Every so often you read a book, a book that takes everything you thought created an excellent novel and tears it to pieces; it then sets it on fire and throws it out the window in a display of pure individual brilliance. That is how I felt when I read this jumbled and absurd, yet fantastic, novel.

The book has no structure or at the very least a perceivable one: it’s all over the place. But, it works so well. It cements the book’s message and purpose underlining its meaning. Indeed, this book is an anti-war novel, which is asserted (in part) through its random and confusing organisation. The story is “jumbled and jangled” such as the meaning of war. It appears pointless to the reader, again alluding to the meaning of war. It also suggests that after the war a soldier’s life is in ruins and has no clear direction, which can be seen with the sad case of Billy Pilgrim. So it goes.

Billy Pilgrim is a poor tortured soul who after the fire-bombing of Dresden is in a state of flux. His mind cannot remain in the present and darts back and forth in time like the narrative. He was never the most assertive of men, and after the war became a shadow of his already meek self. The war has left him delusional, which is manifested by his abduction by aliens. This may or may not have happened. Vonnegut leaves it up to the reader to decide. What decision they make effects what genre the novel belongs to.

Is it science fiction?

If Billy was abducted by aliens then this is sci-fi, but if it is a figment of his imagination then this becomes something much deeper. It’s up to the reader how they interpret it, but I personally believe that he wasn’t abducted. I think he made it up, unconsciously, as a coping strategy for the effects of war, and that the author has used it as a tool to raise questions of the futility of free will, but more importantly to further establish the anti-war theme.

Vonnegut draws on a multitude of sources to establish this further, such as the presidential address of Truman. He ironically suggests that the A-bomb, whilst devastating, is no worse than ordinary war; he points out the fact that the fire-bombing of Dresden killed more than the nuking of Hiroshima. Through this he uses Billy Pilgrim’s life as a metaphor for what war for the effects of war on the human state.

So it goes.

Vonnegut himself is a character within the narrative as the life of Billy Pilgrim is, in part, an autobiographical statement. The narrator addresses the reader and informs them of this. He tells them that this all happened more or less. This establishes the black humour towards war and the inconsequential deaths of those that are in it. Hence the motif “so it goes” at each, and every, mention of death whether large or small. He ends the book on the line “poo-te-weet.” He even tells the reader he is going to do this, but at the same time demonstrates that there is nothing intelligible to be said about war.

I warn you, if you’ve not read this, it is one of the most bizarre books you will ever read. The main character time travels, in his mind, and has no real present state. The narrative initially appears random and completely confusing. But, once you reach the end you’ll see this book for what it is: the most individual, and unique, statement against war that will ever be written.

_________________________________

You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
__________________________________

This book is an absolute masterpiece and it makes it clear in every single sentence. I think it is best to go into it without knowing too much about the plot. You just got to take it as it comes, so to say.

Before reading, I was worried that I might have trouble with the writing style. English isn't my first language and the older a book is, the more trouble I seem to have with the writing (because of obsolete words, unusual sentence structures, ect.). However, my worry was totally for nothing in this case. I found the entire book very easy to read (which is even more surprising considering the heavy topics that get dealt with). I also loved how there were many little passages and repetitions of certain phrases. It seemed fitting somehow.

I would have never guessed that the blend of a war story with Science Fiction could work so well! It gives it so much room for analysing and interpretation.
Honestly, I could write a thousand more reasons why I loved this book, but in the end I would just repeat myself, because I seriously just loved every.single.little.thing! I highly recommend everyone to give it a shot.

Tot ce-am putut reciti ieri și în dimineața asta a fost, bineînțeles, Abatorul cinci. Așa merg lucrurile, So it goes.

Romanul s-a publicat mai întîi în 1969 la Delacorte Press (Dell Publishing). A fost lăudat. Inclusiv în The New York Times din 31 martie 1969. Nominalizat la două premii importante: Nebula Award și Hugo Award. N-a luat, firește, nici unul. Așa merg lucrurile, So it goes. Ursula K. Le Guin a fost socotită de critici o prozatoare mai importantă decît Vonnegut.

