Themes and Undertones of Kurt Vonnegut's Works
Themes and Undertones of Kurt Vonnegut's Works
"Fate: 'what has been spoken,' a power beyond men's control that is held to determine what happens" (Webster's Intermediate Dictionary 270).
Everywhere in the world, people attribute events to fate because of the belief that one has no control over one's own life. People freely donate their lives to destiny because they believe life will happen according to a master plan, and they cannot help what happens to them. Therefore they do not try to change their life's path. In literature, authors have often discussed this master plan in the medium of fate versus free will. Some authors support a fatalistic perspective, others promote free will. One of the writers who has mulled greatly upon this topic is Kurt Vonnegut. Among the many devices used by Kurt Vonnegut in his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, to support the side of a world ruled entirely by fate are setting, structure, and allusion.
One tool used in Slaughterhouse-Five to promote a fatalistic view is setting. Vonnegut often creates premonitions of fate by making connections between the environments of different time periods during the life of his main character, Billy Pilgrim. The author can create fear or happiness or an impending sense of doom by his description of the scenery and characters, such as the Tralfamadorians. By linking various conflicts and characters with their settings, Vonnegut manages to show that the participants in the story are controlled by their environment, not by their free will, as is the popular American belief. Numerous times in the text, Vonnegut does not express a particular emotion about a terrible event, conveying a feeling of fate to the reader precisely because of this apparent lack of feeling. Vonnegut often uses very descriptive imagery of the milieu to convey a feeling that the characters in the scene are ruled by an outside power that has arranged each creature much in the manner of players upon a chess board. Early in the novel, Billy recalls one of his experiences in the army. Billy has been traveling with two scouts and another teenager behind German lines for a few days. A group of German civilians find the Americans out in a quiet forest. The Germans discover the two scouts lying in a clump of bushes and Roland Weary trying to beat Billy Pilgrim to death. Billy, dumfounded, can think of nothing but the angelic face of the...