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Ethics, Values, and Money
People who are part of the status quo and/or unacquainted with
Vonnegut may find some of his views on ethics and values
preposterous or blatantly wrong, but after ruminating upon his
opinions, it will be hard for anyone to disagree with him.
The foundation on which Vonnegut bases his views in this area
is that people have no idea about what's really important (SF
46). He further establishes this point with a Kilgore Trout story
entitled The Barring-gaffner of Bagnialto or This Year's
Masterpiece in which the prices of works of art are established by
lottery on the planet Bagnialto (BC 128-9). Values are trivial and
personal, and, personally, Vonnegut thinks our values are messed
up.
First of all, we value those most useless of commodities, gold
and jewels, above all else (BC 24; S 205). These materials don't
feed, clothe, or shelter us - they don't prolong our lives for
a single second - so they are utterly useless, other than
providing us with something pretty to look at, though not as
pretty as the swaying leaves of an oak or the flowing tranquility
of a stream. Yet, because centuries ago it was arbitrarily decided
that they were precious commodities, they are now worth large
amounts of money to most people, and we all know that money is
king (SF 63). Secondly, we equate money with happiness (SF 118-9;
BC 41, 233); therefore, people will do just about anything for
money, even if it includes killing someone else to get it (SF
167; J 193). When all is considered, it's apparent that the
ramifications of the human love for money are far-reaching. As
a race, we love money more than people (J 150), and when we do
love a person, it is oftentimes because of what that person can
give us (SF 174). Because of this lust for money, many of us lead
spiritually and intellectually vacuous lives (BC 233; S 31-2).
This greed is ruining the planet's environment (S 28), and it has
made our medical system utterly impersonal (BC 63).
It's very easy to see where Vonnegut's views of money come
from. As a child of the Depression he saw the lust for money, and
the equating of money with happiness, as something that ruined
many lives. He especially saw it ruin the lives of his parents. It
should come as no surprise that Vonnegut views money, and the
seeming power that comes along with it, so critically.
Finally, Vonnegut insinuates in Slaughterhouse-Five that it
isn't necessarily always wrong to steal (145). Could it possibly
be okay for someone who is in dire need to take a small something
from a person who has plenty of material wealth? Vonnegut would
answer, "Yes."
Family
The family is very important to Vonnegut, which should be
apparent being as the family is the main theme of an entire novel
of his, Slapstick. Vonnegut deals in all four novels with two
types of families - the hereditary family, and the artificial
extended family. To start with, the extended family.
The first example of the importance of the extended family
comes in the early pages of Slaughterhouse-Five. Billy Pilgrim has
just traveled to 1958 and is attending a banquet in honor of the
Little League team on which his son Robert played. The coach, who
had never been married, is all choked up as he talks about the
team, and admits he would be honored just to be the water boy for
the team (45-6). This is a man in desperate need of a family - any
family - and he could only find it by coaching little kids. Now
that the season is over, his artificial extended family will be
gone for the next eight or nine months, and that's hard for the
coach to take, as can be expected.
A short while later we come to Wild Bob, a colonel from Cody,
Wyoming, who has just lost his entire regiment (family), about
forty-five hundred children (66). Wild Bob is just minutes away
from dying of double pneumonia, yet his one concern is if there is
anybody left from his regiment. The death of his extended family
is far worse than his own imminent death.
In Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut touches briefly on the
extended family, just long enough to point out that since we are
a very restless country, with people tearing around all the time,
it's hard to establish extended families (141). But even when
a person does stay in one place for a long time, as Mary Young did
in Midland City, it's still quite difficult to have an extended
family, as her own lonely death attests to (63). Vonnegut,
however, comew up with a solution to this problem in Slapstick,
which deals extensively with families, as the major plot of the
novel is the setting up of artificial extended families by the
main character, President Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain. Due to the
breakdown of the biological family, Wilbur decides to have the
government issue to each person ten thousand brothers and sisters,
and 190,000 cousins, based on a new middle name followed by
a number. Soon, people establish even larger extended families
based on other aspects of the new G.I. names (209-10). Extended
families are something we desperately need to ward off loneliness.
