Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - Book Report/Review Example

Slaughterhouse Five Revenge plays a significant role in the development of the story in Kurt Vonnegut’snovel Slaughterhouse Five. The book ostensibly follows the story of Billy Pilgrim as he travels rather haphazardly through his life, continuously coming back to his touchstone, the firebombing raid on Dresden while he was a PoW in that city during World War II. Although there are several major themes to be followed throughout the book, Vonnegut portrays his characters in such a way as to paint revenge as an integral part of the storyline. It is revenge that drives several of the characters to their actions in both war and peacetime and it is revenge that is presented as the motivation behind the Allied firestorm in Dresden. To fully understand the key roles revenge takes within the novel as it is shown through the actions of the characters and the various communities involved, it is also important to understand some basic ‘real-world’ understandings regarding the emotional act of revenge from a philosophical and psychological point of view. There are several characters within the novel that seem to have revenge as their central theme, notably Roland Weary and Paul Lazarro, although they aren’t alone. Both of these characters appear in the war as being PoWs along with Billy. It is largely due to the efforts of Weary that Billy survives to be picked up by German soldiers behind enemy lines rather than being shot, even though Billy continuously tells him to go on without him. However, Weary cannot allow Billy to fall behind because of his personal code of revenge for childhood traumas. “He had been unpopular because he was stupid and fat and mean, and smelled like bacon no matter how much he washed. He was always being ditched in Pittsburgh by people who did not want him with them. … When Weary was ditched, he would find somebody who was even more unpopular than himself, … and then he would find some pretext for beating the shit out of him” (33). Billy represented for Weary that less popular individual whom he would be able to strike when the inevitable happened and the scouts left them to strike through Germany on their own. He continued to punish Billy for his weaknesses, taking revenge upon him for interfering in the Three Musketeers dream-world Weary had established as they continued on their trek. “Now, lying in the ditch with Billy and the scouts after having been shot at, Weary made Billy take a very close look at his trench knife. … It had a ten-inch blade that was triangular in cross section. Its grip consisted of brass knuckles, was a chain of rings through which Weary slipped his stubby fingers. The rings weren’t simple. They bristled with spikes. Weary laid the spikes along Billy’s cheek” (35). This incipient violence in the man is not meant to be brotherly sharing of instruments. Instead it is intended to terrorize even as Weary himself feels terrorized by the position they’re in. Through these actions, Weary indicates that his response to being threatened is to exact swift, brutal and very physical punishment on anything nearby that he has no chance of losing against. Thus, when facing death from gangrene in the rail car, Weary instructed the closest thing he had to a friend, someone who felt much the same way he did regarding the importance of revenge, to take care of Billy for him. While Weary had relatively consistent reasons for his actions, his friend from the boxcar, Paul Lazarro, with a name almost too similar to that of Lazarus, takes this idea of revenge one step further by cataloguing a mental list of individuals who had slighted him in some way. While some perhaps deserved some retribution, the stories related within the novel represent an almost irrational need to seek revenge simply for the sake of revenge. Lazarro, perhaps Weary brought back to life in more maniacal form, describes for others his concept of appropriate revenge upon someone or something that has wronged him in his description of his actions against a dog that had bitten him once. “I got me some steak, and I got me the spring out of a clock. I cut that spring up in little pieces. I put points on the ends of the pieces. They were sharp as razor blades. I stuck ‘em into the steak … I threw him the steak. He swallowed it down in one big gulp. I waited around for ten minutes … Blood started coming out of his mouth. He started crying, and he rolled on the ground … then he tried to bite out his own insides” (132). Perhaps the most disturbing part of the tale is the idea that Lazzaro was excited by the suffering of the dog rather than remorseful regarding the extremes to which he’d enacted his revenge. With Lazzaro, the only appropriate payback is a long-suffering death regardless of the degree of harm caused to himself to add the individual to his list. He describes this concept as he details what he plans to do to the English officer who broke his arm as Lazzaro was attempting to steal cigarettes from under the man’s pillow, even though the officers had already given the soldiers some. “One day there’ll be a knock on his door. He’ll answer the door, and there’ll be a stranger out there … And he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger’ll let him think a couple of seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the guts and walk away” (133). Lazzaro has taken the idea of revenge one step further through his use of extreme suffering for actions committed in mere self-defense against him. This is finally epitomized in Lazzaro’s hiring of a sniper to kill Billy in his final speech in New York. This fictional sense of physical pleasure in seeing his real or imagined persecutors get their ‘just’ rewards on the part of Lazarro and the extremes to which Weary seemed willing to go to in order to seriously injure Billy justified by revenge are supported by ‘real’ world studies that suggest men may have a heightened response trigger to social wrongdoing. Although Lazarro and Weary’s revenge tactics are admittedly misplaced, recent studies into the brain wave patterns of individuals who have just been cheated indicate “a lust for vengeance may be hardwired into the male brain” (Knight, 2006). The tests consisted of a series of MRI brain wave scans conducted as test groups of men and women participated in a video game representing real-life situations. As part of the game, players could opt to work together with other players to achieve a modest reward at the end or they could decide