Creating Their Own Fictions

Someone in class yesterday brought up that many characters in Slaughterhouse-Five live in their own world. For example, Roland Weary sees the war through the narrative of war movies; he glorifies the war and celebrates the killings. He thinks of himself and the two scouts he travels with as “the Three Musketeers” despite the fact that they are indifferent to him. He doesn’t help keep Billy keep up with the group because he’s a good person, he does it because he’s fitting it into his own narrative about war; the battle-ready soldier, helping the weak soldier survive. He eventually dies from infections and makes his war buddy, Lazzaro, promises to kill Billy.

Another example is “poor old” Edgar Derby. Every chance Vonnegut has, he mentions that Derby is doomed (it reminded me of Doctorow referring to Coalhouse as black). Derby’s shining moment happens when he makes an impassioned speech about American ideals and being happy to die for the cause. He was greeted with an unenthusiastic response and is eventually shot for looting a teapot. He saw himself as a great leader, but was not treated as such.

All of these fictions, including Billy’s idea of Tralfamadore, relate to war. Billy’s fiction seems like a reaction to going through war, Weary’s is a misconstrued idea of war, and Derby is not the leader he thinks he is. All of these fictions give a general negative view of war and its effects.

Science Fiction in Slaughterhouse-Five

Billy uses science-fiction to escape and form a new universe. All of the weird fictional things in Slaughterhouse-5, Billy has picked up from science-fiction books. For example, the stuff about the fourth-dimension, the Tralfamadorian-like aliens, and the aliens that captured humans as zoo creatures.
I don’t think that having this sci-fi stuff next to the seriousness of the bombings detracts from the bombing’s importance. I read it as Billy, being unable to cope with the idea of war and the deaths, creates his own world with his own view on time to escape this reality. The Tralfamadorian way of looking at death is relatively positive. The death is insignificant because the person will live on forever in the past. This does come with the consequence of losing free will, but that also benefits Billy’s psyche; there’s nothing he can change about the war.
        There is a proverb in the book that appears in both Billy’s office, and on a locket owned by Montana Wildhack that goes, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Billy does not accept the truth of the war and casts himself into a reality where he has no free will, and no power to change anything, leading to his “serenity.” This also relates to Billy’s epitaph about the his feelings towards war, “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” In the Tralfamadorian view of time and life, everything is beautiful, but through Billy’s traveling in time, we see that the things he experienced were far from beautiful by normal standards.

Mumbo Jumbo Humour

The humour in Mumbo Jumbo is used to critique both western and black culture. For example, Gould and Hinkle try to educate Woodrow Wilson Jefferson, a black man, on how to speak with the common African-American vernacular they have observed. Most of the black characters speak proper, grammatically correct English, while the white characters use the vernacular. As someone in class said on Friday, it played with the preconceived notions of race we have about the characters. I did not expect the secret organization for the advancement of the white race to speak in vernacular. W.W. Reed also uses the humour to critic black culture. For example, W.W. is rejected from a cabaret for being too dark. This is criticizing the black racism that happened during the Harlem Renaissance. This time, a black character, W.W., is made to look foolish by another black character who has some amount of power over him. I enjoyed this humour, but I probably would not if the roles were reversed; i.e. the whites coming off as superior. It seems that satire comes from the bottom up; only those without power can effectively make fun of those who have power over them. Even when Reed is criticizing black culture, he’s not doing it by having a white person belittle an African-American. A black character is always in a position of power, never the sole butt of the joke.