Our jobs often provide us with a nice extended family (5).
A possibly even better extended family can come from organizations
like Alcoholics Anonymous. Vonnegut's Uncle Alex was a co- founder
of the Indianapolis Chapter of A.A., even though he never had
a drinking problem. His reason for being so active in A.A. was
because it constantly provided for him new brothers, sisters,
nephews, neices, aunts, and uncles (S 8-9). Of course, there are
plenty of other institutions and organizations which provide us
with family, and religion is one of the most popular of these
institutions (J 80).
It is in examining hereditary families, along with the problem
of overpopulation, that we really see the need for extended
families. Large families make it easier to cope with life (BC
92), which is a very relevant topic for Vonnegut at this time in
his life as both of his parents are dead, his sister is dead,
he's recently left his wife, and his six children have all grown
up and moved away. Yet, Vonnegut realizes that there are too many
people on the planet and not enough room for all of them (SF 196,
212; BC 12-3, 45). Hence, the dire need for extended families that
is the plea of Slapstick. They are needed because we become
interchangeable parts in the U.S. machine without family (S 7),
and most of us in the U.S. who do have families have lousy ones at
that. We know nothing about our grandparents (S 47), and we take
terrible care of our relatives (S 118). Still, we need families,
not only to survive (S 243), but because we are better people when
we have them (S 177). Since the hereditary family is so weak in
the United States, we need to find artificial extended families in
which to become members.
Psychology
While not formally educated in psychology, Vonnegut has
learned much about the human mind and how it works. This is
evidenced throughout the four novels in his comments and
characterizations.
The human mind is powerful enough to convince us of many
things, and Vonnegut turns to this thought on many occasions. We
first visit this world in the form of Roland Weary, who is
creating his own version of the war from deep within the warmth of
the bundle of clothes he's wearing (SF 41-2), convincing himself
that he's one of the Three Musketeers, along with two other
soldiers who largely ignore him. A short while later Weary is on
the verge of actually beating Billy Pilgrim to death as he speaks
unintelligibly of the piety and heroism of the Three Musketeers,
whom he portrayed as being virtuous, magnanimous, honorable, and
servants of Christianity (SF 50-1). In Jailbird, Alexander McCone
managed to convince himself that it was the labor leader, Colin
Jarvis, that was the cause of the workers' misery and heartbreak,
and that the misery was not due to the way his father and brother
ran the factory (31). Alexander later deludes himself into
thinking that he had a wonderful time when he attended Harvard,
even though he was socially scorned for his stammer and "for being
the obscenely rich son of an immigrant" (49). Alexander even went
so far as to delude himself into thinking that Harvard professors
were the wisest men in the history of the world.
Repression is the other major psychological thought that is
dealt with in Slaughterhouse-Five. When Billy Pilgrim is advised
by his doctor to take a nap every day, to see if that will keep
him from weeping each day, which occurs for no apparent reason,
Vonnegut is showing that many people are often troubled by
something in their past, but they won't allow themselves to
confront it consciously, so their unconscious has to find a way to
deal with the problem. In the case of Billy Pilgrim, the way his
unconscious has chosen to deal with the problem is to weep very
quietly and without much moisture (61). The only other time the
reader is made aware of Billy having repressed something, Billy
bursts into tears (197). It's good that Billy can express his
emotions like that, but the crying incident comes at a very
traumatic time in his life when he is still little more than
a child, and to not have cried would have been very strange.
Unfortunately, Billy finds that later in life he, like many
people, including Vonnegut, has problems expressing his emotions
- even emotions of joy (204).
