"As science gave man the opportunity to measure and observe a mechanical universe, it gave him the power to cause his own havoc too; it also robbed him of the language and imaginative framework within which to make sense of the ruin." Do you agree?
The answer will be illustrated by reference to selected works of Kurt Vonnegut and to the film Dr. Strangelove.
by Gary Cahalane
1995, London
cygenesis@yahoo.com
"I love you sons of bitches...You're the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us,...what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstandings, mistakes, accidents and catastrophes do to us."
Eliot Rosewater addressing a convention of science-fiction writers. (1)
"When it went off in the New Mexico dawn, that first atomic bomb, we thought of Alfred Nobel, and his hope, his vain hope, that dynamite would end all wars." Robert Oppenheimer (2)
"In my mind's eye, like a waking dream. I could still see the tongues of fire at work on the bodies of men." Masuji Ibuse, Black Rain (3)
" 'It is my duty to describe something beyond the imagination of mankind,' the correspondent for the London Times began his despatch in April 1945, after British troops marched into Belsen." (4) As James Lundquist suggests "The problem that Vonnegut faces..." (5), as do all of us, "...is essentially the same as the one the correspondent had to face at Belsen - the horrors of life in the twentieth centtury and our imaginative ability to comprehend their full actuality. (6)" For we are all, as one of the many subtitles to Slaughterhouse 5 reminds us, performing "a duty-dance with death" (7).
"The history of the 20th century reads like a third-rate penny dreadful...From 1914 to 1991, more people were killed or allowed to die by human decision than ever before in history. A recent rough estimate is 187m." (8) Against such figures, the question posed by Lactantius: "What is so dreadful...what so dismal and revolting, as the murder of a human creature?"(9) appears a gruesome jest.
It is hard to find a response to the levels of horror that assail us is this blood-soaked century. In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut notes that: "'Sometimes the pool-pah,' Bokonon tells us, 'exceeds the power of humans to comment.' Bokonon translates pool-pah at one point...as 'shit storm' and at another point as 'wrath of God'." (10)
Vonnegut sent his publisher the manuscript of Slaughterhouse 5, writing that: "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everybody is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like 'Poo-tee-weet?'." (11)
It is appropriate then, that the last sentence of Slaughterhouse 5 is: "One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, 'Poo- tee-weet?' (12) In Cat's Cradle a bird has to make an early appearance, because after ice-nine has been loosed there will be no birds left alive. In the moment before 'Papa' Monzano's body falls into the sea, a bird crys out as if asking what had happened. "Poo-tee-phweet." (13)
Vonnegut is not the only one who faced difficulties of expression. Jonathan Schell wrote that "a nuclear holocaust...appears to confront us with an action that we can perform and cannot quite concieve." (14) During the Cuban Missile Crisis, which influenced both Cat's Cradle (by suggesting that a small Carribean Island and its beliefs can effect the fate of the whole world,) and Dr. Strangelove; John F. Kennedy seemed to suffer agonies of incomprehension:
"Was the world on the brink of a holocaust? Was it our error? A mistake? Was there something further that should have been done? Or not done? His hand went up to his face and covered his mouth. He opened and closed his fist. His face seemed drawn, his eyes pained...One thousand miles away in the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean the final decisions were going to be made in the next few minutes. President Kennedy had initiated the course of events, but he no longer had any control over them". (15)
It's an irony worthy of Vonnegut that the author of these words, Robert Kennedy, was shot two days before Vonnegut began the last chapter of Slaughterhouse 5 and could thus be dismissed from the balance sheet of history with a timely "so it goes." (16) As Cat's Cradle says " 'It's a small world'...'When you put it in a cemetery, it is.' " (17)
Angela Carter connected Dr. Strangelove and Cuba in the cultural memory. "One of the great dates in my life was the Cuban Missile Crisis, after which, as you know, we all stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb. Learned to love it, we learned to forget it." (18)
The bomb can be so denied, as Martin Amis points out: "Language cannot live with it, and if language can't, we can't, and we don't...You arrange your defenses for something like this and the most appropriate one is to numb yourself...This is just one aspect of language not being able to deal with it. There's a whole lexicon of jargon and euphemism where nuclear war is called conflict management." (19) Such farcical militarist use of language is perfectly illustrated in Dr. Strangelove by the following exchange between President Muffley and General Turgidson:
"You're talking about mass murder general, not war."
