Slaughterhouse Five Reaction

I know the response to Vonnegut has been overwhelmingly negative, but I’m going to go against the grain in this post, at least a little bit. I’d call my reading experience neutral. Like anything, there was some good and there was some bad.

Let’s start with the good. Vonnegut captured my attention. His writing was clear and I was able to imagine Billy Pilgrim in each of the scenarios depicted by Vonnegut. I still find amusement in the idea of him with a fur vest and shiny army boots. What a clown. The structure and organization of the story was key to my reading experience. At first, I must admit, I was a puzzled and a little bitter about being thrown for a loop, but I came to realize that the novel’s organization is in fact one of Vonnegut’s literary tools. The more I thought about it, the clearer it became: Vonnegut is making the point in a very literal sense that there is nothing intelligible to say about a massacre. Vonnegut has set out to describe Dresden, but has come to realize that nothing can be said. Perhaps the clearest indication of this is the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five:

           

This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this:

            Listen:

            Billy Pilgram has come unstuck in time.

            It ends like this:

            Poo-tee-weet?

"Poo-tee-weet?", the birds often ask throughout Slaughterhouse Five. This senseless question further drives home the point that nothing sensible can be said about Dresden.

On to the negatives of Slaughterhouse Five we go. The largest source of frustration was Billy Pilgrim. He was helpless, self-defeated, spineless and every other miserable adjective. I was waiting the entire novel for Billy Pilgrim to stand up for himself. All I wanted was a couple seconds of valor and heart. We never got that. We didn't even get anything close to that. All in all, I struggled to get behind such a feeble protagonist. This may not seem like a serious setback, but it severely detracted from my reading experience. Moreover, Slaughterhouse Five didn't really go anywhere. The stories were cyclical and the entire novel seemed to be treading water, partly the result of Billy Pilgrim's inability to take action. I understand that the novel's lack of progress is an extension of Vonnegut's theme, but I would have liked a little more movement.