Living In Amber

As the reader ventures through Chapter 4 of Slaughtehouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, it is difficult to determine the intentions and true meaning of the ideas in the book and their effects on Billy, the main character of the novel. We can see this in the conversation between Billy and the Tralfamadorians as they take him in the night of his daughter’s wedding to Tralfamadore. When he asks them why did they choose him over the other humans they respond, “Because this moment simply is.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 28) confirming the conclusions I exposed in my previous post, which explains the hopelessness of Billy due to the impossibility of him believing that he can decide, and that his decisions will build up to create his future. This feeling of having everything already decided, the powerlessness and futility of it all, is what I believe was the main cause of his alcoholism, his despair, and his sleeping disorders.

As we are introduced with the flying saucer of the Tralfamadorians, and all of the stolen furniture they have to make Billy comfortable, it is difficult not to question the purpose of having these strange creatures in the book. Are they supposed to make us feel identified with some of their ideas? Are they connected in some way, or serve as an explanation for the atrocities of World War II? These questions are not answered in the chapter but they have built up with hundreds of other questions about these creatures from previous chapters. Destiny and free-will are questioned incessantly: “I've visited thirty-one inhabited plants in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 31) This distancing from the belief of free-will, which has served to create nations such as the United States, where independent choices and the right to pursue one’s own happiness are believed to be essential for every human being is in direct contradiction with this book. We are destined to be and change our social and economical levels not because of our decisions or any laws we have created and believe in, but simply because it just is. We are not living our lives, life is living itself out through us. We are just its robot puppets.

As Billy asks himself how did he get into this world inside the flying saucer of the Tralfamadorians, they answer that that’s for humans to understand but that what is really important is to know that what they are like bugs in amber. “Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 31) The frozen rigidness of that description is astounding, the amber being life itself, we stuck in it, no way forward, no way out. Will all these explanations and descriptions end up having any similarity with any previous philosophical concept of life? Who or what decides this everlasting anthology of events and what is the final purpose of our world, of our individual lives? Nihilism, the belief that nothing has any value seems to permeate Vonnegut’s soul. A secure formula to sink us, not into amber but into chronic depression.