The Dark Comedy Slaughterhouse-Five - Essay Example

?John Q. Doe English 344 8 May 2000 The Dark Comedy of Slaughterhouse-Five Humor is one of the major coping mechanisms for man whenhe must deal with tragedy. At the root of every joke and jest is a small kernel of pain. In most cases, humor deals with minor events in life, events such as the embarrassment of falling down in public. Black comedy, however, examines the humor in the tragedies of life, tragedies such as death, depression, and murder. Black humor examines these tragedies and produces a satire of the events to provide a manner of dealing with the horrific nature of the events. Kurt Vonnegut, in many of his novels, employs black comedy to both satirize human nature and draw attention to flaws that society should focus on correcting. In his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut seeks to understand the tragedies of war through his black humor. He admits in the first chapter of the novel that he attempted to write a serious book about his experience in World War II, but it was a failure. As he puts it, “there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre” (Vonnegut 19). Even when he incorporates satire and humor into the novel, he still believes “this one is a failure” (Vonnegut 22). But, the novel is not a failure. It is a spectacular success, and that is largely due to the satire and humor that Vonnegut weaves into the narrative. This dark comedy of Slaughterhouse-Five deepens the tragedies of war by critiquing humanity’s flaws in a manner which a narrative lacking humor could not. Through the character of Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut uses black comedy to attack man’s belief in free will. Using Billy, Vonnegut espouses a view that the free will of man is merely an illusion. Individuals believe in free will because it provides comfort, but the humor is that fate controls life. As the protagonist of the novel, Billy Pilgrim embodies this concept. Every attempt he makes to assert his free will is thwarted. One of the first attempts Billy makes to assert free will is while learning to swim as a child. His father takes him to a local pool and tells Billy that he will “learn to swim by the method of sink-or-swim” (Vonnegut 43). Billy’s father throws him into the pool, and Billy sinks “to the bottom of the pool, and there [is] beautiful music everywhere” (44). He eventually passes out, but someone rescues him. This act is something that he “resented” (44). He finds death beautiful, but someone else steals his decision from him, forcing him back into a life of pain and ugliness. In trying to commit suicide, Billy is attempting to exert his free will. But, he is not allowed. The black humor comes from the irony that Billy wishes to die but cannot, even when he is in a place, World War II, where death surrounds him. During his boot camp, the Army trains Billy as a chaplain. Obviously, this position is not one for a man who wishes to die as a chaplain is not often on the front lines and does not often participate in combat. Eventually, Billy finds himself on the front lines and once again tries to die. He does not attempt to avoid bullets. Instead, he “[stands] there politely, giving the marksman another chance” (Vonnegut 33). His fellow soldier, Roland Weary, pulls him to safety against Billy’s will. Weary even acknowledges that he will deny Billy his free will. He states, “’He don’t want to live, but he’s gonna live anyway” (48). After eventually being captured by the Germans, Billy seems to be the closest to obtaining his wish as the Nazis ship him to a concentration camp, but again, he survives by no action of his own. Eventually, he is placed in Dresden to work at a malt syrup factory. During his time there, the Allied forces carpet bomb and then incinerate the city, but Billy survives by mere chance by being in an airtight underground slaughterhouse. The humor is that Billy wishes to die so badly, but no one will let him. Meanwhile, others around him are dying from unlikely events that are absurd in their rarity. Billy’s wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning after crashing her car while racing to the hospital to visit him after he alone survives a plane crash and Edgar Derby, a fellow soldier, is executed for stealing an insignificant teapot, but Billy Pilgrim cannot die even when targeted by a sniper. Through Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut shows that humans only have an illusion of free will due to interference from other people or forces. In his depictions of the actions of the soldiers, Vonnegut critiques the evil of which man is capable. By using absurd situations and actions, Vonnegut causes the reader to laugh at horrific events. Though a quarter or more of the novel is set in a concentration camp, there are no explicit references to the genocide that is present. Instead, Vonnegut presents small images that make the reader laugh and then realize that the laughter is a result of the horrors taking place. One of these small images is the coat that Billy Pilgrim receives upon arriving at the camp. While all the captured soldiers around him receive military coats, the guards give Billy the “coat from a dead civilian” (Vonnegut 82). All of the coats come from dead prisoners, so the tragedy apparent in Billy’s coat is that it came from a civilian, who likely had no part in the war and was innocent. By deduction, the reader can assume that the coat came from a Jew whom the Germans killed. In addition, the coat “had a fur collar and a lining of crimson silk, and had apparently been made for an impresario about as big as an organ-grinder’s monkey. It was full of bullet holes” (90). The image of Billy Pilgrim in a small coat makes the reader and the concentration camp guards laugh. However, the coat probably came from a child that the Nazis executed. While laughing, the reader remembers all the murders that the Nazis committed, murders of men, women, and children. The execution of Edgar Derby is Vonnegut’s greatest statement on the evil of man. As the writer himself states, “’I think the climax of the book will be the execution of poor old Edgar Derby” (Vonnegut 4-5). In a book where the firebombing of Dresden occurs and thousands of people, the death of one man would seem insignificant. The black humor of the situation is its absurdity. Nazis are conducting a genocide, soldiers are raping civilians, the Allied forces are destroying a civilian city, but the Germans take the time to stop and execute a man for stealing a teapot, an exceedingly insignificant offense. The focus on the death of a single individual illustrates Vonnegut’s point that intentional death for any reason, much less a very minor offense, is one of the greatest evils of which man is capable. In describing the war and Edgar Derby, the narrator states, “One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. But old Derby was a character now” (164). Even though war dehumanizes the individual, when each death is taken separately, the tragedy becomes clear, and the reader can only laugh at the absurdity of the situation. In his presentation of the comedic world of Trafalmadore, Vonnegut critiques the inevitability of war. In Vonnegut’s view, war amongst humans is evil, but humanity will never be able to stop waging it. As Vonnegut states in his introduction in response to a sarcastic comment made by a friend about writing an anti-war book, “What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too” (Vonnegut 3). When Billy receives his brain injury, he begins to hallucinate and cannot remember the chronological order of events. The hallucinations take the form of trips to an alien world. On this alien world, Tralfamadore, Billy learns that “only on Earth is there any talk of free will” (86). The Tralfamadorian view of time is that “all time is all time. It does not change” (86). And, throughout that time, war exists. Billy believes that Earthlings are the most evil in the galaxy because they perpetrate war, but the Tralfamadorians assure him that humans are not the most evil. When Billy states, “’I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid” (117). The aliens reply, “Of course” (117). Because of the inevitability of war and their view that war exists throughout all time, the aliens advise humans to “ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones” (117). The advice is absurdly fatalistic. The comment is satirical. One cannot ignore awful times when those awful times consist of humans being burned, turned into candle wax, and boiled alive, among other atrocities that occur and have occurred in war. Slaughterhouse-Five is a book of tremendous comedy and tremendous tragedy. Vonnegut forces his readers to laugh at one of the most horrible times in human history, World War II. In their laughter, the readers become aware that they are laughing at the most tragic events and most disturbing actions of which man is capable. The reader becomes self-conscious of why he is laughing and realizes that it is the only response to the horror Vonnegut is presenting. As a final note, Vonnegut does interlace some hope into the narrative. While the humans act without morals, denying others of their free will and committing heinous acts upon them, nature stands aside and continues in its innocence. As “one bird said to Billy Pilgrim, ‘Poo-tee-weet?’” (Vonnegut 215). This response seems to be the only words appropriate in the face of such horror. Work Cited Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell Publishing, 1991. Print. Read More