WRLB/Bookclub Selection August 2010: Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

“All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle.

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First off, you should know Kurt Vonnegut NEVER gave that MIT commencement speech [“Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of 1997:  Wear Sunscreen”] that floated all over the Internet. He didn’t WRITE it either. However, his wife thought it was so  hilarious (because it sounded so much like him), she forwarded it to all their friends.

Because his voice was that distinctive. He was the 20th century equivalent of Mark Twain.

As a novelist, he’s been described as absurdist, irreverent, and a master of sci-fi, satire and black comedy.  He didn’t like religion. He didn’t like technology. He REALLY didn’t like George W. Bush [OR John Kerry]. He was an atheist yet referenced the Beatitudes as informing his own outlook as a humanist.  He was anti-war yet publicly said he’s proud he was a soldier in WWII. He was popular yet controversial, successful yet “counter-culture,” opinionated yet never preachy. He straddled fences, crossed boundaries, ruffled feathers and never compromised.

Above it all, however, Kurt Vonnegut was just a frickin’ awesome storyteller.

I’m just gonna say it: IMHO, Kurt Vonnegut was one probably one of the coolest humans to ever walk this Earth.

[**FULL biographical info at bottom of post.]

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.” — Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) tells the story of “Kurt Vonnegut,” the narrator, as he tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, who survived the Allied bombing of Dresden as a POW while locked in a slaughterhouse with a few fellow POWs. Billy becomes “unstuck in time,” and bounces around his own life’s time line – past, present and future – throughout the novel.  Along the way Billy is captured and studied by an alien race fascinated by the human concept of “free will” and preoccupation with death.

It’s not hard to see how Vonnegut’s novel is referenced on LOST. The “non-linear” story telling, the “time travel” element of character development, the debate of Fate v. Free Will – all are very important elements of storytelling used by Team LOST.

The question is: WHY?

To answer that question, we need to ask another:  What does the WAY Vonnegut tells the story in Slaughterhouse-Five tell us about the story? What is this story actually about?

To do this, we need CONTEXT.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:  Allied Bombing of Dresden

Use to be, if you and I were at war, and I wanted to destroy a target behind enemy (your) lines, like a gun factory, my guys had to fight through your guys on the ground to get to it.  However, now, with the advent of military air power, I can fly over your guys and bomb it.

Unfortunately, my target is surrounded by your civilians, and targeting civilians is Not Cool.

So what should I do? If I am the Allies in WWII, I institute a policy of warfare that tries to prevent collateral damage: I choose a specific military target and bomb it as accurately as I can, and I don’t try to bomb anything but specific targets. I bomb anywhere I think your guys are and anything on the ground that might be helping your guys kill my guys.

Dresden: Pre-Bombing

In 1940, the only way for me to do this is to make bomb runs during the day because the only way to drop a bomb on a specific target was to fly over it, SEE it from the air (by looking down through the bottom of my airplane) and then release my bombs accordingly. If I hit civilians, I would not be happy about it, but at least I could say I wasn’t gunning for them.

Problem: If I send my bombers during the day, your guys on the ground and in the air can hear and see them coming. This gives you plenty of time to deploy your anti-aircraft defenses. Also, since my bombers are actively trying to hit a specific target, they have to fly within range of your defenses to be accurate. AND since figuring out which specific targets I’m bombing is not very difficult for you, you are able to strengthen your defenses strategically.  Soon, every bombing raid I launch costs me lots of airplanes (when you shoot them out of the sky).  Replacement airplanes take a long time to build and cost big bucks (and I’m outta time and money).

In a word, I am screwed.

Since I can’t just stop bombing targets that help your guys kill my guys (cuz you’ll end up killing  more of my guys that way), I have to come up with a new plan. If I drop bombs at night, the cover of darkness helps protect my air strike from your defenses (saving me time and money).  However, since I can’t hit a specific target in the dark (cuz I can’t see it from my airplane), the only glimmer of hope of I have of hitting my target is bombing a huge section of your turf, flying away and crossing my fingers that I blew up what I needed to.

Dresden: Post-Bombing (1945)

This military strategy, known as area bombing  (targeting entire cities and towns for bombing instead of specific military targets), was introduced to the Allied war plan in 1940 by Arthur Harris, the new Big Cheese of The Allied Bombing Plan at the time. The Allies were taking huge losses in the air. They had to decide: bomb at night and kill innocent civilians on purpose or stop bombing all together and mostly likely lose the war. [This means Hitler would win. That’s a BAD thing.]

According to my local military historian (the one I live with), area bombing was justified as a legitimate means of warfare (read: not evil) because 1) civilians were feeding the war machine anyway [Therefore, there are no “non-combatants”], and 2) the Germans were already doing it.

The preferred method of area bombing was “fire bombing.”  A squadron of RAF planes would fly over a chosen area (a LARGE chosen area) at night and basically carpet bomb it with large explosives wrapped with incendiary devices (usually rods of phosphorous, I’m told).  The first would cause maximum damage; the second would light all the damage on fire. Then U.S. planes bombed during the day over the next few days (preventing any enemy repair efforts).

