"Cliff Notes - Slaughterhouse Five" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

1976 Billy assassinated in Chicago after speaking on flying
saucers and time.

^^^^^^^^^^SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: THE STORY

Vonnegut's method of storytelling sometimes makes it difficult to follow him or to see his point in a welter of apparently unrelated anecdotes. To help you along, the discussion of each chapter in this section begins with a brief overview of the chapter's structure.

^^^^^^^^^^SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: CHAPTER 1

STRUCTURE: The string of anecdotes that lead up to Vonnegut's visit with the O'Hares all describe problems related to writing his "famous book about Dresden." After his visit to the O'Hares, things start going well for him, and he is able to write the book. In the last part of the chapter Vonnegut finds solutions to (or at least ways around) his writing problems.

Let's look at some of those problems the author complains about.

THE WORDS JUST WON'T COME. Although he thought it would be easy to write about Dresden--"all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen"--he just can't seem to get started. Vonnegut may be afraid that he has used up his talent, or somehow ruined it (the off-color limerick suggests this idea), perhaps by writing so much science fiction instead of "saving himself" for his "great book about Dresden."

EVERY TIME HE STARTS THE BOOK, HE ENDS UP GOING IN CIRCLES. The Yon Yonson poem illustrates this dilemma. Once you start it, you go around and around forever.

ANOTHER ANTIWAR BOOK WOULD BE POINTLESS. This problem is clearly stated in the conversation Vonnegut has with the movie director. Books don't stop wars because wars are as unstoppable as glaciers are.

WRITING ISN'T THE NOBLE PROFESSION EVERYONE THINKS IT IS. Vonnegut calls himself a "trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontations." He goes on to describe a diagram he made that reduces every human being to a line of color and makes the destruction of Dresden nothing but a brilliant stripe of orange. What was once an atrocity has now become something abstract and "pretty."

NOTE: PARALLEL IMAGES This chapter is full of images that resurface in altered form later in the book. In Chapter 4, for example, the Tralfamadorians use the metaphor of bugs trapped in amber to describe human beings caught in time. This image parallels the idea of characters "trapped" in a diagram for a story. The "idiotic Englishman" with his absurd souvenir turns up again in the guise of Roland Weary displaying his weapons to Billy (Chapter 2) and later (Chapter 6) as Billy himself, showing his "treasures" to the Dresden surgeon. In a way the Englishman is also like Vonnegut trying to interest O'Hare in his Dresden story. Vonnegut is not only struggling with writing problems here, he is generating material that he will rework into Billy's story.

WRITING WON'T HELP VONNEGUT FIND MEANING IN HIS LIFE. Vonnegut isn't very happy with himself. He's getting old, he's killing himself with alcohol and cigarettes, he and his wife don't communicate any more. Maybe life itself is a rut he fell into: before he knew it he's "an old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls."

WRITING DEHUMANIZES THE WRITER. The gruesome story of the veteran's being killed by an elevator points up this problem. Nancy does to the veteran the same thing that Vonnegut wants to do with Edgar Derby--she dehumanizes him by making him a character in a story. This in turn dehumanizes her, making her unable to feel anything for the suffering of others. Vonnegut fears that even if he does finish his Dresden book, the very act of constructing a good story will turn him into a callous creep.

NOTE: MACHINE IMAGERY One of Vonnegut's favorite themes is the uneasy relationship between man and machines, and this anecdote is shot through with machine imagery. it's even possible to see the News Bureau as being run by its machines. And it's ironic that the veteran is killed by getting his hand caught in an iron gate that is imitating life forms--iron ivy, iron twigs, iron lovebirds. Keep an eye out for other instances of such imagery.

WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT A MASSACRE? The cocktail party anecdote, where Vonnegut hears about the death camps, illustrates another problem. How do you respond when someone tells you these ghastly stories? "Oh, my God" doesn't say very much, does it? That's Vonnegut's point.

These problems frustrated Vonnegut for twenty-three years, until he visited the O'Hares. You should look at this anecdote in some detail. He begins by describing the trip from Cape Cod as seen through the eyes of two little girls, his daughter and her friend. To them the world is full of strange sights, including rivers and waterfalls to stop and wonder at. The peaceful scene contrasts sharply with the purpose of the trip, which is to reminisce about the war--as if that time of destruction and death were "the good old days."

O'Hare is embarrassed about reminiscing, and his wife Mary seems intent on keeping him that way. She bangs ice trays, moves furniture, and mutters to herself. When she finally tells Vonnegut off he too is embarrassed because he realizes he's been thinking and acting like a fool about his "famous book on Dresden."

NOTE: EMBARRASSMENT Doesn't every anecdote in this chapter deal with embarrassment? Vonnegut has consistently portrayed himself as a fool: a grown man playing with crayons, an "idiotic Englishman" with his stupid souvenir, an "old fart" who talks to his dog, a green reporter trying to act tough. The point is that he doesn't realize how embarrassing his actions have been until he encounters Mary O'Hare. Perhaps Vonnegut is saying that embarrassment, not horror, is the proper way to feel about atrocities committed in war. It is those people who are not embarrassed who are dangerous. They are the ones who come up with the kind of thinking that says, "We have to bomb Dresden so we can end the war sooner."

Vonnegut also has a tangible breakthrough while visiting the O'Hares: he conceives the idea of calling his book "The Children's Crusade." Coming up with a title may help a writer to crystallize his thinking on a subject or get him going in the right direction. This seems to happen to Vonnegut.

NOTE: THE CRUSADES There were approximately seven Crusades between the years 1095 and 1271. The Christian powers of Europe sent these military expeditions to Palestine in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to regain possession of the Holy Land from the Moslems. The name crusade comes from the Latin word crux, meaning cross. Vonnegut's description of the Children's Crusade is pretty accurate.

Note how Vonnegut puts together two ideas that ought to be totally contradictory: holy and war. The book is full of such ironic juxtapositions, so keep an eye out for them.

The senselessness of the historical Children's Crusade provides Vonnegut with a parallel to the destruction of Dresden. And he learns that Dresden had been bombed before, just as pointlessly. The quote from the great German poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) conveys Vonnegut's view. The caretaker of the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) is showing the undamaged dome to his young visitor. This is what our great architect did, he tells Goethe. Then he gestures at the bombed-out ruins around the church and says, that is what the enemy did!

Vonnegut's visit to the O'Hares has been fruitful, and on the way home he finds additional material. At the New York World's Fair he and the girls see "official versions" of the past and future that make him wonder about the present: "how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep." This suggests one of the major subjects of the book, the nature of time and how it works.

Suddenly Vonnegut is asked to teach in one of the most prestigious writing programs in the country. And he gets a three-book contract. Nothing had worked before, but everything is working now. He finishes the book.

NOTE: VONNEGUT'S SELF-DEPRECATION Vonnegut often mocks himself and his writing. Some readers see this as false modesty, others believe he's sincere. Slaughterhouse-Five has a lot of intelligent things to say about the destruction of Dresden--about the thinking that caused it, about the effect it had on the people who survived it, about what he sees as the right way and the wrong way to remember it. The book is not a failure, for it made Vonnegut's reputation and is generally considered his masterpiece. And Slaughterhouse-Five informed the public that Dresden--at least in terms of number of people killed--was the worst single bombing attack of the war.