"Mr President. I'm not saying that we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say. No more than 10-20 million killed. Tops!" (20)
But is denial in the face of people and weapons that "threaten to end history", (21) a wise response? Is it right that we should just concede that language can't cope, that,
"when one tries to face the nuclear predicament, one feels sick, whereas when one pushes it out of mind, as apparently one must do most of the time to carry on with life, one feels well again" ? (22) And, how does this behaviour stand in relation to Bokonon's advice, that we should "Live by the foma [harmless untruths] that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy." (23)
There is no definitive answer because it depends on one's personal point of view. On whether you regard denial as harmful or harmless lying. Jonathan Schell believes that "a society that systematically shuts its eyes to an urgent peril to its physical survival and fails to take any steps to save itself cannot be called psychologically well." (24) He is probably right about society in general, but my problem is one of individual response. I do not believe that there is much that I can do if some maniac decides to blow up the planet, ultimately my only real possible retaliation to the vagarities of "Zah-mah-ki-bo" (25) is to thumb "my nose at You Know Who." (26)
I therefore shelter myself in the illusion of solid surroundings. This response in Cat's Cradle is seen by James Lundquist as "a joke on all mankind - the notion that the physical world will remain stable, that water will always solidify at the same temperature, that the climate will always remain hospitable in the warm southern seas" (27), rather then being ravaged by worm-like tornadoes which feast upon the planet's corpse.
The illusionary future is also one of the funniest, and cruel, themes of Dr. Strangelove. Kong tells his crew that, they are "all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with." (28)
As Kong speaks, the soundtrack plays: 'When Johnny comes marching home again...'. The tune is ironic because we suspect that they won't be going anywhere ever again, and also because, as a song with a particular connection to the American Civil war, it reminds us that they are fighting a kind of civil war, sibling against sibling of a sort, for we are all human, and should therefore be on the same side.
Vonnegut's work is an affirmation of this kind of humanity. For via what has been been described as "his teasing...with a Mod Yoknapatawpha County" (29), he more than most is writer as "drugs salesman" (3O), providing the foma to help sooth a society "in pain" (31).
He has lived an amazing life, like the narrator's in Cat's Cradle, his Karass seems to have "been working night and day for nearly half a million years to get [him] up that mountain." (32) The mountain in question being the formation of 'a language and imaginative framework to make sense of the ruin.'
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in 1922. The date "guaranteed...the two experiences that most seem to have shaped his thought and development, the great depression and World War II". (33) "The depression early impressed Vonnegut with the enormous amount of suffering in the world." (34) "His father, who was a second generation architect, went ten years without a commission." (35)
It was the radio and film comedians of the period that helped him survive. "[My] deepest cultural debts are to Laurel and Hardy,...Buster Keaton,...Jack Benny...They made me hilarious during the Great Depression, and all the lesser depressions after that." (36) He would need his humour, for his is a life rich in the sort of absurd ironies that populate his novels, and as a product of generations of ardent religious sceptics, he does not believe in a God to blame them on.
His ancestors were all German, but had deprived him of a German cultural heritage because of first world war anti- German feeling. In World Two he went to the 'father-land' just after his mother committed suicide. There he was to fight Germans 'the enemy', but was captured and went through the experiences detailed in Slaughterhouse 5, surviving "the greatest massacre in European History" (37) in a meat locker surrounded by "cadavers' (38). He should have been a third generation architect but instead saw the aftermath of the destruction of one of the most beautiful of pre-war cities.
It is no wonder that Vonnegut should feel the need to meet fate "every time a character die[d]" (39) with a: "So it goes."(40) For he sees himself as echoing Celine's belief that "Death and suffering can't matter nearly as much as I think they do. Since they are so common, my taking them so seriously must mean that I am insane. I must try to be saner." (41)
Vonnegut is akin to the survivors of Hiroshima: Who "still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition - a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors...- that spared him...
...And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see." (42)
Vonnegut's life is full of such bizarre twists of fate as that which befell his sister Alice: " 'Soap opera!' she said...when discussing her own impending death. 'Slapstick,' she said...hers would have been an unremarkable death statistically, if it were not for one detail, which is this. Her healthy husband...had died two mornings before - on...the only train in American railroading history to hurl itself off an open drawbridge...she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place." (43) Accidents, like the execution of Edgar Derby in ruined Dresden, or the death of the young man crushed by a lift on Vonnegut's first day as a news reporter.
