Ironically
enough my brother had to read this same book over the summer for his sophomore English
class. So when I sat down to begin reading it over the break I asked him if he
could remember anything about the book. He said that the book was confusing,
jumped from place to place, and that the main character gets captured by
aliens. This wasn’t exactly what I was expected from a satirical anti-war book
but it sounded intriguing so I jumped in. I was almost anxious to see if it
made any more sense to me than it did to him. The first chapter was a bit
confusing and I found myself constantly wondering when the actual story was
going to begin. It seemed odd that the first chapter of the book was about
writing the book, but the background helped set up the rest of the book.
One of the
first things I had to get used to when the story started was the main character
Billy’s detachment from time. Vonnegut is able to use this throughout the story
to contrast different situations in Billy’s life allowing the reader to put
them in perspective. Such as when he is being showered in the prison camp and
then travels through time to when his mother is bathing him as an infant. One
of the most interesting times Vonnegut uses Billy’s detachment from time is
when he is watching the documentary on World War II bomber pilots in reverse. When
he is describing the factory workers who build the bombs, he says the workers
carefully disassemble the bombs and the minerals hidden cleverly so that they “will
never hurt anyone ever.” I thought this
line was funny because Vonnegut shows us just how ironic and ridiculous
building a bomb is. In his own satirical way he is showing us we would be far
safer if we never even took the materials to build a bomb out of the earth.
The first
several chapters did have some humor but most of it was a darker humor. The
death of characters seemed to be treated as very unimportant. In one example
the characters see smoke in the distance and Vonnegut says “There was a battle
there. People were dying there. So it goes.” It is comical how serious events
like this are understated in the book and nearly every death is followed by the
statement “or so it goes.” I found myself laughing at this but almost felt bad
for doing so. It will be interesting to see how Vonnegut uses this dark humor
in the remainder of the book and how exactly the aliens will fit into the
story.
