Billy's Tralfamadorian philosophy is seen by him as extremely comforting, as it gives the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, which in his case is almost everything. Others see his denial to ever try to answer the "Why" question about life as horrifying because it implies that the events of life are entirely arbitrary. The outlook of the book is also complicated because even among the numerous horrifying moments there are many of simple beauty and human goodness, how does it effect these moments if there is no "why" to any of them if they all occur arbitrarily and without purpose. One thing we have to take into account is that Billy is already an exceptional character, not only is he in no way aware of the narrative and discourse that is applied to war he has almost no agency in anything in the novel. The entire war he is either led around as a prisoner or follows Robert Weary, it's easier for him to just go with the way the moment has been structured.
While to us the outlook that our lives are arbitrary and that we have no freewill is maybe terrifying it's possible that for Vonnegut and for Billy there is a comforting almost therapeutic power in giving up on explaining the "why" of such horrible and such deep things. Vonnegut seems to feel some deep responsibility to explain Dresden and to communicate to others what really happened there, abandoning the "why" and leaving the event in some ways inexplicable helps him remove a burden. But this provides us with no framework for making the philosophy comforting for those who are not the damaged remainder of the children's crusade unless we believe that trying to impose some sort of narrative on our life (perhaps this is the duty-dance with death) is inherently stressful and giving up on it, which is incredibly hard to do is comforting. Perhaps rather then being damaged Billy and Vonnegut have simply been given the ability to give up on trying to impose meaning on their lives in a way that would be hard for us.
I don't think so though because the fact that both titles fit seem to imply the acceptance of both the senselessness of war and life in general and the necessity of dancing around death, of festooning it, of trying to give meaning to it because ultimately art is the duty dance with death. I think one of the core themes of this novel is reconciling the tension between these two ideas and I don't really have a way of doing that yet. But it's interesting to try I suppose.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Billy Pilgrim and PTSD
It is undeniable that there are certain ways in which Billy pilgrim being unstuck in time parallels PTSD. The sense in which he has no choice but to constantly experience the war, and the ways in which these experience tend to occur (or recur) based on experiences that remind him of the war. The fact that he didn't start speaking about Tralfamadore until after the plane crash and the ways in which it mirrors some of Kilgore Trout's novels gives us reason to believe that Billy's beliefs might be a sign if severe trauma. In addition the constant chorus of "Billy Pilgrim says" means it isn't necessarily established within the universe of the novel whether Tralfamadore actually exists or not. While it's probably a common and perfectly acceptable reading of Slaughterhouse-5 to say Billy's time travel is a metaphor for PTSD, and the philosophy as a testament to how horrible war is. I would argue that such a reading is very likely to undermine the validity of Billy's philosophy, and that that isn't necessarily a bad thing just something we need to be aware of.
Even leaving out all the problems our society has with mental illness and the ways in which labeling Billy PTSD can be seen as giving him a status as an abnormal person who's perspective must be fixed, regarding his philosophy as a testament to the damaging effect war has on people undermines his philosophy. The article we presented on Thursday Gothic "Un-representations’ of Terror in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 does just this. While the article doesn't focus on the relationship with PTSD the idea that Billy being forced to adopt this philosophy as a form of denial of the terror of war because answering the question "why" with regard to Dresden would have consequences so powerful Billy must deny them changes Billy's realizations about the nature of reality into denials of it's nature. It could almost be seen as a defense mechanism by us against the prospect of having to apply Billy's philosophy to our lives, if Billy's mindset, which forces him to give up trying to give meaning to the events of his world, is just a result of the horrors of war then it is simply a sign that we shouldn't engage in war anymore because it leaves people this jaded. The flip side of this is that then because we have never been exposed to the horrors of war and because billy's philosophy is only a product of trauma not a real insight into our world we don't have to give up on trying to answer the "why me" questions, a thing that I doubt any of us are willing to give up on.
Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, many people might find Tralfamadorian philosophy paralyzing and fatalistic rather then comforting and so want to use it is a testament to the wrongs of war then a legitimate philosophy. I think it's just important to realize how easy it is to undermine his philosophy by emphasizing it's traumatic origins (though talking about the origin of any of Billy's mindset makes little sense in the context of non linear time), and so we should be wary of overemphasizing the PTSD aspect of billy is we want to treat the philosophy seriously.
