Why does Billy Pilgrim have an abnormal number of animal encounters in Slaughterhouse-five? Pilgrim’s experiences with animals depict the inhumane treatment of people in World War II in an indirect and satiric manner. They also portray the effects of war on people’s consciences. Billy’s clumsy personality and fantastic experiences help delineate such things in a humorous manner. His extraterrestrial escapade to Tralfalmadore further stresses the non-human conditions of people and the animalistic behavior of those in favor of the war.
Although there are dozens of references to animals in Slaughterhouse-Five, I shall make reference to a select few. One of Vonnegut’s connections of human to animal treatment in World War II includes the moments during Billy Pilgrim’s imprisonment by the Germans. He mentions the source of the lubrication for the axles of a cart. On one page, he claims them to be “greased with the fat of dead animals” (157), while in a different part of the book, Pilgrim alleges: “The “candles and the soap were made from the fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the state” (96). Although he doesn’t directly mention grease in the second quotation, we do know that some soap and candles are made from animal fat. I believe it is safe to say that Vonnegut has juxtaposed these references to lubrication so that we may find a hinted simile in their sources of fat. The “Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the state” were regarded as animals. If they weren’t always considered as animals, they were certainly treated brutally.
Concentration camps were common hells of the Holocaust. One of their dreaded characteristics were the gas chambers, where mass numbers of prisoners would be mercilessly butchered. Vonnegut envisions the thoughts of the Germans while they were gassing the Jews: “When Billy got his clothes back, they weren’t any cleaner, but all the little animals that had been living in them were dead” (90). Vonnegut makes an allusion to gas chambers and decontamination chambers, comparing the death of the animal pests living near the person with the “Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the state” (96) living alongside the “elite”. These minorities were considered pests to be exterminated.
There is one intolerable thing war is known to: strip people of their conscience. For instance, Paul Lazarro is a perfect example of a human whose intention to do good has been dismantled by war. We can see that brutality was not limited to the German troops by recognizing Lazarro’s hunger for pain. He rants that he is impervious to pain, especially if he is the one inflicting it, when he proudly retold what he did to a dog that once bit him: “So I got me some stake, and I got me the spring out of a clock. I cut that spring up in little pieces. I put points on the ends of the pieces. They were sharp as razor blades. I stuck ‘em into the steak-way inside. And I went past where they had the dog tied up. He wanted to bite me again. I said to him, ‘Come on, doggie-let’s be friends…He believed me…He swallowed it down in one big gulp…’Now Lazzaro’s eyes twinkled… ‘Anybody ever asks you what the sweetest thing in life is…it’s revenge” (139). War has made people like Paul Lazarro animals: taking pleasure from seeing others in agony.
As we can infer from another animal reference, during the Second World War, minorities were barbarically treated. On one occasion, Billy becomes the unwitting aggressor of a pair of horses. In their toil, they become afflicted by effects of the work they were set out to do: “The horses’ mouths were bleeding, gashed by the bits, that the horses’ hooves were broken, so that every step meant agony, that the horses were insane with thirst” (196). In this maxim, the reader is astonished to be informed that a horse, which we relate to perfect health in the simile, “as healthy as a horse”, is being overexploited. Furthermore, humans were also forced to endless drudgery during this period (hence the animal torture). As the Americans here “had treated their form of transportation as though it were no more sensitive that a six-cylinder Chevrolet” (196), so had the Germans treated the Jews as if they were no more than mindless animals, good for nothing but labor. Known to be an enduring people, the treatment of Jews was lowered to remorseless segregation. In the same way, the horse, which is famous for its health, was greatly deprived of its wellbeing.
Certain animals have gained linguistic attribution for a variety of traits: “Blind as a bat”, “strong as an ox”, a “cunning fox”, “as busy as a bee”, and “healthy as a horse”, among other similes. When describing his abduction by the Tralfalmadores, Billy Pilgrim makes an allusion to an animal, the owl when he recalls that “he heard the cry of what might have been a melodious owl, but it wasn’t a melodious owl. It was a flying saucer from Tralfalmadore…” (75). Owls are known to be the wise ones of the animal kingdom. This is probably due to their superior awareness of their surroundings, considering the fact that they have great eyesight, and can turn their heads more than 360 degrees to any side. Furthermore, Athene, the Greek goddess of wisdom, was so marveled by the observant eyes and majectic appearance of owls, that she honored it by making it her favorite feathered bird. Also, the hoot of an owl was known to be an omen of defeat, death, or even pure evil, while the mere sighting of the bird meant victory in battle. It is possible that a part of Billy Pilgrim will die with the arrival of truth and choice less reality: the human part, which clings to hopes and dreams. It is also possible that Pilgrim is signaling the arrival of wisdom into his life. In particular, he refers to the wisdom of one’s environment and how to act based on conclusions obtained from the acquired knowledge. In Tralfalmadore, Billy will learn that the purpose of life is nonexistent. He is given the wisdom required to cope with war: Believing that it was unavoidable and thus, merits no guilt. It is the shortcut to accepting unfavorable circumstances: Assuming that predestination is the way of life. This indirectness aids the author, Vonnegut, in his recollection of the war: It becomes easier, somewhat detached.
In Tralfalmadore, Pilgrim “was displayed naked in a zoo, he said” (25), where, excluding his luxurious accommodations, his status of imprisonment could be easily compared to that of a Jew in a ghetto or concentration camp. People would pass by the perimeter and contemplate the existence of the “animals” within. Although people in Tralfalmadore didn’t view humans, or Billy in particular, as inferior (as people in the Holocaust did), they did view him with pity for his lack of perception. Pilgrim’s incarceration however, couldn’t have been clearer.
Finally, after analyzing the evidence, we can safely assume that the inhumane treatment of people in World War II is depicted in an indirect and satiric manner Billy Pilgrim’s animal encounters in Slaughterhouse-Five. They also portray the effects of war on people’s conscience. Kurt Vonnegut, the “pillar of salt” (22) who wrote this book, is regretting recalling his past, which he does so by means of animal references, which make everything easier to bear. Now, the question we must ask ourselves is the following: To make it “easier to bear”, would we be avoiding reality if we believed in the Tralfalmadorian theory of life and time, or should we confront actuality with the determination to make amends? Billy Pilgrim seems to favor the former, while Kurt Vonnegut, his creator, acknowledges the truth of the present and the possibility of a different future. However, Vonnegut still swerves reality using a method other than the belief of predestination and the impotence towards the past, present, and future: he uses clever similes, metaphors, and juxtapositions. Why would Billy and Vonnegut be using different methods to cope with the truth?
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