Early in Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut draws for the reader
the monument that has been erected over the grave of Kilgore
Trout. The inscription on the monument is a quote from Trout's
two-hundred-and-ninth, and final, novel. The quote reads, "'We are
healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane'" (16). Thus,
the tone is set for a novel that has as its focal point the mental
problems of one of the story's two main characters. That Vonnegut
would be addressing psychological stability at this time is only
natural being as his son Mark had recently been hospitalized for
schizophrenia.
There are three main topics of psychology in Breakfast of
Champions. The first one Vonnegut only touches on, though he
briefly returns to the thought in Slapstick and Jailbird, and that
thought is that childhood experiences can have a lifetime effect
on people. In Breakfast of Champions he refers to Kilgore Trout's
depressing childhood and the pessimism it spawned. This pessimism
is what destroyed his three marriages and drove away his only son
at the age of fourteen (31). The reference in Slapstick to
childhood experiences is a quote from Dostoyevski: "'One sacred
memory from childhood is perhaps the best education'" (90). In
Jailbird, Walter Starbuck reflects how, when he was in college at
Harvard, his plan was to prepare himself for a career as a public
servant. Only as an older man does he realize that that wasn't
necessarily his plan, it was the plan of his mentor, Alexander
McCone (47). McCone had been such a childhood influence that it
was years before Starbuck could discern between his own thoughts
and McCone's.
The next topic that Vonnegut covers is the amazing fear people
have of change. This is a subject he addresses quite frequently.
The first example occurs in a beautiful little story Vonnegut
tells about Bill, Kilgore Trout's pet parakeet. Trout decides that
he likes Bill so much that he will make Bill's three biggest
wishes come true. First, Trout opens the door of the bird cage.
Bill flies over to a windowsill. Next, Trout opens the window.
Bill flies back into his cage. Finally, Trout closes the door
behind Bill and commends him for his wisdom (BC 35).
The next example given of how we fear change is a passing
comment Vonnegut makes about Trout as Kilgore finds himself alone
at night in New York City. Trout was petrified, and even though he
had a life that was not worth living, he had an iron will to live,
which is a common combination for people to have (BC 71-2). Even
though most of us live mundane lives and have little or nothing to
live for, we still tenaciously cling to our pathetic existence
because death is change; worst of all, we don't really know what
the change will be, so we fear it all the more. We fear change so
much that even Wayne Hoobler soon misses his life as a convict in
prison on the very day he's released from there (BC 189).
Vonnegut returns to his views on how we fear change in
Slapstick, only in Slapstick he's more subtle in his approach. The
first example he uses involves Wilbur and Eliza as they are
growing up. They were growing (changing) so quickly when they were
young that a great gong was installed in the kitchen of the house
they were living in. The gong was connected to push- buttons in
every room and at regular intervals down every corridor. A button
was to be pushed only if Wilbur or Eliza began to toy with murder
(32-3). Since they were so big it was assumed that they had the
physical capability of tearing a person apart, which they probably
did, and since children change as they grow up, naturally if was
feared that they would turn into marauding animals.
Another example of the fear of change involves the repetition
in the lives of Wilbur and Eliza. Whenever Dr. Mott congratulated
them on their healthy appetites and regular bowel movements they
would always react in the same way. Eliza and Wilbur came to the
conclusion that life can be painless if one is simply allowed to
repeat a dozen or so rituals endlessly (43-4). The reason that
this makes life so painless is because rituals are comforting, and
the sameness of them leaves us nothing to fear (204).
The final topic Vonnegut dives into regarding psychology in
Breakfast of Champions also spills over into Slapstick. It is
Vonnegut's assertion in Breakfast of Champions that mental
problems are due to a physical problem (usually a chemical
imbalance) and have nothing to do with actual thought processes
that are working independently of the physical body. Vonnegut
makes this point many times.
His initial comment on this comes in passing, as he mentions
that the bad chemicals in Dwayne Hoover made him forget all about
Hawaiian Week at his automobile dealership (99). Then he states
that the same bad chemicals which troubled Dwayne also confused
the assassins of John F. Kennedy and led to their shooting of him
(133). On the same page Vonnegut blames the Holocaust of the Jews
on bad chemicals.
