Foster Solomon

Dr. Holt

Science Fiction 12

4 December 2017

No End to War

Books have a beginning, a middle, and an end, in that order. Kurt Vonnegut chooses to

make Slaughterhouse-Five an exception to that description allowing him to forgo other typical

literary practices. He labels the prologue Chapter 1, writes in first person even though he is not

the main character, and uses text breaks when the same scene or thought continues. Still, the

most significant abnormality is the lack of a major climax. Vonnegut builds up to a big finale,

but there never is one, resulting in a sense that there is more to the story that is impossible to

discover, because the story of war is never complete.

Foreshadowing makes the absence of culmination of the story all the more apparent. A

chronological summary of Billy Pilgrims life is given at the beginning of the book, and the rest

of the book expands on that summary, but in the order that Billy experienced it, jumping from

time to time as a stream of consciousness would move from memory to memory. The reader is

never in suspense waiting to know what will happen he or she already knows but how and

when it will happen. Vonnegut only gives brief descriptions or focuses on small, seemingly

unimportant details, so the reader never fully understands how the event happened.

Chapter 1 first introduces the reader to the ending as Vonnegut tells his war buddy

Bernard V. OHare about the book he wants to write,

I think the climax of the book will be the execution of poor old Edgar Derby, I

said. The irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands and thousands
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of people are killed. And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for

taking a teapot. And he's given a regular trial, and then he's shot by a firing squad.

(Vonnegut 6)

Edgar Derbys death is continually mentioned through the rest of the book: at his introduction, in

the prison hospital, on Billys honeymoon, again in the prison hospital, etc. Now the reader

expects a dramatic scene with every detail of the minutes leading up to Derbys death, but there

never is. Only a brief paragraph informs the reader that Derby has died:

Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, was

caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for

plundering. He was tried and shot.

So it goes. ( Vonnegut 274)

After all the time spent foreshadowing Derbys death, the reader feels like there must be more to

the story than just that.

The bombing of Dresden compares to Derbys death in its foreshadowing to description

ratio. The book finished with the most momentous event of Billys life, an event foreshadowed

by the majority of the book, but only described it briefly without how it happened. Vonnegut

could have made the bombing one, huge, noteworthy climax, but spread it out throughout the last

few chapters, making the recount of the actual bombing seem very short and concise. Billys

time in Dresden is interspersed with experiences from other times in his life, preventing a

successive timeline and refusing a sense of completion for the reader.

Vonnegut informs the reader at the end of the first chapter that the book will end with

Poo-tee-weet?, but that in no way prepares the reader for the book to end (28). Although his

story is complete, Slaughterhouse-Five doesnt feel complete. Instead of the story drawing a line
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between a starting point and an ending point, the book is structured like an ascending, widening

spiral, one that can not stop (Allen). When the book ends, readers are left to keep climbing, but

without Vonneguts assistance, and each going in their own direction.

If told chronologically, the story could have definite beginning and end, but time follows

Tralfamadorian rules in Slaughterhouse-Five. Everything happened, so the order doesnt matter.

As the pages run out, the falling action and resolution that usually conclude a book have already

occurred, and the climax was split into sections scattered through several chapters. The book is

like a puzzle that hasnt been put together yet. Since all the pieces are there, a Tralfamadorian

would be able to see the whole picture, but a human can only see pieces. Although the reader has

the entire story, it is difficult to see the story as a whole. Therefore the reader cant place the

events in a way that gives the book a true end.

Vonnegut had outlined the Dresden story many times on one end of the wallpaper was

the beginning of the story, and the other end was the end, and then there was all that middle part,

which was the middle. In those outlines, the end was going home after the war, which is only

described in the first chapter from Vonneguts standing, never from Billys. However, just telling

the story of the events of the war was not enough to fully explain the bombing of Dresden. The

later effects of the bombing on the survivors lives also contributes to the story, like when Billy

admitted himself to a mental institute. The continued pain caused by Dresden could not be

expressed in a story with an ending.

Therefore, Vonnegut chose to use the human inability to see time as a whole to share

every part of his story, but make sure that the reader keeps thinking about the issues he

presented, lives lost in war and the survivors who will never be the same. He needed each event

to show The Childrens Crusade, but concluding the story would make his experience
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something of the past (Vonnegut 19). For Billy Pilgrim, the war always wages on as he jumps

through time because, as Tralfamadorians say, he is always in the war and he always will be,

along with Roland Weary, Edgar Derby, Kurt Vonnegut, Bernard V. OHare, Paul Lazzaro, and

every other soldier. The story of war never ending for them, it should never end for the reader.

No true complete story of a war will ever exist, and Vonnegut does not want the reader to

think that this story is the only one. Each person who died in World War Two could have written

a book about what they went through in the war, but never will. Each of the 135,000 people who

were killed in the bombing of Dresden had their own infinitely complex life that ultimately lead

to them being one of 135,000 nameless people who will never say anything or want anything

ever again. (Vonnegut 24)

Edgar Derby had a name and a story. He was a 44-year-old high school teacher of

Contemporary Problems in Western Civilization who lived in Indianapolis. He had a son, a

marine who survived the war. He had one of the best bodies of the Americans captured. All of

that disappeared when he was shot for stealing a teapot. Each person who died in Dresden had a

life just like Derby, which was taken simply because they lived in Dresden.

Slaughterhouse-Five has no conclusion because Vonnegut does not have the right to

conclude the bombing of Dresden. The story has no end. The absence of chronology allows him

to leave the reader without the satisfaction of knowing it is all over because it never is. There are

too many parts left unreported that can never be reported, and those who experienced it will

never stop experiencing it.Vonnegut wanted the reader to understand that this still happens; war

still happens; innocent people die for being born in the wrong place; young people continue to

die as expendable soldiers. So it goes. (Vonnegut 125)

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Works Cited

Allen, William Rodney. The Use of Time in Slaughterhouse-Five. Slaughterhouse-

Five, Chelsea House, 2006. Bloom's Literature,

online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Details/1937?q=slaughterhouse five. Accessed 28 Nov. 2017.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five, Or, the Children's Crusade: A Duty-dance with

Death. Dial Press trade pbk. ed., New York, Dial Press, 2009.