After reading Slaughterhouse Five, I can safely say that Vonnegut played a part in subtly affecting the way I see the world. As I high school student, I often just accepted the idea of free will, having no reason to question it. Slaughterhouse Five gave me the opportunity to dive deeper into this complex debate. For English, I had write about my opinion about this complex debate using the information I have gained from reading Slaughterhouse Five. I thought I would share it with you, because it is a truly fascinating idea to think about. Does free will truly exist, or is it just an illusion?
Slaughterhouse Five: A Duty Dance with Reality
Suspend reality for a moment, and imagine that you are a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II. As you wipe the time-travelling dust from your eyes, you survey your surroundings. You find yourself encircled by a multitude of humans on the brink of death. Disembodied voices of mingling eighteenth-century Germans fill the air. They are discussing who the next victim of the gas chamber should be. That victim is you. You begin to drown yourself in misery. You think to yourself do I really have any control over this, or am I destined to die? Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse Five, experienced the same internal struggle. His experiences in war influenced his opinion concerning free will. Vonnegut had no control over his fate, tethering him to his philosophy that the human perception of conscious control is only an illusion. He uses science to illustrate the fool’s paradise of free will, but while doing so, presents the character with an internal solution to cope with the limitations of one’s will. Vonnegut uses Slaughterhouse Five as a liaison to communicate his views concerning the illusion of free will.
In Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut reveals his beliefs about the existence of free will through science.
In Slaughterhouse Five, understanding the universe scientifically is the ubiquitous obstacle to free will. Due to the scientific laws of time travel, past, present, and the future have already happened. Since Billy Pilgrim became “unstuck in time, he lost control of his life and couldn’t even predict what part of his life he would be living next. But this doesn’t affect the outcome because according to the Tralfamadorians, the order in which events are experienced is insignificant. An individual could never have chosen a different course of action, because his actions are already predetermined. As the narration in Slaughterhouse Five informs us, “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future” (Vonnegut 52). No matter the order in which events are experienced, an individual can never have complete control over his actions. The illusion of free will is just an epitaph to moments in the past where you wish events could have turned out differently, but as Vonnegut demonstrates, there are too many external factors out of your control to truly have free will.
Another way Vonnegut presents a lack of free will is through the Tralfamadorians, who completely and conclusively remove the possibility that people can act freely. In Slaughterhouse Five, the Tralfamadorians have a philosophy that time is set out on a line. According to the aliens, humans travel along that line, but nothing they do changes the events that are predetermined. The Tralfamadorians explain this to Billy with the analogy of one of their test pilots pushing a button that destroys the world. “He always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way” (Vonnegut 101). By stating, “the moment is structured that way”, Vonnegut presents the idea that everything is already written in stone.
However, Vonnegut finds a way for the characters to overcome the limitations of their world by looking within themselves, instead of waiting for an external solution to be presented. Initially, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five appears to be a novel advocating that free will is only an illusion of the human subconscious, but upon further investigation, Slaughterhouse Five provides a solution. The way he accomplishes this to acknowledge the world is a chaotic and meaningless place. Once that has been identified, people can change to accommodate the real world, instead of some false illusion where the world is ordered and makes sense. He never says this is an easy journey though. He often presents an immutable wall of destiny that limits people’s range of free will. For Billy, this is the Battle of Dresden. As a prisoner of war, Billy’s control is revoked and he is basically a puppet for the SS to manipulate. To escape his corrupt reality, Billy invents an internal fantasy – The Tralfamadorians. The Tralfamadorians present Billy with a philosophy that absolves him from the need to try to change his reality. The helps him cope with the brutality surrounding him, because according to the Tralfamadorians, the war was inevitable. While the external forces of destiny, habit, and science restrict human free will to an extent in Vonnegut’s book, he sees hope in the possibility of an internal solution through personal means as a loophole in the restrictions.
Through Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut challenges the reader to partake in a philosophical journey by demonstrating the restriction science presents concerning the illusion of free will. Vonnegut’s personal experience as in war, humanity’s ultimate expression of brutal scientism, validates his viewpoint. As a prisoner of war, Vonnegut had to put his life in someone else’s hands, having no control over his fate. This novel may not provide a concrete answer to this extensive debate, but by reading this novel, one can absorb the idiosyncratic viewpoint of someone how has truly had his free will tested. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is a critique of the culture, cautioning to not rely on the naïve illusion that you control your destiny.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Please comment and follow :) It would mean a lot to me.
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