Throughout the course of the novel, I've found myself feeling very sympathetic for poor Billy Pilgram. He becomes a prisoner of war, witnesses one of the worst firebombings in history, marries a fat women for her money, and gets kidnapped by aliens and deemed insane for telling his story. But worst of all, due to his uncontrolled ability to travel in time, he knows everything both good and bad that is to happen in the future, and has absolutely no power to change it. While at first I was a bit taken back on Billy constantly having no desire to live, given his situation, I don't really blame him. However this begs the question, why would Vonnegut intentionally create this type of protagonist to tell his extremely serious and emotionally dramatic story?
The main reason I believe someone could possibly create Billy's unmotivated and detached persona as a protagonist, is to go against the idea of the traditional war narrative. In the very first chapter, Vonnegut admits he made a promise to Mary O'hare that he wouldn't glorify the horrors of war to inspire the next generation to feel like they need to prove themselves as men in battle in his book. With this promise in mind, Vonnegut seems to do everything in his power to insure Billy can not be seen as a hero. By the end of reading this novel, I believe Vonnegut's desired effect was to not have any reader aspire to be like Billy's character, creating almost an anti-role model. This is especially due given the science-fiction plot twist to the novel with his claims of the Tralfamodore planet, making Billy's life seem even more isolated and sad than ever.
While Vonnegut originally struggles with identifying his novel as an official "anti-war" book, I feel like the message clearly comes across through Billy's persona as a protagonist. By depicting such a sad, childlike, and almost comical figure to share his extremely serious story, Vonnegut is creating a different type of metanarrative that can be argued as more relatable to the actual type of young kid fighting in the war itself at the time.
I agree totally: to look back on the first chapter, Mary O'Hare gives her view on the general war novels whose movies are headlined by the likes of Frank Sinatra and John Wayne. Can anyone imagine Billy Pilgrim played by either of those characters? He is, indeed, the ultimate anti-hero.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of Billy as an anti-role model, and I can see how Vonnegut maybe made Billy to be sad and pathetic and also coincidentally a war veteran, and how this could potentially cause people to think more negatively about every aspect of Billy. This sounds kind of mean, but for an anti-war novel, I suppose it's a good method, I can see it being very effective in a lot of people. I totally agree with you, it seems like a story that has war, time travelling, and aliens would have someone more intense and noble as the protagonist, but by using Billy, Vonnegut is going after something bigger than just a fun read.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a pathetic, powerless, and sympathetic protagonist fighting in a war that he really doesn't want to be in is probably the exact image Vonnegut wanted to create for his main character. Like you mentioned, Vonnegut writes this book for Mary O'Hare, and calls it the "Children's Crusade." Billy Pilgrim's story, though unconventional, makes us think about the war more critically than we might have if Billy was some gung-ho war hero. So I think Vonnegut definitely succeeds with his "anti-war" book, and he does it in a way that is surprising and new (even for us teens who have grown up with some of the postmodernist elements that were more novel for the readers of the 1970's).
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that Billy is nowhere near a traditional hero, but I think that given his situation and his exposure to the Tralfamadorians, he should indeed be considered heroic. If I knew, for example, exactly what would happen at every moment in time, including how the universe would end, and that even if I tried I could do nothing to stop it, I would feel very depressed and apathetic. Even if I didn't know all of this, but only knew, as Billy did, that the future is set in stone, and no matter what I do, I cannot hope to improve it, I would find it hard to have the motivation to get up every morning. As such, I admire Billy for the fact that he does go back and think about Dresden, and if he is a representation of Vonnegut, that he has the motivation to write a whole book advocating against war. If nothing can change the future and war is inevitable, as the Tralfamadorians think, why put so much effort into trying to stop it?
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Billy is almost detached from all of the happenings means that it's almost a narrator's view, as opposed to the main character in the action. For Vonnegut's purposes of making a novel against war, this kind of perspective seems appropriate in reducing any heroism that Billy would've shown.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Billy is almost detached from all of the happenings means that it's almost a narrator's view, as opposed to the main character in the action. For Vonnegut's purposes of making a novel against war, this kind of perspective seems appropriate in reducing any heroism that Billy would've shown.
ReplyDeleteThis view of Billy certainly makes sense, if we think of "role model" in terms of the "role" of war hero or traditional protagonist. But the sympathy you describe for him is connected to another common feeling about Billy, a kind of envy at his apparent inner peace and generally blissful/blessed vibe. And he does present himself as something of a messianic guru, if not a role model, in the later part of his life (to the extent that that distinction even makes sense in this novel!), when he takes on the role of spreading the good news about Tralfamadorian time. Surprisingly, Billy becomes a kind of role model as an anti-war hero, telling everyone that everything's okay and there's really no death and everything happens because it has to happen.
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