to double-cross their fellow players for a greater reward. In this sense, the players were significantly different from these two Vonnegut characters as their anger was somewhat justified. “The results suggest that men get a much bigger kick than women from seeing revenge physically exacted on someone perceived to have wronged them” (Knight, 2006). In addition, the scans indicated that while both sexes experienced increased brain activity in the fronto-singular and anterior cingulated cortices, which are explained to be areas that are associated with the direct experience of pain, this activity had a much more significant drop in men when the cheaters were punished. “In addition, several other regions of male participants’ brains ‘lit up’ instead – areas linked to the experience of reward known as the ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens and orbito-frontal cortex. The results suggest that men not only feel less empathy for cheaters, but experience pleasure when they are punished” (Knight, 2006). A similar study, involving only men this time, showed similar findings of pleasure associated with the punishment of someone doing a perceived wrong. Again using a game as the principle instigating force, the study demonstrated that the majority of men involved would choose to impose a penalty even when to do so would cost them some of their own money. “Doing so, the researchers found, activated a region of the brain known as the dorsal striatum. Previous research has shown that this region is involved in enjoyment or satisfaction” (Roach, 2004). As the study was conducted, the amount of brain activity shown in an individual was directly related to the amount of punishment they choose to distribute. “Individuals with stronger activations were more willing to incur greater costs in order to punish someone else” (Roach, 2004), suggesting that it is indeed passion rather than reason that plays the most significant role in instigating vengeful actions. However, the study also demonstrated that there is another part of the brain concerned with logic that carefully measured and weighed the benefits of revenge with the costs. “Deficits in prefrontal cortical functioning may contribute to these psychopathologies by a disturbed ability to weigh beneficial against negative consequences of an action” (Roach, 2004). Therefore, based on the results of this study, characters such as Weary and Lazzaro were brilliant studies of the prefrontal cortical deficient, pleasure-seeking variety of individual, incapable of separating themselves from the pleasure obtained in obtaining revenge from the inconsistency and even immoral courses of their actions. By using Thomas Irving as his primary source for factual information regarding the raid on Dresden, Vonnegut inadvertently may have included a great deal of untruth in his story regarding the motivation and reasoning behind the attack, but uses this early assumption as a key ingredient in developing his concepts of the futility of revenge. At the time Slaughterhouse Five was written, these inconsistencies with fact were not known, while justifications offered since have been called into question. The picture of Dresden as a completely innocent target of no strategic significance that had been spitefully and shamefully flattened by the Allies painted by Irving depicted this event as nothing short of a war crime. However, Air Marshall Arthur Harris indicated in Bomber Offensive (2005) that the orders to bomb Dresden were, in fact, based on strategic objectives. “This was considered a target of the first importance for the offensive on the Eastern front. Dresden had by this time become the main center of communications for the defense of Germany on the southern half of the Eastern front and it was considered that a heavy air attack would disorganize these communications and also make Dresden useless as a controlling center for the defense” (2005). Harris acknowledged the size of the city played some part in the decision as it was the largest city as yet untouched and had developed into a large center of war industry. He also indicated that American planes did carry out two light attacks during the daylight during the following two days. Yet, in a letter posted to The Guardian in 2004, David Pedlow, a man claiming to be the son of an RAF meteorological officer involved in the Dresden bombing, reported that the briefing just prior to the bombing “were given no strategic aiming point. They were simply told that anywhere within the built-up area of the city would serve.” This procedure differed quite drastically from the several other missions his father had flown as in these other missions the crews were given a strategic aiming point, even to the detail of a “small but significant railway junction within a built-up area.” Pedlow said his father “felt that Dresden and its civilian population had been the prime target of the raid and that its destruction and their deaths served no strategic purpose, even in the widest terms” (2004). Vonnegut sets up the innocence of Dresden early in the novel as the Englishmen work to reassure the departing Americans regarding their destination: “You lads are leaving this afternoon for Dresden – a beautiful city, I’m told. You won’t be cooped up like us. You’ll be out where the life is, and the food is certain to be more plentiful than here. … You needn’t worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden is an open city. It is undefended, and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance” (138-39). At no point does Vonnegut contradict this innocent view of Dresden – no mention of armament works or other war industries seen in the streets as the work crews make their way to their new home, as they undertake their work duties within the city or as they return to clean up and plunder following the bombing. The people, mostly civilians, are described as “watery and putty-colored, having eaten mostly potatoes during the past two years” (142) who had not had much cause for rejoicing or fun. The city architecture is described as “merry” with innocently shy creatures that “peeked” and stone monkeys that “frisked” (143). The most hostile thing seen in this city, including the way in which the soldiers were treated once in their new home, is the response of a tired civilian surgeon who felt Billy was trying to make a mockery of the war and its effects through his outlandish clothing. This virtuousness and harmlessness of Dresden makes it impossible for us to associate this wonderful city