În sintagme ce s-au banalizat de mult, romanul reprezintă o „satiră”, o „comedie neagră”, ceea ce și este. Două voci (a Naratorului și a lui Billy Pilgrim) spun una și aceeași poveste: bombardarea de către armatele aliate a Dresdei (13 - 15 februarie 1945) și consecințele ei (terestre și mintale).

Un pasaj vestit:

„Billy agăţase pe unul din pereţii cabinetului său textul înrămat al unei rugăciuni, care exprima metoda sa de supravieţuire, în ciuda faptului că el unul nu punea mare preţ pe viaţă… Şi iată ce scria acolo:
Să-mi dea Domnul
puterea de-a accepta ce nu pot schimba,
curajul de-a schimba ce pot şi
înţelepciunea de-a pricepe ce pot şi ce nu pot.
Printre lucrurile pe care Billy Pilgrim nu le putea schimba se numărau trecutul, prezentul şi viitorul”.

A stunning piece of science-fiction audaciously centred around the Allied fire bombing of Dresden at the end of World War II. Slaughterhouse five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim as he time travels back and forth within his own lifetime, a life forever marked and tainted by his experience of being a POW and then being stationed in Dresden at the time of the fire bombing. A postmodern, meta-fictional satirical novel, that has often been censored (especially in the United States) for being seen to be so laid back about homosexuality and being perceived as being disrespectful to American soldiery. A true modern classic. 7 out of 12

2010 read

It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

Somehow, I had never read Slaughterhouse-Five. Well, it’s a classic for a reason.

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time. He travels backwards and forwards to various points in his life, trying to make sense of what happened to him in World War 2, up to and including witnessing the firebombing of Dresden. The book is wonderfully jumbled, leaving the reader as uncertain as Billy about the meaning and connection of the various threads of his life. Moving and gripping, Slaughterhouse-Five is an amazing experience. An absolute must read.

Life can be so unutterably sad.

That in a nutshell was my early life; and Kurt Vonnegut’s life.

And young Billy’s too.

But Vonnegut was American, and so was I (by birth at least) - and so is Billy Pilgrim.

And Americans always jazz up their sadness.

And that’s what they all did to get themselves through the War. Big Bands became the perfect anodyne to stark terror.

And zany behaviour - my own, Vonnegut’s and Billy’s - became the preferred personal way for American bullied innocents to jazz up their sadness.
***

Living in a meat cooler under a city while your country is Decimating that city can only leave a traumatic scar.

BIG TIME.

So you jazz it up big time yourself - you start to prefer your mini-vacations on Trafalmador over more mundane hot spots.

Like, for example, foxholes.

So it goes, with Kurt and Billy, and me, and with cringing, bullied kids like us EVERYWHERE. Because where there is carrion like us there the crows gather. And crows don’t even chew you before swallowing.

And they have gizzards to take care of your bones.

You know, had Kurt Vonnegut been a believer he might have considerably mollified his trauma.

Or even reading books by and about declared Aspies, like I do now, may have helped do the trick.

But alas, dear Kurt, back then they shot first and asked questions later.

If they’d have heard you were an Aspie back then they would have leered and just told you to keep marching and shut up.

No wonder their Jazz was in as much demand as a good, stiff drink back then.

For you too, Kurt - you picked up their old-time jazzy zaniness...

And just marched on into doomed Dresden -

Dreaming of long-lost Tralfamador.

I read this book first in 1999 when my grandfather passed away. It was a bit of a coincidence as his funeral occurred between a Primate Anatomy exam and a paper for my Experimental Fiction class on Slaughterhouse Five. I was frantically trying to remember the names of all kinds of bones when I picked this up in the other hand and tried to wrap my head around it.


Basically, Vonnegut has written the only Tralfamadorian novel I can think of. These beings, most undoubtedly inspired in Billy Pilgrim's head by the scattered science fiction plots of Kilgore Trout, experience time as a continuum that is constantly occurring...and when they look at time, even though in their version of history, the world is in a constant state of being destroyed for example, they choose to see the things that make them happy...the good moments.

