Slaughterhouse-Five Themes/Main Ideas

The purposelessness and destructiveness of war

The primary theme of the anti-war novel is the senseless, random, and destructive nature of war that affects all and spares none, be it participants of any side of the war. While explaining the nature of the novel to his publisher and justifying the fragmented and disjointed narrative, Vonnegut, in order to highlight the senselessness of war, mentions: “There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again.” The novel highlights the irrational and illogical nature of war. Dresden, which is supposed to be a safe city as it lacks military interest, is bombed with its 130,000 civilians either asphyxiated or burned to death. The author also mentions the execution of Edgar Derby by the firing squads for stealing a teapot from the ruins. From trivial to mass execution, all forms of execution in a war seem to lack any form of rationale. Vonnegut also stresses on the fact that life after war is more horrifying than the war itself. It becomes a task to keep one’s sanity intact. Reality becomes unbearable and pointless, with people striving to escape. In this novel, this is exemplified either through Billy and Rosewater’s escape with the help of Trout’s novels or through the perception of the Tralfamadorians, if it is considered as a figment of Billy’s imagination.

“So it goes” or the inevitability of death

The oft-repeated refrain “so it goes” appears in the novel quite a number of times immediately after any mention of death—be it the deaths of thousands of people, an animal, a human being, or even an idea. Death is mentioned throughout the novel in a matter-of-fact tone, devoid of any sentimentality. It holds true for all the events that are mentioned: be it the air bombing of the city of Dresden or the protagonist’s tryst with death. The Tralfamadorians say “so it goes” in response to death as they perceive death as just another event in life, not considering it a tragedy; after all, it is inevitable. Since the Tralfamadorians can see the past, present, and future simultaneously in four dimensions, the death of a person for them is someone “in bad condition in that particular moment” but who is “just fine” in other moments. Billy draws immense comfort from this philosophy of the Tralfamadorians. They teach Billy that time is not linear and things that happen to us have already happened and are inevitable. There is no point in fighting it. Rather, it should be accepted as it is without attaching any too much emotion to it. In this way, death too is inevitable and should not be obsessed over. Throughout the novel, death is depicted as an inevitable experience. This serves as a justification for Billy about the Dresden bombing, where he knows it is bound to happen and that so many people are dead only in that particular moment and are perfectly fine and alive in other moments.

Free will

In the novel, Vonnegut first mentions the agency of free will through the Tralfamadorians. Amidst the absurdity of the existence of the Tralfamadorians and their nonlinear conception of time, they raise the philosophical question of free will that becomes the crux of the novel. Unlike human beings, who see the world in three dimensions, the Tralfamadorians see the universe in four dimensions. They believe that all moments in our lives have already happened and the past, present, and future exist simultaneously. Hence, all moments of time occur and reoccur endlessly and simultaneously. Because the Tralfamadorians refute the linear nature of time, unlike human beings, they believe that one cannot do anything to change a course of action because everything has already happened and nothing we do can change that. They inform that out of all the planets they have visited in the universe, the question of free will and its agency is only talked about on Earth, as human beings, with their limited understanding of the nature of time, fail to grasp the bigger picture. The Tralfamadorians possess an attitude of acceptance about their fates.

In his entire life, Billy has ended up in multiple situations where his free will has been challenged. As a child, his father throws him into a pool, against his will, to teach him how to swim, almost drowning Billy in the process. When he was drowning, he had lost his will to live and had accepted that he was going to die, only to be rescued by some people. Later, in his life, Billy is deployed in the war against his will. After the Battle of the Bulge, when the American soldiers were fleeing, Roland Weary unwillingly dragged along the exhausted and weak Billy.

In the novel, Vonnegut draws a thin line between the existence and the nonexistence of free will. Billy was not a trained soldier when he joined the war. However, it would not have mattered when Dresden was bombed. Many trained soldiers died. However, Billy, even though an untrained soldier and most likely to have not survived, was fated to live. Nothing would have changed that. However, Vonnegut suggests a third option that follows the middle path. He suggests a way where by exercising free will, the entire war and the bombing could have been avoided. Thus, Vonnegut appeals through the novel to find a negotiation between free will and fate.