Madison Casimir
Mrs. Hilliard
AP Literature and Composition Pd 6
6 November 2015
What's the deal with Slaughterhouse V?
Seinfeld was introduced to me through my grandfather’s venomous hatred. Since its premiere, my paternal grandfather has maintained a dangerous and fuming dislike towards it. The mere vibrations of the show’s introductory bass line is enough to anger him and send him on a ten minute long rant about the inane, fickle, and idiotic characters. Out of all the characters, he hates Cosmo Kramer the most. Kramer is my grandfather’s declared nemesis, a bane of his existence. Kramer’s flagrant misuse of his friend’s resources, his ridiculous and unsustainable ideas, and his incredibly exaggerated personality drive my grandfather’s discourse on the evils of Cosmo Kramer. To him, Kramer is a hyperbole, a fake, inflated character that is an insult to his intelligence. Inevitably, he brings up Michael Richards’ racist stand up performance at the Apollo; the one that killed his career. So it goes.
My grandfather detests Seinfeld because it is a show about nothing. It lacks substance, leaves the viewer grasping for meaning and depth. Some take it at face value. It’s a show about nothing. What’s the point in searching for meaning? Others ignore the messages about the selfish abandon of human existence and watch it only for the dry, rude comedy. The same can be said for Slaughterhouse V by Kurt Vonnegut. The simple, artistic prose subverts the anti-war sentiment and leads to a romanticized and rose-hued interpretation of the novel, the protagonist and prevents deeper insight into the character of Billy Pilgrim.
Slaughterhouse V is a beautiful and, often times, ridiculous novel. It is silly, dark, and vastly innovative, but its core stems from the atrocity of the Dresden air raids; the massacre of thousands. Its protagonist, the guileless Billy Pilgrim, is an exaggerated, reckless buffoon created to counter the glorification of the American soldier. Billy is thrown through time by chance and circumstance, having no control over his own life and mind.
Every episode of Seinfeld contains a heaping dose of nihilism coupled with dry humor. Seinfeld has a dark side, but it is known for its sharp punch lines and quick wit. Slaughterhouse V follows this same pattern.The novel does not shy away from grotesque scenes of a visceral or macabre nature, but it does combat the horror with short, eloquent statements like "so it goes." The last three pages of the novel detail the excavation of bodies from the wreckage in Dresden after the bombing. It describes the scent of the bodies, the liquefaction, the rot, and impromptu cremations with flamethrowers, but these pages don't maintain the same punch as "everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" or "how nice- to feel nothing and still get credit for being alive."These phrases are the reason behind the novel's rampant success. It is gorgeous and profound; giving insights about life and humanity, but it dilutes the anti-war message. Vonnegut acknowledges this in the opening chapter saying, "…there would always be wars… they were as easy to stop as glaciers." His argument against war is the dehumanization that it entails, but so much of his novel deals with humanity and the implications of it. These clashing ideas, the absence of humanity and the abundance of it, cause this strange idealized, romanticized fondness that masks the injustices and horrors so vividly described.
Billy, like the infamous Cosmo Kramer, is an exaggeration; a placeholder for something. Something big and vast and utterly idiotic. Billy is not realistic. He is not a hero. He generates empathy by being a weak and feeble individual, barely able to care for himself. Billy is the converse of the propaganda poster soldier, "a filthy flamingo."Billy has no definitive personality; he exists through the eyes of others. In Tralfamadorian captivity, he is viewed as a perfect human specimen and begins to groom himself and exercise regularly, to fit these specifications.At a meeting of the Lions Club, he is voted president and delivers a speech that gets him a standing ovation, but in the presence of fellow P.O.Ws that view him as an idiot and an insult, he can barely speak. And so on.He is relatable in this way as humans exist within a social construct that is constantly shifting and warping personalities to the situation, but he is not realistic. No human being is so completely influenced by the opinions of others.
Is Billy a character or is he a reflection of the situation, of the people? War is stylized as brash, intense, and bold, but Billy Pilgrim is none of these. He represents the human aspect, with each minor character having some similarity to him. Billy is the reality of war, the war "fought by babies…" Billy is the worst case scenario, the soldier who makes it through the horror only to relive it forever. Billy is a character in the conventional sense, a being in a story, but he does not further the plot, does not contribute to the text intentionally. Each of his actions is a response, instinct. The only distinctive intentional decision Billy makes comes when he decides to share his alien discovery with the world and breaks out of a hospital. It is the only time Billy is shown as acting on his own thoughts. Before this, he had been a creature of instinct and habit with no higher level thinking or rationalization abilities. For Billy Pilgrim, fate dictates his entire existence.
My grandfather enjoys intelligent film and literature. He fancies himself a savant of politics and news. But he despises Seinfeld. He has never found any pleasure or warmth in a show about nothing with characters that represent the very notion of nothing. The risk of nothing is that the substance that exists within can be easily overlooked or made into an overly idealistic notion. On page 24, Vonnegut writes, "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." When there is nothing to say, then you can only ever deal in nothingness. Nothingness leads to the profound, but then only the profound is remembered. My grandfather has never read Slaughterhouse V, but I have a suspicion that he would hate it too.