Here we have the major clue to the mode of response at work in Vonnegut's writings and in Dr. Strangelove, perhaps the only mode of response possible in the circumstances. For what we are here presented with could be summed up by Raymond Chandler's view that "it is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little." (44) The narrator's growing sense of an absurd destiny in Cat's Cradle, mirrors that of the Flitcraft incident in The Maltese Falcon, "the life he knew was a clean, orderly, sane, responsible affair...a falling beam had shown him that life was fundamentally none of these things." (45)
Vonnegut, (46) and the existentialist, Sartre, both share a vision of man "born into a kind of void,...a mud." (47)
Bokonon's belief that "each one of us has to be what he or she is" (48), is almost word for word the dictionary definition of existentialism: "the human being is obliged to make himself what he is, and has to be what he is." (49) Which is in turn echoed by Dashiell Hammett's view that "character is fixed". (50)
Vonnegut has, I suggest, taken the fatalism and existentialism inherent in the 'hard-boiled' view of life, and added jokes and absurdity. He was taught to react to suffering during the depression by using defensive laughter, and he uses it still as a protection against harshest reality, as way of making 'sense of the ruin'.
The techniques that Kubrick uses in Dr. Strangelove are the 'hard-boiled' conventions made cinematic: gritty realism side by side with the heightened lights and shadows of film noir. This is hardly surprising, for most of Kubrick's early material such as The Killing inhabited the meanest streets. But Kubrick does differ from Vonnegut in one vital respect.
"Kubrick has been frequently been criticized for having lost interest in mankind since Dr. Strangelove." (51) Nobody could accuse Vonnegut of such a failing, after all, there is only one thing sacred to Bokononists: "Man,...that's all, just man." (52) Yet it is sometimes hard to see how he retains faith in us as a species. His work, which is resolutely humane, is frequently condemned and burned in his own country. Such a response strikes him as "dumb" (53).
"History!' writes Bokonon. 'Read it and weep!" (54) For the real story of the bomb is the blackest comedy of all.
The reality is one in which one man can affect many, as Henry Stimson did when he changed the first Nuclear target from Kyoto to Hiroshima because he wanted to pull rank on the head of the Manhattan project. (55)
It's a reality in which: Enrico Fermi, just before the Trinity test, "suddenly offered to take wagers from fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world." (56)
And, in which: "the Radar Laboratory at [M.I.T] was named the 'Radiation Laboratory' as a security cover. Scientists hoped to fool the Germans into thinking “that instead of working on something really useful and practical like radar, that we were wasting our time on something completely impractical and useless like an atomic bomb." (57)
The Cold War has finished, but still deep in denial, we do not ask 'where have all the warheads gone?' Because the answer might upset us. Like the citizens of Sodom or Gormorrah, we just trust that our surroundings will remain uncharcoaled by the wrath of man or god.
Lot's wife was sure she would survive then and Vonnegut loves her, he loves her for the same reason that I adore his writing and the telephone calls between heads of state in Dr. Strangelove, for the same reason that Eliot Rosewater loves his science fiction writers. "[She] was told not to look back...But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it [is] so human. " (58)
Ultimately however, Lot's wife paid the price for her humanity, turned into a pillar of salt, she no longer found it necessary to make sense of the ruin because she became a part of it. Let's hope such a fate does not await us all.
Annotations:
1. Vonnegut, K, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, p.27, Quoted By, Wood, K & C, 'The Vonnegut Effect: Science Fiction and Beyond.', p. 141, IN, Klinkowitz, J, & Somer, J (Ed.), The Vonnegut Statement, Panther, 1975
2. Quoted by, Rhodes, R, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Simon and Shuster, London, 1986, p. 676
3. ibid., p. 712
4. Lundquist, J, Kurt Vonnegut, Frederick Unger, New York, 1977, p. 69
5. ibid., p. 69
6. ibid., p. 69
7. Vonnegut, K, Slaughterhouse 5, Vintage, London, 1991, title page
8. Eagleton, T, 'Where Will It All End?', IN, The Sunday Times, 13/11/94, p. 7.8.9. Ouoted By, De Quincey, T, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, Phillip Allan, 1925, p.3
10. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1965, p. 152
11. Vonnegut, K, Slaughterhouse 5, op. cit., p. 14
12. ibid., p. 157
13. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, op. cit., p. 162
14. Schell, J, The Fate of the Earth, Picador, London, 1982, p. 8
15. ibid., pp. 28-9
16. Vonnegut, K, Slaughterhouse 5, op. cit., p. 154
17. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, op. cit., p. 44
18. The Open University, The Next Five Minutes: Literature and the Bomb, Broadcast By: BBC2, 28/9/94
19. ibid.
