” (117). The Tralfamadore also says that “one thing Earthlings might learn to do is ignore the awful times, and focus on the good ones” (117). This way we can spend all of eternity looking at these pleasant moments and can just block out the bad moments. But because our minds aren’t always so controllable, it’s hard for us to only focus on the good times. So while the good moments in time will last forever, the bad times will also last forever. Time can’t erase the bad moments, such as the fire bombings of Dresden. Vonnegut’s making a point that we can’t just ignore these bad moments and mistakes because they did happen and that will never change. If we don’t recognize and learn from these mistakes such as the fire bombings, then we’re more likely to repeat our actions which continue an endless cycle of war.

Billy Pilgrim, just before broadcasting his beliefs about the Tralfamadores and time travel over the radio, goes to a book store in downtown New York City. While he’s there he finds another book by Kilgore Trout, the science-fiction writer that he has come to adore. The book is about a man who travels back in time to witness the life of Jesus and see if he had actually died on the cross. While there, he sees Jesus at age twelve, working with his father Joseph to build a “cross to be used in the execution of a rabble-rouser” (202). Even Jesus would produce materials used in the demise of another person if it meant having work and getting paid, but this is a hard idea for us to process because Jesus is a symbol of peace and love. However, this is synonymous to how members of our modern society will build weapons used for war; despite knowing that they’re use will be potentially destructive. In a way, it makes the members of society that produce these materials seem evil and heartless. While they aren’t necessarily evil, it is absurd that as a country we oppose war and yet knowingly continue to create lethal weapons that fuel war.

Billy eventually turns to the end of the book about the time traveler to read the ending where he feels Jesus’ limp bodies’ chest with a stethoscope. He examines that “there wasn’t a sound inside the emaciated chest cavity” and the time traveler confirms that “the son of God was dead” (203). What’s important here is that Jesus died on a cross, a cross similar to that which he built with his father at the age of twelve. Here Vonnegut’s message is clear: if we continue to create weapons for war, then those same weapons which we create will one day be the death of us, just as Jesus was killed on a cross similar to that which he created.

Vonnegut expresses more of his frustrations of war through another Kilgore Trout book that Billy comes across when he meets Trout for the first time. The book is about a robot that commits awful crimes but doesn’t get punished for his actions because he’s programmed to perform the horrible crimes. The book reads that “(Napalm) was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground” (168).The robot is a metaphor for our soldiers that partake in war today. They are responsible for the deaths of fellow human beings but they are unpunished and even praised for their duties. Again, Vonnegut is taking an idea that seems ridiculous, which is that robots could possibly be built to perform the jobs of humans and function in our society, and he’s connecting it to reality. This makes the reader realize that what is reality is also absurdity.

Kurt Vonnegut’s’ opinion of war was obvious; he opposed it. While some of the concepts he illustrates in Slaughter-house Five may seem crazy, he effectively demonstrates their realism in our society today. Vonnegut wasn’t very optimistic about war ever seizing to exist and surely would not be surprised that we are still engaged in war today. But he did seem to believe that it certainly would be possible to prevent war if everyone contentiously objected it and realized its absurdity. As of now though, it doesn’t seem as if war will ever seize but rather will continue to rage on.

Work Cited

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York, New York: Dell Publishing, 1969.