Later, Dwayne begins an argument with his mistress, Francine
Pefko, and that, too, can be blamed on the chemicals that reside
in his brain (159). Towards the end of the novel it is Dwayne's
bad chemicals that cause him to drag Francine onto the asphalt of
the dealership parking lot and give her a beating (272). However,
we shouldn't get the impression that bad chemicals are always
behind irrational acts. Sometimes the cause is a brain tumor, such
as the one found in Will Fairchild, which caused him to become the
most famous murderer in the history of Midland City (287).
The views expressed in Slapstick are not as obvious, or as
numerous, as those given in Breakfast of Champions. In fact, they
only appear in one brief section, which starts with Wilbur and
Eliza's mother shrieking due to the bang sound made by a bit of
steam escaping from a soggy log that was burning in a fireplace.
She shrieked because her chemicals insisted that she shriek in
reponse to the sound (65). Seconds later these very same chemicals
make her curse her children, saying she hates them, she hates
them, she hates them. But she soon asks for forgiveness from her
husband for what she has said, and he grants it to her (66-8).
While Vonnegut is known for his generalizations, this approach
to psychology is an overgeneralization. While many mental
illnesses, like his son's, are due to a chemical imbalance, many
other psychological problems are the result of an individual's
attempt to cope with the world around him or her, and have nothing
to do with chemical imbalances. Still, Vonnegut shows empathy and
compassion for his chemically imbalanced characters, something
that is too seldomly found on this planet.
A good comment that Vonnegut makes about the psychological
make-up of people is in regards to cowards. He rightfully points
out that scared, insecure people often act very tough, and try to
bully others around, as a way to compensate for their cowardice
(S 101). Vonnegut addresses this balancing act again, though more
sensitively, in Jailbird when he describes Dr. Bob Fender's love
for the subtlety and delicacy of all things Japanese as a way to
compensate for his huge hands and feet and all (105). He also
touches on this through the character of Sarah Wyatt. Sarah shows
how many people use humor to cope with the horrors and atrocities
of life (175). This is an attempt to attain balance between joy
and sorrow.
Two other remarks Vonnegut makes in Slapstick are that we do
a good job of forgetting (repressing) incidents and occurrences
which might eventually bring us grief, especially during childhood
(110), and that we all hate, and there is no harm in that (176).
Both of these are astute observations.
In Jailbird Vonnegut shows how personality types fit into
a society regardless of the situation. What Izumi tells Fender
about communism and her loyalty to it simply sounds like "'common
sense on the part of a good person from an alternate universe'"
(106). People who are willing to fight for the good of the
commoners are going to join whatever organization is available to
them to best attain this end, whether it's joining the Communist
Party, Democratic Party, Labour Party, or an underground movement.
Likewise, a person who supports big business will join the
Conservative Party or Republican Party. This also applies to
religious zealots. Hardline conservative fundamentalist Christians
in our country, like Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, and Pat
Robertson, would be seeking to become an ayatollah if they
happened to have been born and raised in Iran. All of this just
goes to show how much alike so many of us are, regardless of
whether we come from Russia, France, Zaire, or the United States.
Philosophy
One of Vonnegut's major assertions is that all moments in time
exist simultaneously, like a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. Just
because we can only see one small section of the Rockies at any
one time doesn't mean the rest of the mountain range doesn't
exist. Time is structured in the same way (SF 26-7).
Vonnegut uses an excellent metaphor to illustrate this point.
He tells of a time when Billy Pilgrim is on maneuvers and taking
part in a Sunday morning worship service with about fifty other
soldiers. They are informed by an umpire that they had been
theoretically spotted from the air by a theoretical enemy, and
they were now all theoretically dead. So the theoretical corpses
ate a hearty meal and laughed (SF 31). To be dead and feasting at
the same time is the exact point of believing that all moments in
time exist simultaneously.