20. Kubrick, S (Dir.), Kubrick, S, George, P, Southern, T (Screenplay), Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Hawk Films/Columbia, U.K, 1963
21. Schell, J, op. cit., p. 3
22. Schell, J, op. cit., p. 8
23. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, op. cit., p. 6
24. Schell, J, op. cit., p. 8
25. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, op. cit., p. 116
26. Schell, J, op. cit., p. 8
27. Lundquist, J, op. cit., p. 35
28. Kubrick, S, op. cit.
29. Klinkowitz, J, 'Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, and the Crimes of Our Time'IN, Klinkowitz, J, & Somer, J (Ed.), The Vonnegut Statement, Panther, 1975, p. 156
30. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, op. cit., p. 98
31. ibid., p. 98
32. ibid., p. 178
33. Lundquist, J, op. cit., p. 2
34. ibid., p. 2
35. Klinkowitz, J, 'Vonnegut in America', IN, Klinkowitz, J, & Lawlor, D L (Ed.), Vonnegut in America, Delta/Dell, New York, 1977, p. 8
36. Klinkowitz, J, 'Vonnegut in America' op. cit., p. 9
37. Vonnegut, K, Palm Sunday, Jonathan Cape, London, 1981, p. 92
38. ibid., p. 89
39. ibid., p. 296
40. ibid., p. 296
41. ibid., p. 296
42. Hershey, J, 'Hiroshima', IN, The New Yorker Book of War Pieces, Bloomsbury, London, 1989, p. 507
43. Vonnegut, K, Slapstick or Lonesome No More, Vintage, London, 1991, pp. 8-9
44. Chandler, R, 'The Simple Art of Murder', IN, Pearls are a Nuisance, IN,
The Chandler Collection: Volume Three, Picador/Pan, London, 1984, p. 191
45. Hammett, D, The Maltese Falcon, IN, Dashiell Hammett: The Four Great Novels,
Picador/Pan, London, 1982, p. 429
46. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, op. cit., p. 166
47. Cuddon, J A, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Term and Literary Theory, Penguin,1991, p.317
48. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, op. cit., p. 166
49. Cuddon, J A, op. cit., p. 317
50. Wolfe, P, Beams Falling: The Art of Dashiell Hammett, Bowling Green University, Ohio, 1980, p. 20
51. Ciment, M, Kubrick, Collins, London, 1983, p. 117
52. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, op. cit., p. 133
53. Vonnegut, K, Palm Sunday, op. cit., p 8
54. Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, op. cit., p. 157
55. Sherwin, M J, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance, Vintage, N.Y, 1977, p.230
56. Rhodes, R, op. cit., p. 664
57. Sherwin, M J, op. cit., pp. 18-19
58. Vonnegut, K, Slaughterhouse 5, op. cit., p. 16
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Chandler, R, 'The Simple Art of Murder', IN, Pearls are a Nuisance, IN, The Chandler Collection: Volume Three, Picador/Pan, London, 1984
Ciment, M, Kubrick, Collins, London, 1983
Cuddon, J A, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Term and Literary Theory, Penguin, London, 1991
De Quincey, T, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,
Phillip Allan, 1925
Eagleton, T,'Where Will It All End?' IN The Sunday Times,13/11/94, p. 7.8
Hammett, D, The Maltese Falcon, IN, Dashiell Hammett: The Four Great Novels, Picador/Pan, London, 1982
Hershey, J, 'Hiroshima', IN, The New Yorker Book of War Pieces, Bloomsbury, London, 1989
Klinkowitz, J, 'Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, and the Crimes of Our Time'
IN, Klinkowitz, J, & Somer, J (Ed.), The Vonnegut Statement,
Panther, 1975
Klinkowitz, J, 'Vonnegut in America', IN, Klinkowitz, J, &
Lawlor, D L (Ed.), Vonnegut in America, Delta/Dell, New York, 1977,
Lundquist, J, Kurt Vonnegut, Frederick Unger, New York, 1977
Rhodes, R, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Simon and Shuster, London, 1986
Schell, J, The Fate of the Earth, Picador, London, 1982
Sherwin, M J, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance, Vintage, New York, 1977
Vonnegut, K, Cat's Cradle, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1965
Vonnegut, K, Palm Sunday, Jonathan Cape, London, 1981
Vonnegut, K, Slapstick or Lonesome No More, Vintage, London, 1991
Vonnegut, K, Slaughterhouse 5, Vintage, London, 1991, title page
Wolfe, P, Beams Falling: The Art of Dashiell Hammett,
Bowling Green University, Ohio, 1980
Wood, K & C, 'The Vonnegut Effect: Science Fiction and Beyond.', IN, Klinkowitz, J, & Somer, J (Ed.), The Vonnegut Statement, Panther, 1975
Audio-Visual Sources:
Kubrick, S (Dir.), Kubrick, S, George, P, Southern, T (Screenplay),
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Hawk Films/Columbia, U.K, 1963
The Open University, The Next Five Minutes: Literature and the Bomb, Broadcast By: BBC2, 28/9/94