What Billy learns from these creatures is that each traumatic event that has happened in his life fits very precisely into a state of meticulous nature. It has always happened and always will happen and so it goes (on and on and on). What Billy Pilgrim truly experiences over and over in his life is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He exists throughout his memories traveling back and forth with the knowledge of what will happen and how precise it all is. Dresden is bombed in every moment and his friend Derby is put in front of a firing squad. At every second, he is the only survivor of a plane wreck, he is getting married, and he is fighting a Children's Crusade. It's the only way he can look at the despair that has happened and make sense of it.

When my grandfather died and I read this, I felt as if it was just what I needed because I could escape back into time and remember the good memories of my grandfather...if they existed (even if in some fourth dimension) then he was just as dead as he was alive and eating peanut butter chocolate ice cream. At the same time my grandfather had a heart attack, I was watching him play cards with my grandma at the kitchen table. But which one to think of? Well, that was easy. Death can't be prevented and so it goes but you can always try to change which moment you live in. It's a little bit different than a memory and if you go far into it, you'll end up like Billy Pilgrim, which is to say, you will go insane because the rest of the world sees time as linear and counts seconds and minutes and hours.

Once and awhile, it doesn't hurt. I re-read this again on the plane rides home and back before and after my grandmother's funeral on Monday and last night. My grandma was a strong and intelligent woman and she always read everything she saw. My recent memories of my grandmother were of her at the holidays. She always had her mind but her physical condition had deteriorated and she was dependent on oxygen. It made me sad to think of her like this a bit.

It's really hard for me to think that my grandma is no more but then I tell myself...well, it's silly for me to keep crying on and on about this. My grandma is right now reading at 4am in her living room chair and I am a child creeping down the stairs hoping she's still up. She is telling me that one day I'll come around and like green onions. She is reminding me to keep my feet off of the davenport and about being "tickled" by something. She lives in a jungle of houseplants and watches musicals all of the time, always pointing out when some distant relative of mine appears briefly in The Greatest Show on Earth. My grandma can't be dead and be doing all of those things, can she? It doesn't make sense. She will always be alive in some moments just like I will always be seven and nine and twenty eight and perhaps past thirty and forty. So, she'll always be here.

I just wish I could dream about her.

(Book 375 from 1001 books) - Slaughterhouse-Five = The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut about the World War II experiences and journeys through time of Billy Pilgrim, from his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant, to postwar and early years. It is generally recognized as Vonnegut's most influential and popular work. A central event is Pilgrim's surviving the Allies' firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner-of-war. This was an event in Vonnegut's own life, and the novel is considered semi-autobiographical.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نوزدهم ماه می سال2011میلادی

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «سلاخ‌خانه شماره پنج»؛ نویسنده: کورت ونه‌گات؛ انتشاراتیها: (روشنگران و مطالعات زنان)؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش نوزدهم ماه می سال2011میلادی

عنوان: سلاخ خانه شماره پنج؛ نویسنده: کورت ونه گات؛ مترجم: علی اصغر بهرامی، تهران، نشر روشنگران، سال1372؛ در263ص؛ چاپ دیگر سال1380؛ چاپ بعدی سال1381؛ شابک9646751490؛ چاپ ششم سال1389؛ موضوع: جنگ جهانگیر دوم - از سال1939میلادی تا سال1945میلادی از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م

کورت ونه گات: (زادروز: یازدهم ماه نوامبر سال1922میلادی، ایندیاناپولیس، ایالت ایندیانا، درگذشت: روز یازدهم ماه آوریل سال2007میلادی) در شهر «نیویورک، ایالت نیویورک»؛ ملیت: آمریکایی؛ پیشه: نویسنده از سال1950میلادی تا سال2005میلادی؛ همسران: «جین مری کاکس» از سال1945میلادی تا سال1971میلادی، «جیل کرمنتز از سال1979میلادی تا سال2007میلادی)، دارای چهار فرزند؛ والدین: «کورت وانگات سینیور، ادیت لیبر»؛

