Before reading the sixth of the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, my cousin cruelly spoiled its great ending for me. Although I had prior knowledge of the ending and overall plot, I wanted to read it to experience the joys of anagnorisis. Living the experience, however pointless, was the reason that I chose to proceed with the read.
“Lionel Merble was a machine. …Every creature and plant in the Universe is a machine” (Vonnegut Pg. 154). Divinely-programmed events have been imposed upon us ever since we existed. Is this true or has our future been randomly formed prior to our “spontaneous” existence? Either this is factual, or we, beings with supreme control over our fates, have been given a great opportunity. The Tralfalmadorians of Slaughter House-Five by Kurt Vonnegut obviously trust the former, more constricted set of beliefs: Everyone and everything is a robot (believe what you want on who, if at all, programmed us).
Is the purpose of the Tralfalmadorian-lived life to experience, or simply let life arrive and leave, leaving no impression on anything? Irrevocably convinced of the Tralfalmadorian way of thinking of the existence of a worthless life, “Billy Pilgrim got onto a chartered airplane in Ilium twenty-five years after that. He knew it was going to crash but he didn’t want to make a fool of himself be saying so” (Vonnegut Pg. 154). Why would he? Nobody would believe him. I don’t think anyone would believe his “theory” without substantial evidence. People are too scared to accept their impotency in their lives.
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