A thought that grows out of this believe is that there is no
need for a heaven. Using the normal concept of time, George Jean
Nathan had died in 1958 (SF 199). Most people would think that his
body was no more and his soul was in Heaven or Hell. However, the
Vonnegut view is that the body is still very much alive somewhere,
and his soul is with it.
The only philosophical thoughts of Vonnegut's that appear in
all four novels are that we are all utterly insignificant (SF
49), and nothing really matters (SF 66). Vonnegut bounces back and
forth between our insignificance (SF 100), and the meaninglessness
of life (SF 101), and then back (SF 113) and forth (SF 156) again.
Yet all of his brief comments and asides about our insignificance
and the belief that nothing matters can be summed up in the last
line of Slaughterhouse-Five: "One bird said to Billy Pilgrim,
'Poo-tee- weet?'" (215). With all that had happened, the moments
in time are still existing just the same.
Vonnegut uses metaphors in the other three novels to
illuminate his views on our insignificance. In Breakfast of
Champions he makes his point succinctly in a brief aside about
Kilgore Trout (106). The point is made in Slapstick, too, as Vera
Chipmunk-5 Zappa admits to feeling as insignificant as an ant
(208-9). A metaphor is used in Jailbird to illuminate the point,
and Vonnegut also explains the metaphor, stating that we are here
for no purpose, and that the world would be no different had he
spent his entire life carrying a rubber ice cream cone from closet
to closet (277-8). Vonnegut's view of reality is refreshing and on
target. When the delirious Colonel Wild Bob, who has had his
entire regiment killed, addresses a group of strangers as his
regiment, he is addressing his regiment, as far as his reality is
concerned at the time (SF 67). When Billy and Valencia are making
love, and she imagines Billy is Christopher Columbus and she is
Queen Elizabeth the First of England, she really is the queen, as
far as her version of reality is concerned (SF 118). Bertram
Copeland Rumfoord creates his own viable reality when he treats
Billy's words as a foreign language, and even though Billy is
speaking English to the English-speaking Rumfoord, it's still
impossible for Billy to communicate with him without an
interpreter (SF 192). But all the views of reality that are shown
in Slaughterhouse-Five can be summed up in one sentence that is
spoken by the artist Rabo Karabekian in Breakfast of Champions
when he defines what truth (reality) is: "'It's some crazy thing
my neighbor believes'" (209).
There are a few other scattered philosophical remarks made by
Vonnegut in these novels. One is made via metaphor as Vonnegut
shows the luxurious railroad car of the German guards which is
attached to the chaos and filth of the prison cars of the POW's,
showing the close relationship between happiness and sadness (SF
68). When the train arrives at the prison camp and the German
soldiers need to get the U.S. POW's out of the car, they only need
to do what they could do to get any mass of people to move in
a desired direction - give them a light to go to and coo calmingly
(SF 80). People are all the same in many respects; this is merely
one of those respects.
Eliot Rosewater espouses a few bits of wisdom while he and
Billy are residing in the veterans' hospital. Rosewater asserts
that everything there is to know about life was in The Brothers
Karamazov by Dostoyevski. "'But that isn't enough any more,'" says
Rosewater. So he and Billy set off to try to re-invent themselves
and their universe (SF 101).
Vonnegut makes two quick philosophical points in Jailbird.
A catastrophe has just occurred, and Walter Starbuck knows what it
is - the sun has come up again (166). Could he make any more of
a condemnation of our lives? He follows this up with
a condemnation of rich people. Because rich people are never faced
with problems that aren't as easy as pie to solve, they have never
lived - no one can say what they are (178).
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
(the main page, abstract, evaluation form...)
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 - AUTOBIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 2 - PHILOSOPHY AND OPINIONS
CHAPTER 3 - STYLE
WORKS CITED
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