Keiran Eagen

10.2.2014
Humanities
Seminar Reflection
A comment was made about the Tralfamadorians and how they call us humans the great
explainers. I think this is a true statement, when considering how we must always ask why? This
happens when Billy Pilgrim has been kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians and Billy asks Why
me? the aliens calmly reply Why you, why anybody? They of course continue to call the
human race the great explainers. I started to think about why we continue to ask why (kind of
ironic right?) and it deepened my perspective on how Vonnegut describes humans in this book. I
think he sees as very smart but also we have such new ideas that are just mind blowing for the
aliens and even for some people in this world.
I am choosing to attempt at answering why Kurt Vonnegut narrates the first and last
chapters of this book. My hypothesis is that Kurt Vonnegut wanted to remind the reader that he
was there during the bombing of Dresden and that these events were seen through his eyes. It
was not like he had read up about and talked to former soldiers about it, he was there. He saw
what the firebombing did. All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty
much true.1 For me this is the really stand out quote to me. Vonnegut just throws it out there
right under our noses. He was there, it did happen. I think because it is on the very first page I
forgot about this a little bit but answering this question now makes me realize that this was
probably the most important quote in the book. Because we know then from the very beginning
that he was there.
This wont flow nicely with the rest of what I am writing but that is alright. As I sit in this
van with my close friends and I look out at this beautiful sunset that compares to none other, I
realize that the Tralfamadorians are so right. I feel as though I am only present in this moment as
I sit and see everyone living in their own moments. The seminar and the book have suggested
this as a fictional way of moving through time but I truly feel that we would never understand
because we cannot see time. We can feel it pass, as we get older and grow up and then eventually
die, but we cannot see it.
During both of these war novels you feel the difficulty that the authors have while
explaining their war experiences. In All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque
explains his experiences through a young man who the readers follow on his logical journey
through World War One. While in Slaughter House 5 Kurt Vonnegut explains his war story in an
extremely confusing but humorous journey through time and the terrible bombing of Dresden,
Germany. Each author has his own way of telling his story but you still feel the hardship and
trauma that it caused them. They dont feel accepted, they cant be part of normal life any more.
How could they, there is nothing that will ever compare to the gross destruction of mind and
body that war causes.
1

Slaughter House 5, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 1, Ch. 1