Even leaving out all the problems our society has with mental illness and the ways in which labeling Billy PTSD can be seen as giving him a status as an abnormal person who's perspective must be fixed, regarding his philosophy as a testament to the damaging effect war has on people undermines his philosophy. The article we presented on Thursday Gothic "Un-representations’ of Terror in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 does just this. While the article doesn't focus on the relationship with PTSD the idea that Billy being forced to adopt this philosophy as a form of denial of the terror of war because answering the question "why" with regard to Dresden would have consequences so powerful Billy must deny them changes Billy's realizations about the nature of reality into denials of it's nature. It could almost be seen as a defense mechanism by us against the prospect of having to apply Billy's philosophy to our lives, if Billy's mindset, which forces him to give up trying to give meaning to the events of his world, is just a result of the horrors of war then it is simply a sign that we shouldn't engage in war anymore because it leaves people this jaded. The flip side of this is that then because we have never been exposed to the horrors of war and because billy's philosophy is only a product of trauma not a real insight into our world we don't have to give up on trying to answer the "why me" questions, a thing that I doubt any of us are willing to give up on.
Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, many people might find Tralfamadorian philosophy paralyzing and fatalistic rather then comforting and so want to use it is a testament to the wrongs of war then a legitimate philosophy. I think it's just important to realize how easy it is to undermine his philosophy by emphasizing it's traumatic origins (though talking about the origin of any of Billy's mindset makes little sense in the context of non linear time), and so we should be wary of overemphasizing the PTSD aspect of billy is we want to treat the philosophy seriously.
Anticipation of Criticism in those books we read
One of the more well known aspects of postmodernist fiction is the breakdown of the barrier between the author and the reader. Ishmael Reed's signed note's, Vonnegut's first chapter in which he discusses the writing process and destroys any possible suspense as to what the conclusion will be, and Doctorow's facade that he is merely a researcher without the creation of any frame narrative beforehand all bring it to the readers attention that this is a constructed world that has been crafted. I think it is most likely a result of this willingness to break this barrier that many postmodernists are willing to insert anticipate and respond to the criticism they expect to face.
This is most prominent with Vonnegut and Reed, probably because their narratives are the least traditional and most likely to be labeled as purely fictional, untrue and irrelevant by the most banal of their detractors. Both of them include a point at which a character alleges that the alternative version of history central the narrative is simply untrue. For Reed this takes place immediately after he finishes the telling of his alternative history when the literary critic alleges that the story is simply false. In Vonnegut this takes place when Billy Pilgrim's daughter threatens to take away his dignity and freedom because his tales of Tralfamadore simply aren't true. By having the criticism voiced within the novel the authors make it clear that they are aware of the criticism and don't feel it is particularly relevant to the novel since obviously this isn't about debating historical truth.
While Vonnegut's doesn't really go much further into how we should understand his novel then to liken it to the telegraphic style of Tralfamadore, Reed does go into some greater depth. His passages on how essential a sense of humor is and his passages on the statues which caricature white colonialists suggest that we should take his statements about white culture with a sense of humor and an understanding that his mockery serves as a sort of satire and a sort of retribution for the ridicule of Africans by white people. So while I am sure including hints on how to read and understand the novel is not a solely postmodernist technique it seems to me that postmodernist would be more likely to do it then other writers. Furthermore it is a technique that I appreciate because it gives a stronger sense of what the writer is trying to tell us and what they want us to get out of the book. While the effect and the intent can sometime be totally different it is always interesting to see what the author intended.
This is most prominent with Vonnegut and Reed, probably because their narratives are the least traditional and most likely to be labeled as purely fictional, untrue and irrelevant by the most banal of their detractors. Both of them include a point at which a character alleges that the alternative version of history central the narrative is simply untrue. For Reed this takes place immediately after he finishes the telling of his alternative history when the literary critic alleges that the story is simply false. In Vonnegut this takes place when Billy Pilgrim's daughter threatens to take away his dignity and freedom because his tales of Tralfamadore simply aren't true. By having the criticism voiced within the novel the authors make it clear that they are aware of the criticism and don't feel it is particularly relevant to the novel since obviously this isn't about debating historical truth.
While Vonnegut's doesn't really go much further into how we should understand his novel then to liken it to the telegraphic style of Tralfamadore, Reed does go into some greater depth. His passages on how essential a sense of humor is and his passages on the statues which caricature white colonialists suggest that we should take his statements about white culture with a sense of humor and an understanding that his mockery serves as a sort of satire and a sort of retribution for the ridicule of Africans by white people. So while I am sure including hints on how to read and understand the novel is not a solely postmodernist technique it seems to me that postmodernist would be more likely to do it then other writers. Furthermore it is a technique that I appreciate because it gives a stronger sense of what the writer is trying to tell us and what they want us to get out of the book. While the effect and the intent can sometime be totally different it is always interesting to see what the author intended.
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