Kurt Vonnegut = A pillar of salt, (Slaughter House 5 Blog, theme of loss of meaning of life)

Kurt Vonnegut was an author that I have grown to admire and have attempted to emulate in my own writing. The power and truth of his harsh and mournful views of this tiny planet have moved my perspectives, thoughts, and feelings of life.

Vonnegut was a grumpy old man who always express in his writing a theme of dehumanization or loss of meaning of life for the human race. He even writes in Breakfast of Champions:

“I tend to think of human beings as huge, rubbery test tubes, too, with chemical reactions seething inside.”

Strong words. In the PBS special we watched in class, Vonnegut, as he was nearing the end of his life, said referring to the human race as a whole:

“(Sigh) Look, after two world wars and the holocaust and the nuclear bombing of Urashima and Nagasaki and after the Roman games and after the Spanish Inquisition and after burning witches in public, shouldn’t we call it off? (Speaking with laughter) I mean we are a disease and should be ashamed of ourselves.”

In “Slaughter-House Five” and also in a lot of his writing, Vonnegut infuses this dehumanization theme that tends to depress regular people with a fresh and unique style of black humor. A few examples:

"Even though Billy's train wasn't moving, its boxcars were kept locked tight. Nobody was to get off until the final destination. To the guards who walked up and down outside, each car became a single organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilators. It talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too. In went water and loaves of black-bread and sausage and cheese, and out came shit and piss and language."

Here, Vonnegut refers a boxcar moving POW’s to Germany and compares it any other ‘organism’. He doesn’t show any meaning and describes the box-car full of soldiers as nothing more than animals that talk, eat, and excrete.

“So it goes.”

This phrase occurs over 100 times in the book, and is mentioned anytime after death is in subject. It is said in the same toned no matter the nature of death that is being mentioned. It could be accidental, on purpose, or a massacre but all Vonnegut says is “So it goes”. It also points out that no matter what anyone does; they are still going to die somehow and someway.

So is Vonnegut really saying that we are nothing special? Is our race nothing more than horrible killing machines or mindless animals? Even of knowing what Vonnegut said about the human race, I believe that Vonnegut shows, even though hard to believe, a message through this theme of dehumanization and the meaning of life. You can see it clearly through this quote, referring to a story in the bible:


“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for hat, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt.”


I love this quote, it really shows a message through the dark consequences of Lot’s wife being turned to a pillar of salt, and that message is clear to me: That we are all humans, we are all bound by the same vulgarities, the same emotions, and the same regrets. We are all confined on this little round floating rock by birth and then death. We need to accept that we have flaws; even Vonnegut calls himself “a pillar of salt” in the novel. He shows us through his dark dehumanization themes and criticism that we need to better ourselves from actions that can only be explained by a mindless statement such as “Poo-tee-weet”.

Vonnegut died about a year ago, I don't know how, but that is unimportant. What is important is that he lived. In that PBS special, I was shocked to hear him call us a disease… maybe somewhere he just gone off the rails, just lost hope His life is an example of how life can be more than a “disease”. So I propose this simple epitaph for Mr. Kurt Vonnegut. It is simple. It is short, and very impersonal. I think he would want that.

"Kurt Vonnegut: He lived.
Thank you.”