Concept of Time in Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has attempted to express his ideology on the concept of time through his books such as The Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse-Five. In a 1970 New York Times interview, for instance, he states that “nothing in this world is ever final–no one ever ends–we keep on bouncing back and forth in time, we go on and on ad infinitum.” Vonnegut’s ideological contribution to the cyclical history has been illuminated by the ideas of several other time theorists, notably Guy Murchie who follows similar patterns regarding the concept of time in his book, The Music of the Spheres, but fails to explore the possibilities of how one can cherish to spontaneously travel through time. Vonnegut’s theory allows consciousness to grasp multiple events widely separated in space in a single instantaneous perception and experience a progressive interiorization into memory. If applied correctly, this could result in an optimistic worldview which is the basis of Slaughterhouse-Five.

In the opening chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut utilizes the real world as a background for his book: “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true” (SF, Vonnegut, p.1). World War II and its barbaric acts contributed to his personal belief that the destruction of Dresden was not a final act, and, by extension, that death does not represent a final act for all men.  It is this very meaninglessness, futility, and barbarity that Vonnegut wants to either purge from his memory or create a symbol to rationalize. Moving toward the end of the chapter, he discredits the punctual time: “Time would not pass. somebody was playing with the clocks…the second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again…There was nothing I could do about it. As an Earthling, I had to believe whatever clocks said–and calendars” (SF, Vonnegut, p.26). This view of time is exactly the concept that Billy Pilgrim, the novel’s protagonist, rejects by being “unstuck” (SF, Vonnegut , p.28) in time, bouncing back and forth in a simultaneous gap between the past, present, and future.

Vonnegut utilizes the structured moment to point out the determinism and futility of Slaughterhouse-Five. According to the Tralfamadorians, free will does not exist and that Earthlings, as he refers to humans, are the only life form that believes in the concept of such thing. While Billy is in the company of a Tralfamadorian, the unearthly being says “I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will”(SF, Vonnegut, p. 109). During the same conversation, the Tralfamadorian expands on free will by referring to “bugs in amber” (SF, Vonnegut, p.109). The primal attempt to express free will is utterly pointless with regards to the present moment as opposed to the past and future as highly emphasized in the novel. Their account of the end of the universe, for instance, is always the same because “the moment is structured that way” (SF, Vonnegut, p.117). This is the same determinism that destroys Dresden; it is a historical philosophy that saw the destruction of civilians as hastening an end to armed conflict.

Billy Pilgrim’s capability to bounce back and forth in time acquired him a new perspective towards the significance and tragedies of people who insist on living in an irreversible, linear history. He has encountered an overview of life, from the bombing of Dresden in World War II, being abducted by Tralfamadorians to his domestic life as a father, husband, and optometrist. As a result, he exists in an eternal present: “All moments [Billy writes], past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist…It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever” (SF, Vonnegut, p. 27). Vonnegut provides imaginative links to pure inner duration that Billy constantly visits. An idea, event, person, place, or conversation allows Billy to transcend the phenomenal world and enter pure duration. For instance, Billy’s description of the sleeping prisoners and him and his wife in exactly same terms: ”nestled like spoons” (SF, Vonnegut, p. 70-72). This condition elicits a response from Billy’s memory and he “ascends through them to inner duration.”

1. Why are the last words of the novel “poo-tee-weet”? What statement is Vonnegut making by closing his text this way?
2. “And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep” (p. 18) What kind of understanding does this show about time in Slaughterhouse-Five?
3. Why do you think the author chose to tell the story with time-traveling instead of in chronological form?
4. Why is the Tralfamadorian idea of time incompatible with free will?
5. How is free will demonstrated throughout the book?