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Dresden: Post-Bombing

Obviously, when you bomb an entire city and light it on fire, everyone in that city who can’t find appropriate shelter dies/incinerates. However, when you bomb an entire city and light it on fire in certain conditions, you might get lucky and create what’s called a “firestorm.”

Think of gas like from a gas stove. If you leave the gas on your stove too long while you’re trying to light it, when you do light it, there’s a flash – all of the fumes in the air light up, too.

A firestorm works the same way as the gas on your stove. Once the incendiary hits ground and catches fire, the fire it creates is so hot and powerful it burns an enormous amount of oxygen (from the air) in a very short time. The fire creates a powerful upward suction, like a windstorm, along the ground — a hurricane force windstorm, btw – that gobbles up every molecule of oxygen in the air — including the air in the lungs of people lucky enough to have escaped the initial bombing.

That’s right. Peeps untouched by the bombing died anyway. They suffocated when the oxygen disappeared from the air (when their lungs burned from the inside out). The only way to survive was to be in some kind of underground shelter with smoke-tight doors that prevented the suction effect from reaching you.

The Allies first created a firestorm when they area/fire bombed the German city of Hamburg (July 1943).  The firestorm was an accident. However, once they realized what they’d done and how effective it was, the Allies tried, and succeeded, in implementing the firestorm effect on the city of Cologne and on the city of Dresden (February 1945), where our buddy Kurt was being held by the Germans as a prisoner of war.

This is what Kurt saw on the streets of Dresden.

In a slaughterhouse. Underground. With smoke-tight doors.

The U.S. Air Force bombed Dresden for an additional two days.  When Kurt and his buddies emerged from their basement meat locker, the entire city was destroyed, and over 100,000 civilians were dead. Men, women, children — everyone.

The Germans used their POWs, including Kurt, to help clean up the mess. He spent the next few weeks digging corpses out of the rubble and dumping them into huge funeral pyres.

What makes the bombing of Dresden so much more disturbing is that, in the grand scheme of things, it was completely unnecessary and accomplished nothing. [Dresden was not a military or industrially heavy target.  Also, the bombing took place after the writing was on the wall for the Germans. Hitler committed suicide April 30, 1945, and Germany and Italy officially surrendered May 8.]

“Crazy people don’t realize they’re going crazy. They think they’re getting saner.”– Locke to Jack in “White Rabbit.”

Original Question: What does the WAY Vonnegut tells the story in Slaughterhouse-Five tell us about the story? What is this story actually about?

That’s for you to answer as we go forward this month. [You didn't think I was just gonna TELL you, did you? ]

While you are thinking over this question consider the following: Vonnegut’s self-description at the beginning of the book compared to the blunt-force reality of what that description means.

What it says:

Kurt Vonnegut

A fourth generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod [and smoking too much], who, as an American Infantry scout, hors de combat, as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, “the Florence of the Elbe,” a long time ago, and survived to tell the tale.

This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of  tales of the planet of Tralfamadore, where flying saucers come from.

Peace.”

What it means:

When Kurt climbed out of his accidental fire-bomb shelter, he spent the next few weeks digging out corpses and hauling them into piles for disposal (burning).

THIS is what he “witnessed”

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NOTES:

*FYI: America firestormed Toyko in 1945 [a la Charles LeMay] killing an estimated 100,000 people. According to my historian, the devastation was so complete, the Japanese didn’t believe that Hiroshima was hit by a nuclear bomb at first because IT DIDN’T DO AS MUCH INITIAL DAMAGE as the firestorming of Tokyo.

**All About Kurt:

• Born in Indianapolis, IN.
• His parents spoke German but didn’t teach him because Germans were not the most popular peeps after WWI.
• Vonnegut’s father [much like William Goldman’s] pressured him to study chemistry at Cornell University [even though it was pretty darn clear he was a writer].
• In 1942, he quit college and joined the army [he was failing all his chemistry courses anyway].
• His mom committed suicide in 1944 with sleeping pills [she was most likely schizophrenic].
• On December 14, 1944, he was captured by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge and sent to POW work camp in Dresden. He survived when Allied Forces firebombed Dresden February of 1945.
• After the war, he got married and tried to get an M.A. in anthropology [U of Chicago rejected his thesis and never granted him the degree].
• He worked as a police reporter, a publicist (at General Electric) until his writing made a little money. Then he worked as an English teacher, ad man and started a car dealership [Saab] which failed.
• He and the wife raised seven children. They had three of their own. They adopted three of his sister’s children [she died of cancer a few days after her husband died in a train accident]. Later, they adopted a little girl.
• In 1972, his son Mark was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
• In 1984, he attempted suicide [booze and pills].
• In 2004, his cigarette accidentally caught his townhouse on fire while he was watching the Super Bowl [He called his unfiltered, heavy smoking “a classier way to commit suicide.”].
• He got tired of writing novels and became an artist in 1997. However, he wrote social commentary up until his death.
• In 2007, he fell in his home and suffered head trauma that killed him. He was 84.

References:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/slaughter/

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWdresden.htm

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Kurt_Vonnegut/

http://www.nndb.com/people/928/000022862/

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1557035/20070412/story.jhtml

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/28/style/off-season-with-kurt-vonnegut-no-manual-for-life-as-a-living-classic.html?scp=52&sq=&pagewanted=2