When A Equals B…

One of the main ingredients in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is irony. From the beginning we are forced, or maybe taken through the process, to understand how absurd war and life really is. By making us laugh about the adventures of Billy Pilgrim, we notice how the goal is always present, to make a joke out of a horrible story. In chapter seven, we encounter irony in the first couple of sentences. “Tralfamadorians, of course, say that every creature and plant in the Universe is a machine. It amuses them that so many Earthlings are offended by the idea of being machines.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 55) In Billy, the novel’s protagonist, we see a perfect example of a machine. He goes to work, marries the person with the best connections, has children as his society stipulates and is depressed due to the horrible events in his life. The irony in this maxim is that the only beings that can really evaluate if we, as part of the Universe, are machines have to be outside of our planet. What Vonnegut is referring to here is how we continue doing what our society tells us to, how it has become the work of a machine to do our daily activities.

Vonnegut plays with the definitions of events and objects through his characters as he makes them unaware and ignorant of what they’re confronting. As Billy is taken in a toboggan down Sugarbush Mountain after his plane crash, he passes under a seat lift where he sees young people flying through the air in yellow seats and he, “supposed that they were part of an amazing new phase of the Second World War. It was all right with him. Everything was pretty much all right with Billy.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 56) The complete unawareness of the situation and his machine identity caused by the war have made Billy believe that everything he sees must have something do with the war and has to let go of, as he had to do in order to reintegrate (in a partial way) with his life as an optometrist. As everything was all right with Billy, Vonnegut builds up on his previous conclusion, that war makes people machines. This makes it easier to live hard times and be satisfied with the bare minimum, never striving for more. Blind acceptance or full denial become the survival mechanisms to continue living after the unthinkable horrors of war.

Another example of how Vonnegut shows irony in a direct fashion, using his characters as puppets is the conversation between the cook of the Dresden camp, the guard of the slaughterhouse and the two American soldiers. “'All the real soldiers are dead,' she said. It was true.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 57) Stating that Derby was too old, Werner (the guard) too young and Billy simply inappropriate for war defends the conclusion Kurt is making, war is inappropriate.