with the atrocities of Germany during the war. This innocent picture of Dresden is compared with the somewhat ambiguous picture painted of America and the Allied forces. Although he does not outline these forces as villains, he makes his opinion regarding war resoundingly clear. “I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that” (18). His first illustration of American warfare is a detailed description of a war movie played in reverse, in which the American bomber planes swoop in, collect the fire and destruction up in “cylindrical steel containers” that they stored neatly in racks as the Germans sucked artillery into long steel tubes on the ground. America is further let off the hook through the speech of Derby who “spoke movingly of the American form of government, with freedom and justice and opportunities and fair play for all. He said there wasn’t a man there who wouldn’t gladly die for those ideals” (156). However, Derby speaks these words to another American, one who has been trying to encourage the men to go fight for him as a means of getting out of the camp. This is immediately and ominously followed by the sounding of the air-raid sirens. Although no bombs went off that night, the following night was filled with “sounds like giant footsteps above. Those were sticks of high-explosive bombs. The giants walked and walked. … There was a fire-storm out there. Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn. It wasn’t safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day” (169). Even here, although it was obviously Allied bombers that had caused the firestorm, it remains the firestorm itself that is the enemy. This changes as the refugees make their way out of the destruction. “One thing was clear: Absolutely everybody in the city was supposed to be dead, regardless of what they were, and anybody that moved in it represented a flaw in the design” (171). This is followed by a group of American planes that swoop in and spray the column with machine-gun fire, missing some of their group but hitting some in another group further away. This final act and acknowledgement of annihilation as the intent and purpose of the bombing as well as the events that follow on the ground in Dresden afterward within Vonnegut’s novel illustrate the way in which revenge among nations is acted out. In the ‘real’ world, while some continued to point to Nazi Germany’s own crimes as justification of the Dresden bombing as a form of retribution, experts such as John Black in “The Truth About the 1945 Bombing of Dresden” (1995) point out that both US and British occupiers allowed all but the top Nazi leaders to continue to play a role in western Germany as a means of gaining them as allies against the USSR. This reversal of ethics indicates a sense of revenge rather than retribution involved in the bombing as retribution is defined as a justly deserved penalty while revenge includes the concepts of spitefulness, vindictiveness and the passionate desire for revenge within its definition (American Heritage Dictionary, 2000). If Allied leaders were interested in retribution, these leaders would have been punished and the thousands of refugees who had fled to Dresden as a site of refuge would have been spared. This is the concept brought out in Vonnegut’s novel regarding the bombing itself. Having been significantly reduced in their own power yet still requiring some outlet for their own revenge, the Germans summarily caught, tried and executed the American leader Edgar Derby for the crime of stealing a teapot, while all around them, American soldiers were stealing many valuable and irreplaceable treasures from the abandoned Dresden homes. This execution, in its minute scale compared to the widespread destruction surrounding them, is a microcosm of the vengeful actions of the Allied states in taking their anger out on Dresden for the atrocities of the entire Nazi regime. Just as Derby was not the most guilty party involved, having barely touched the teapot, so Dresden is seen to be separated yet connected to the horrors of the war. Just as Dresden was punished for the crimes of Hitler, so Derby was punished for the crimes of the Allied forces. Without an understanding of the concept of revenge, it is difficult to imagine the story unfolding to quite the same degree of detail and analogy. It is necessary for Weary to display a heightened sense of revenge in order to introduce the topic, while it is necessary for him to be replaced by a more violent, more unpredictable firebrand such as Lazzaro to begin to understand the extremes to which men might go to correct a perceived wrong, regardless of who the original instigator might have been. Studies into the workings of the human brain have shown that this type of pleasurable pursuit of horrendous torture and suffering of those who have wronged them is indeed driven by passion and easily circumnavigates the logical restraints that prevent most men from causing undue harm to society. However, when these types of men gain control of large portions of the population, tremendous destruction and taking of human life can occur. Despite the justifications offered and possible strategic nature of the bombing, it remains somewhat evident that at least a degree of the decision to bomb Dresden was based on a need for this type of revenge on the part of the Allied leaders on a nation that had already caused so much pain. Through his sympathetic portrayal of all parties involved, Vonnegut brings out this vengeful aspect of the bombing, illustrating the ways in which entire countries can be ruled by revenge, and then brings it back down to the level of the individual again, making the concept easy to understand without simplifying it or detracting from the horror and senselessness of these same actions. Works Cited American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: 4th Ed. “Retribution” & “Revenge.” New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000. Black, John. “The Truth about the 1945 Bombing of Dresden.” Workers World. New York: February 23, 1995. Harris, Sir Arthur. Bomber Offensive. London: Greenhill Books, 1947, Reprinted 2005. Knight, Will. “Brain Scans Reveal Men’s Pleasure in Revenge.” New Scientist. Vol. 18, N. 47, January 18, 2006. Pedlow, David. “Dresden Doubts.” The Guardian Unlimited. February 14, 2004. Roach, John. “Brain Study Shows Why Revenge is Sweet.” National Geographic News. August 27, 2004. Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five. New York: Delacorte Press, 1969. Read More