By Aidan O’Sullivan
The American writer Kurt Vonnegut has been described as an activist, a satirist, a social critic, and a science fiction icon. How true are these claims? More or less.
His most famous work Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death straddles the line between fiction and reality. For Vonnegut, the book was a 2 decade attempt to express his wartime experience in WWII Germany. Its long gestation period is perhaps reflected in its form. The narrator is a WWII veteran telling the story of protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, also a war veteran, who has become unstuck in time, living and reliving various portions of his life continuously. The book is a meta-comedic tale, where the reader is constantly confronted with the absurdity of the narrative. The life of Billy Pilgrim and his interactions with the Alien civilization of the Tralfamodians directly contrasts with the dark experiences of wartime combat.
The book embraces the more cynical alienation that many left-wing writers felt in the post-war period. It takes a dim view of nationalism, whether German, American, or otherwise. While the book has been described by Vonnegut as a decade long attempt to describe the effects of his time in combat in Germany, it was published during the midst of the Vietnam war. It became a star text for activists with Vonnegut himself being an ardent critic of the war.
It’s true that Vonnegut is not the most lyrical or prosaic of writers. There are no long romantic passages or overly enrapturing literary phrases, but the book’s plainness lends itself towards its themes. Primarily, trauma. The numb aching depersonalisation that envelops the protagonist Billy Pilgrim as he is lost in time is a direct attempt to challenge war narratives which emphasise a macho glorification of war.
Pilgrim, if you hadn’t yet guessed, is on a journey, and as the alternative title makes clear ‘The Children’s Crusade,’ Vonnegut views him and his fellow soldiers as naive young men trapped in an ideological war not of their creation. The Children’s crusade refers to a popular youth movement in Western Europe to establish a kingdom in Jerusalem.
The book also zeroes in on an often critiqued event of WWII, specifically that of the bombing of Dresden. While now reportedly far less in casualties, it was one of the most controversial acts of the Allies, with mass civilian German casualties. Its necessity is at times still debated today. Vonnegut experienced the bombing first hand as a combatant and was forever scarred by the experience. The book’s strength is in its fractured subjective take on trauma, which sees Pilgrim become completely desensitised to war.
Partly, its subjectivity is where its drawbacks become clearer if one is looking to understand 60s and 70s America better. While clearly the book is an attempt to critique the glorification of war it’s important to remember that this does not necessarily make it any more truthful or historically accurate. Despite, perhaps recent consensus or depictions of Vietnam, the war for most of its duration garnered support from large swathes of the population. This is what Nixon, in the face of anti-war protests, referred to as his ‘silent majority.’ He believed that most Americans were not reflective of the typical anti-war protester. He was right.
The book’s popularity if anything touches on a bigger desire and change right across American society. The absurdism of Vonnegut which chimes so closely with the ridiculousness and irrationality of military bureaucracy clearly resonates with a much broader range of Americans than simply those who are anti-war.
While the writing may be characteristically straightforward, readers should stick with the book for its edifying themes, its comedic absurdity and its ability to use fictional narratives to illuminate hard hitting truths about war.