Vonnegut as a "Bug in Amber"
Connection of Fiction and Autobiography in the Works of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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Playthings, puppets and the Puppet Master
Discussing the very nature of Humanity, one must come
across the question of responsibility, whether it is
Humanity who is responsible for its deeds or some higher
force. There seems to be a certain disagreement about the
answer to this question, both in Vonnegut's work and in
published critical work. Doris Lessing, a distinguished
British writer, for example, thinks that
Vonnegut is moral in an old-fashioned way. He
does take the full weight of responsibility, while
more and more people are shrugging off the we
should have and we ought to have and we can if we
want and coming to see history as a puppet show and
our -- humanity's -- slide into chaos as beyond our
prevention, our will, our choice. The strength of
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., this deliberate and self
conscious heir, derives from his refusal to succumb
to this new and general feeling of hopelessness.
(Lessing:35)
This argument can be opposed, for example, by Ranly who
notes that all Vonnegut's characters are "comic, pathetic
pieces, juggled about by some inexplicable fate, like
puppets" (Ranly:208). Both Ranly and Lessing use the word
puppet, yet they completely disagree about the issue of
responsibility in Vonnegut's work.
At this point, Ranly's argument will be examined more
closely. Humanity, as presented by Vonnegut, seems not to
have any free will, it seems to be an entity completely
ruled by some forces, either forces originating from inside
of the human being, or forces from "above", or both. In
neither case, however, Humanity has a way to protect itself
from these forces or do anything at all about them. Humanity
is led by these forces into all kinds of situations.
Humanity seems to be a puppet in the han d of a puppet
master, a plaything designed for amusement or for being
tested in how much it can stand. Vonnegut says this himself
in his book Slaughterhouse-Five:
there are almost no characters in this story, and
almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of
the people in it are so sick and so much the
listless playthings of enormous forces. (SH5:164)
Pawns, the lowest and least important of chess playing
stones, are what Vonnegut's characters can be compared to.
This argument is employed in Reed's book, for example
(Reed:209), and Jarab, who describes the main characters of
Slapstick and Mother Night as "simple and certainly useful
pawns, who, however, can be sacrificed anytime during the
big chess game of history" (Jarab:239, transl.). Also,
Vonnegut himself uses the idea of chess stones in his story
"All the King's Horses" (WTM:84-103), where chess is played
with real people, some soldiers, a woman and two little
children, instead of stones. The people are killed if they
are "taken" by the enemy. In the story, none of the people
is responsible for anything, any moves, any attacks, any
retreats etc. The only responsible characters are the two
players who decide on the moves, even though the players are
people in this case, too.
Another idea that compares people to playthings is the
quotation taken out of William Shakespeare's As You Like It:
"All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely
players" (TQK:38). People in Vonnegut's fiction really
appear to be actors, who do not act of their free will, but
that of the playwright.
Human life and its value
Showing that people are playthings or puppets or pawns
or players also leads to the right conception of the value
of human life in Vonnegut's writing. Frequent occurence of
death depicted in various ways is constantly present.
Generally speaking, there are two most remarkable views on
life and death. One of the views shows that human life is
priceless, very valuable, item of the highest importance.
The other view contradicts the first one, because it shows
that human life does not really have any value, that it can
be and often is wasted for almost any reason.
Life without price
Some works of Kurt Vonnegut show that human life does
not have a very great value or high price. This can be
concluded from several hints. In Galapagos, for example,
Vonnegut puts a star to every name of a person, who is going
to die in the following chapter. It is a rather amusing
feature at first, but later it makes the reader wonder about
the value of life, about the question whether that is all
that can be said about the loss of human life. "This person
is going to die" the star seems to say -- only that and
nothing more, no compassion, no feeling, nothing. The
greatest effect of using the stars with names of people
close to death is reached by using the star with Mandarax
(an amazing computer capable of doing almost everything,
from translating and interpreting all languages and quoting
famous people and famous quotations to, for example,
diagnosing a mental illness, or arranging flowers). The
computer is mentioned numerously throughout the whole book
and close to the end a star wi th the name Mandarax preceeds
its drowning in the sea. By using the same tool for both
human death and the end of Mandarax, Vonnegut appears to say
that the value of human life equals the value of a computer,
of a machine. The reader may wonder whether this example may
show that when a person dies in the book, it should evoke no
more feelings for the dying one than for a piece of
electronic equipment.
Furthermore, to stay with the novel Galapagos,
Vonnegut uses one phrase everytime somebody dies: "he
wasn't going to write Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway"
(e.g. GAL:244-245). In this way, another view is shown and
that is the opinion that the human life is valuable as long
as the person does something important in people's eyes: for
example, write a famous symphony. Otherwise, there need to
be no tears and no emotions about a dead person, who was
just another human being, one out of many. Similar phrase as
the one about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is used in
Slaughterhouse-Five. It is much shorter but, on the other
hand, it is used much more frequently. Everytime a character
dies, Vonnegut says "So it goes." The epitaph appears one
hundred and six times altogether throughout the novel. It is
no wonder death occurs so often in the novel, since the
prime topic of the book is the fire-bombing of Dresden in
World War Two. The phrase seems to suggest that it is not
a great tragedy when some body dies, that it is normal, and
does not deserve more time speaking about it than necessary.
