So, Does It Go?

One of many realizations many people experience upon losing a loved one, I believe, is the How-can-everything-be-going-on-normally-as-if-nothing-had -happened? surprise. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut describes the fictitious existence of the Tralfalmadorian race who, aided by their superior perceptive capabilities, have accepted time and nature, let alone fate, as unchangeable and predetermined; a world I describe in my blog, God Is A Mechanic.

One thing we must acknowledge is the passing of time and the emotions its varying events carry. For instance, when the writer of the Dresden book describes the book, he begins with introducing a massacre. He tells of how “everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre. . .”(19). The birds say “all there is to sat about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?””(19). As I see it, here Vonnegut leads us to believe that the birds ask what reaction we will take from this massacre: Will we be Tralfalmadorianly indifferent, or humanly emotional? Billy Pilgrim’s view regarding this question changes throughout the book. I mention this metamorphosis in my blog, Billy Pilgrim’s Indifference: So It Goes. This is the question the birds ask.

Mine is a philosophical question which we may never know the answer to: Even if the Tralfalmadorians were to exist and they would be correct on their theory of time, would we still be lachrymosely affected? After the bombing of Dresden and the end of the second World War (and the end of the book as well, for that matter), “one bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-too-weet?””(215). This makes the Billy as well as the reader himself question the reaction he must have with respect to the war: Shall I be indifferent or shall I be human? Is it possible to be humanly indifferent? Poo-tee-weet?