آثار: رمان‌ها: ‍«پیانوی خودنواز (سال1952میلادی)»، «آژیرهای هیولا (سال1959میلادی)»، «شب مادر (سال1961میلادی)»، «گهواره گربه (سال1963میلادی)»، «خدا شما را حفظ کند، آقای رزواتر (سال1965میلادی)»، «سلاخ‌خانه شماره پنج (سال1969میلادی)»، «صبحانه قهرمانان (سال1973میلادی)»، «اسلپ استیک (سال1976میلادی)»، «محبوس (سال1979میلادی)»، «مجمع الجزایر گالاپاگوس (سال1985میلادی)»، «ریش آبی (سال1987میلادی)»، «زمان لرزه (سال1997میلادی)»، «مرد بی‌وطن (سال2005میلادی)». مجموعه داستان‌ها: «قناری در خانه گربه (سال1961میلادی)»، «به خانه میمون خوش آمدید (سال1967میلادی)»، «انفیه ­دان باگومبو (سال1999میلادی)»، «خدا شما را حفظ کند، دکتر کورکیان (سال1999میلادی)»، «جوجو را نیگا (سال2009میلادی)». نمایش‌نامه: «تولدت مبارک وندا جون (سال1971میلادی)».؛

کورت وانگات جونیور، در رشته ی زیست‌ شیمی، از دانشگاه «کورنل» فارغ‌ التحصیل شدند، در ارتش نام‌نویسی کردند، و ایشان را برای نبرد در جنگ جهانی دوم به «اروپا» فرستادند؛ ایشان بسیار زود به دست نیروهای «آلمانی» اسیر، و در «درسدن» زندانی گردیدند، پس از پایان جنگ و بازگشت به «ایالات متحده آمریکا»، در «دانشگاه شیکاگو» به آموزش «مردم‌شناسی» پرداختند، و سپس به عنوان تبلیغات‌چی در شرکت «جنرال الکتریک» دلمشغول به کار شدند، تا سال1951میلادی که با پایان یافتن انتشار نخستین کتاب ایشان «پیانوی خودکار»، کار پیشین خویش را ترک کردند و تمام‌ وقت دلمشغول نویسندگی شدند؛ آثار ایشان ترکیبی از طنز سیاه، در مایه‌ های علمی‌ - خیالی ه­ستند؛

از آثار ایشان: «گهواره گربه»، «سلاخ‌خانه شماره پنج» و «صبحانه قهرمانان» بیشتر مورد ستایش قرار گرفته‌ اند.؛ در سال1999میلادی آستروئید یا سیارک شماره25399، را، برای بزرگداشت ایشان «ونه گات» نامیدند

چکیده این داستان: «بیلی پیلگریم»، قهرمان داستان، در زمان خدمت خود در آرتش «آمریکا» در جنگ جهانگیر دوم، قابلیت حرکت در زمان را پیدا می‌کند، و از آن لحظه به‌ طور همزمان در زمین، و در یک سیاره ی دور، به نام «ترالفامادور»، زندگی خویش را پی می‌گیرد؛ او به فلسفه سرنوشت «ترالفامادور»ی ها باور پیدا می‌کند؛ آنها قادر به دیدن محیط خود در چهار بعد هستند؛ بنابراین از همه ی رخدادهای بگذشته و آینده باخبر هستند؛ واکنش او به رخدادهای ناخوشایندی که رخ می‌دهد، گفتن این جمله است: «بله! رسم روزگار چنین است.»؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 31/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 07/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/02/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

BOW DOWN, BITCHES.