In Deadeye Dick, when somebody dies, Vonnegut does not call
it dying. He writes that this person had their "peephole
closed" and when they are born, they simply have their
"peephole opened". This, again, seems to show, that human
life is no more than "peeping" through a hole and death
means only an end to this.
In Deadeye Dick, Vonnegut calls a neutron bomb
a "friendly bomb", because it destroys people and leaves all
the property untouched. (DED:34) DeMott asks a difficult
question: "Why do human beings take satisfaction in creating
a neutron bomb that destroys 'only' human beings, not their
accoutrements?" (DeMott, 1982:p.1) In this example property,
houses, cars, home equipment and other valuable things
appear to be worth much more than human lives.
A rather common theme in Vonnegut is showing people
who are reduced to mere numbers, be it soldiers (such as in
Sirens of Titan), or workers (e.g. Player Piano) or anybody
else. People reduced to numbers do not have much value,
either. In the story "The Lie" (WTM:222-236) Vonnegut shows
a young boy, Eli Remenzel, who is supposed to go to a very
prestigeous school, only because all the Remenzels in
history went there. On the way there, his mother counts all
his predecessors and finds out that Eli is actually number
thirty-one. His feelings do not matter, his wishes, his
fears do not matter. The only thing that matters is that he
is number thirty-one. The theme can be found in other works
as well, for example Sirens of Titan, Hocus Pocus, or Player
Piano. In "Harrison Bergeron" this theme can be recognized
as well. Vonnegut shows the readers a society where everyone
is completely equal, equal even in things as absurd as body
weight or intelligence or how one looks like. This, however,
redu ces the human being into a mere number, too. The person
loses his individual features, ceases to be special any
more. The people in "Harrison Bergeron", through acquiring
equality, reach uniformity and deformity of self instead.
To go further from showing unimportance of human
beings as individuals, it can be said that the same view is
taken for humankind in general, for Humanity. The novel
Galapagos demonstrates this very apparently. There is an
apocalypse and only a few people survive on the Galapagos
Islands. However, evolution does its work with this remnant
of humanity and people evolve into different kind of
species, a species with flippers instead of hands and
a brain that is much smaller and much less capable. Again,
there is no feeling or compassion for the lost species. It
seems that the world is better off without people, at least
people as we know them. It seems that the phrase "He wasn't
going to write Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway" can be
applied here, too, meaning that the same way people are
unimportant and there is nothing special about them,
Humanity is unimportant and there is nothing special about
it, either.
The only thing that matters: human life
The previous section has shown that humanity appears
to be disposable. However, this cynicism is not shared
everywhere in Vonnegut's work. On the contrary, there
appears another view which shows the value of human life in
a different light.
In Timequake, when Kilgore Trout observes dead and
dying people, a completely different attitude to human death
is seen. While the epitaph "he was not going to write
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway" could be inscribed
emotionlessly upon the grave of humanity in other novels,
Kilgore Trout does not share this:
The dead and dying were widely scattered, rather
than heaped or enclosed in a burning or crumpled
airplane or bus. They were still individuals. Alive
or dead, they still had personalities, with stories
to read in their faces and clothes. (TQK:110)
This humane view of dead people seems to be a rarity in
Vonnegut's books.
In the apocalyptic novel Cat's Cradle, there are many
other clues that can lead to the discovery that human life
is valuable. For Bokonists, there is one thing that matters,
one sacred thing. It is "not even God," there is "just one
thing." The answer to what it is, is neither the ocean, nor
the sun. It's "Man ... That's all. Just man" (CAT:143). For
example, when a Bokonist is about to commit suicide, he
always says: "Now I will destroy the whole world"
(CAT:160). Todd calls this kind of mora lism "vague, so
undemanding, a dreamily humanist nihilism..." (Todd:107).
Bryant finds more truth and maybe the foundation about
the human worth in Vonnegut's writing:
"Human worth -- and hence significance --
resides in the being of the human.The self is its
own reason for being: its being is its own
guarantee of its value." (Bryant:303)
Vonnegut, showing Humanity in the worst light possible, over
and over again describes that human lives are precious and
valuable in themselves. People do not need to prove to be
worthy, their worth is there no matter what kind of person
they happen to be. Vonnegut depicts ususally broken down
people, criminals, failures etc., while still showing the
fact that their value is great, beyond measurement.
Bugs in Amber
The lack of free will is a common feature in most of
Vonnegut's books. In Slaughterhouse-Five, for example
Vonnegut introduces the phrase 'bugs in amber'. One of the
examples is the passage which shows (from the view of the
Tralfamadorians) that the future is given and that one
cannot change it.
All moments, past, present, and future, always
have existed, always will exist. The
Tralfamadorians can look at all the different
moments just the way we can look at a stretch of
the Rocky Mountains, for instance. (SH5:27)
Another passage of the novel describes the theme more
directly. It is the part when the Tralfamadorians kidnap
Billy Pilgrim and he asks "why?".
"Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in
the amber of this moment. There is no why."
(SH5:76-77)
This concept views the world as a kind of amber and
everything in the world as a 'bug' trapped in it, unable to
control what it is doing, having no free will at all.
Humanity, according to this, cannot help what it is doing.
Thus Bokonon and Jonah in Cat's Cradle can sing a Bokonist
tune:
We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do, What we
must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily
bust. (CAT:178)
Timequake, Vonnegut's latest novel, deals with free will, or
the lack of it, very directly, too. In the story, there is
a timequake that causes the time to go back ten years.
Everything the people went through during the ten years,
they have to go through again, without any chance of
changing things. Vonnegut calls it a 'rerun' (e.g. TQK:123)
or an 'automatic pilot' (e.g. TQK:192). Just like a pilot
who has no control over a plane that is flown on an
automatic pilot, the characters and whole Humanit y has no
way of controling what is going to happen next.
The structure of Vonnegut's novels itself reveals the
fact that everything is set and the characters have no way
of changing the storyline. The plot is usually revealed in
the first couple of chapters (e.g. GAL, SH5, HOC, BOC etc.),
the reader almost always knows what is going to happen next.
The narrator often occupies a vantage point for observing
the whole story. In Slaughterhouse-Five, for instance, it is
the view of Tralfamadorians who see in the fourth dimension,
therefore see everything that has happened and that will
happen. In Galapagos it is the viewpoint of a ghost
narrating the story a million years after it actually
happened, therefore seeing it from a very similar point to
the Tralfamadorians?.
If there is a puppet which is actually doing
something, there also must be a puppet master. It is
difficult to recognize the puppet master, though. The
'enormous force' (SH5:164), the source of all acts of
Humanity differs from book to book. In Galapagos it is the
people's big brains. In some other books (e.g. HOC, BOC,
DED), it is chemicals or fault in the 'construction' of the
human being:
It is a big temptation to me, when I create
a character for a novel, to say that he is what he
is because of faulty wiring, or because of
microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or
failed to eat on that particular day. (BOC:4)
Some of the most gruesome accidents, says Vonnegut, "were
caused by people who had rendered themselves imbecillic or
maniacal because by ingesting too much of what, if taken in
moderation, could be a helpful chemical" (HOC:28). Wilbur
Swain's mother, in Slapstick, is described as "a symphony of
chemical reactions" (SLP:58). In some novels the source is
the sexual drive or other physical needs. The key word is
probably the word 'physical'. Vonnegut often sees the fault
in the body. In Bluebeard, for example, that fault is seen
in the 'meat': "I would hate to be responsible for what my
meat does." When people do something terrible, it is the
'meat's' fault (BLU:246).
On the other hand, in Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut
muses about the idea of God being the cause. He uses
a parallel: the 'destructive testing division' at the
Pontiac Division of General Motors, where
various parts of automobiles and even entire
automobiles were destroyed. Pontiac scientists set
upholstery on fire, threw gravel at windshields,
snapped crankshafts and driveshafts, staged
head-on collisions, tore gearshift levers out by
the roots, ran engines at high speeds with almost
no lubrication, opened and closed glove compartment
doors a hundred times a minute for days, cooled
dashboard clocks to within a few degrees of
absolute zero, and so on.
Everything you're not supposed to do to a car,
they did to a car. (BOC:165-166)
Vonnegut wonders if this is the reason what God put people
on earth for, whether it was to test them and find out how
much they can stand without breaking (BOC:166). From the
novel it seems that he thinks that this is, obviously, the
reason.
In Galapagos, he says that people are "nature's
experiments" (GAL:82), which corresponds with the above
view, only with one difference that Vonnegut uses the word
"nature" instead of "God". However, it can be assumed, that
he has one entity in mind, since both, nature and God can
take up the role of, or be seen as, the Creator of the
Universe, of the world, of the human beings.
After all, Vonnegut seems to imply, God is the creator
of the 'meat' and the designer of the 'big brain', both of
which a human being cannot control, both of which a human
being is subject to. Another clue of God being the source
can be seen: If God created the whole reality, then it is
the maker of the amber as well. What are people predestined
to do must have been predestined by God, the creator.
Whatever or whoever the puppet master might be, it
will hence be called Divinity, as a counterpart to Humanity.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I: Humanity
Characteristics of Humanity
Playthings, puppets
Human life and its value
Bugs in Amber
CHAPTER II: Divinity
Characteristics of Divinity
Other Divinity characters
The Divine Father
Religion
CHAPTER III: Hero vs Villain
Hero vs. Villain
Unsuccessful Ways Out
Successful Ways Out
Humanity vs. Divinity
On meaning and purpose of life
CHAPTER IV: Vonnegut as the Hero
Fiction and Autobiography merged
Vonnegutīs amber
Vonnegutīs ways out
CONCLUSION
List of Abbreviations Used
Bibliography
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Last modified: Apr 2, 1998