Kurt Vonnegut prefaces his “Dresden book” with the admission that an anti-war book “might as well be an anti-glacier book for all the good it will do.” Why, then, does he go on to write one of the most celebrated anti-war pieces of all time? Simple: There is no other book to write, particularly about the bombing of Dresden.
Like all great writers, Vonnegut had a gift for saying exactly what needed to be said. For that reason, in writing a review and a tribute, I’m tempted to use his own words as much as possible. He himself puts forth that there is “nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.” Though his most well known verbal motif from “Slaughterhouse-Five” is “So it goes,” perhaps this one represents his ideals more accurately: “Everything is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.” And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?”
To understand the story, perhaps one should approach it like the novel’s Tralfamadorians: as omnipotent observers who can see the end from the beginning. Vonnegut famously opens the novel thusly: “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” Throughout the book Billy travels unintentionally and without warning to a number of periods in his life—past, present and future—as a hapless prisoner of all-knowing aliens. Vonnegut’s use of time-travel is simple but ingenious: through it, we can witness a full illustration of Billy Pilgrim’s life.
After his abduction, the Tralfamadorians tell Billy that “free will” is a concept invented by humans, one that is novel in the universe. They, of course, have the luxury of knowing for sure, given that they can see the beginning and end of the universe, the latter actually caused by a failed Tralfamadorian experiment.
Although Billy spends much of his life championing the Tralfamadorian lifestyle, no educated reader would say that Vonnegut is promoting inaction and apathy. Our own experiences tell us that we can always act, and, all things considered, it is hard for us to sympathize with the Tralfamadorians’ inaction in the face of obliteration.
One question in particular dominates my thoughts about free will, fate, Kurt Vonnegut, and Dresden. What were the chances that of all the people who witnessed and survived the firebombing of Dresden, one of them would turn out to be the exact right person to write a novel about it?