Why do I love this book? I love it because of the villains. Not just the obviously villainous Paul Lazzaro--although he's one of the great villains of modern fiction. During the hellishness of war all he can think about is his own petty need to avenge slights done to him--but the larger, less obvious villains in this book: the Tralfamdorians. They’re not the type of villainous space aliens you see in most science fiction, arriving in flying saucers and hell bent on enslaving humanity, only to be stopped by some intrepid space cadet. (Vonnegut hated being categorized as "science fiction" because most science fiction at the time was just juvenile male wish fulfillment, which he clearly was not interested in. In fact he kind of satirizes that kind of thing in this book.) His aliens are much more fascinating than that.
The Tralfamdorians aren't much interested in Jesus Christ's message of universal love. They're more interested in the message of Charles Darwin, that beings die to improve the species. (At least that's the message as they see it. Like I said they're villains.) To them the idea of free will is silly. (Well, villains can be right sometimes.) The world is structured in a way that everything that happens is meant to happen and there's nothing we can do about it. Concern for human feelings is useless and therefore we shouldn't give a second thought to massacres and slaughter. Just say "and so it goes," and move on. This was certainly the feeling of the Nazis with their belief in the destiny of the everlasting Reich (or whatever the phrase is,) and the Communists with their belief that the road to the future must be built on the corpses of the present. (Stalin’s most famous saying—"One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic.")
To Billy--like Vonnegut, a witness to the slaughter at Dresden--they provide an escape. They put him in an enclosure where all his needs, material and sexual, are met and where he is protected from the poisonous gas outside. To mankind their philosophy provides an escape from moral responsibility.
In the first chapter of the book Vonnegut tells his friend he is writing an anti-war book. His friend responds that he "might as well write an anti-glacier book," and Vonnegut kind of agrees with him. Wars, like glaciers, can’t be stopped. And yet he wrote the book anyway. Yes, death is inevitable, but to Vonnegut humanity is also worth mourning. What happened to Edgar Derby is worth relating, and we should be moved by it. Vonnegut is not satisfied to sum up Edgar’s death with the phrase, "and so it goes." I love this book because Vonnegut conjures up this fascinating alien race with a view of life that provides an opportunity for escape, but then punctures the illusion by showing that it is as facile as it is attractive.

The Florence of the Elbe

Kurt Vonnegut tells us in an epigraph, “This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace.”

This much is true. Stylistically, it’s unique. It jumps all over the place, not to mention all over time.

The story-telling is cumulative and simultaneous, rather than linear and sequential.

Maybe this is the only appropriate way to tell a story about the firebombing of the open city, Dresden, “the Florence of the Elbe”, in which up to 135,000 Hansels and Gretels (mostly civilians) lost their lives or had them taken away (wiki records that the figure has been revised to 25,000).

The “historian” David Irving seemed to promote the higher figure, not out of sympathy with the civilians, but in an attempt to establish a moral equivalence with the Holocaust. Even the facts are schizophrenic.

However, the precise number is not really relevant to the morality of the act. It was still a horror, whether or not the motive was to end the war and reduce further killing.




Dresden Frauenkirche after the bombing


"God Willing"

The War was a playground where the evil in humanity was unleashed. Religious people are entitled to ask, where was God?

God doesn’t seem to be present in Vonnegut’s narrative. Perhaps all that is left of him is the aside, “Somewhere, a big dog barked.”

If you believe that God exists, was he sidelined in the theatre of war? Did he become all bark, and no bite?

On the other hand, if God doesn’t exist, or he remains stolidly neutral, then what hope is there that good will prevail over evil?

Only, perhaps, that good people will somehow prevail over bad people. Or that bad acts (including war crimes) will be punished according to law.

"Accident Will"

Vonnegut’s novel seems to acknowledge the horror, while at the same time revealing some reason for optimism.

In a delightful malapropism, the German cab driver, Gerhard Muller, to whom the novel is dedicated, says, "I hope that we'll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if the accident will."

Instead of meeting again, “God willing”, he struggles for a suitable non-theistic alternative. If "Fate permitting" is too theistic or determinist, what can you call it, other than [an] “accident”? If there is nobody who can mean it to happen, how can it be meant to happen?

Billy Pilgrim's Progress

Throughout the novel, the chief protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, a Joe Average, makes some sort of progress of his own, beyond Dresden and the War. He comes to realise that real life smells like both “mustard gas and roses”.

Vonnegut relies on the devices of science fiction as the foundation of his story and as the basis for hope.

It’s almost as if there is a continuum of science, science fiction, fantasy, imagination, superstition and religion from which we have to construct our personal, social, spiritual and literary beliefs and styles.

Vonnegut positions “Slaughterhouse Five” all over this continuum as telegrams about “flying saucers, the negligibility of death and the true nature of time.”

Unstuck in Time

Even before the bombing, Billy Pilgrim comes “unstuck in time.”

Not only does this describe his experience of the world, it bonds him with the Tralfamadorians who kidnap him and return him by flying saucer to a zoo on their planet.

During these segments, the novel takes on the tone of “Gulliver’s Travels”, only it’s more apparent that Billy is learning about himself and humanity by observing and listening to the Tralfamadorians.

The big difference is the comprehension of time. For Tralfamadorians, time doesn’t pass, it doesn’t cease, it is never gone. It remains, it stays, in perpetuity, only it is perpetuated both forward and backwards:

"When a person dies, he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past...all moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist...

"It is just an illusion...that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.

"When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.

"Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes.’”

"So It Goes"

When understood in this context, the expression “So it goes” isn’t just resignation or acceptance of death, it’s actually a celebration of life.

Death doesn’t mean that you have ceased to live. It just means that, in one moment out of many (albeit they are all compressed or sublated into the one moment), you no longer exist, but you still exist in all of the others.

Interestingly, Vonnegut adds to this passage the words “And so on”. Again, it’s a continuum. We’re somewhere on it, we keep on and we keep going on.

Free Billy

When time is collapsed on itself, there is no before and after, and therefore no cause and effect:

"All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all...bugs in amber.”

Billy Pilgrim adheres to a naïve belief in Free Will, which is evidenced by the framed prayer on his office wall:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference."

The Tralfamadorians consider this amusing, because Earth is the only place in the universe that believes in Free Will.

Vonnegut reveals:

"Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”

Determinism

Vonnegut’s view of Determinism is more problematic.

The absence of cause and effect is related to his explanation of time:

"Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? Well, here we are...trapped in the moment. There is no why.”

I wonder whether, ironically, this means that Billy Pilgrim was both stuck and unstuck in time!

If there is only one moment, albeit perpetual, the question “why” doesn’t arise. Life is pure existence. It just is. It needn’t be any more complicated than that.

It’s not so much that what is happening or what has happened has been determined from outside.

It’s more that it has already happened, and evidence of its occurrence is contained or preserved in the recorded moment (the amber).

We can’t change the record, because it’s a document, simultaneously, of the coexistence of what humans have come to think of separately as the past, present and future.

What Remains to Be Done?

The Tralfamadorians do say that “every creature and plant in the universe is a machine.”

This is obviously consistent with a level of Determinism, but it’s equally consistent with the view that we have already performed or done everything that could be expected of us.

It’s already happened and it can’t be changed. Even the end of the world, which was caused when somebody presses a button. Billy asks why they can’t stop it being pressed:

"He always pressed it and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way.”

It’s not so much the Determinism, as the nature of Time.

Still, the question remains, is Gerhard’s world of peace and freedom possible? Is there anything we can do about it? Will it happen of its own accord? Has it already happened? Has it already been preserved in amber?

If our attempts to do good might have no effect, should we at least avoid doing evil?

Brief, Urgent Messages in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner

It turns out that the Tralfamadorians have books, “brief clumps of symbols separated by stars”.

"Slaughterhouse Five” is somewhat modeled on them. Perhaps the answers to the above questions are in these books?

"…each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message - describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other.

"There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep.

"There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects.

"What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”

If we humans could think of, and enjoy, life, not just books, as many marvelous moments, all beautiful and surprising and deep, then perhaps there would be no evil. And nothing would hurt. Peace.

And so on.

This was really weirdly fantastic.

Re-read in 2020 as book 29 of 30 for my 30 day reading challenge.
https://youtu.be/8CA3Ep_Z1-g