Epilogue

This is my final blog entry. So it goes. I'll use this blog entry to make some closing remarks on the story of Slaughterhouse-Five.

The last chapter opens with Vonnegut describing the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the carnage taking place in Vietnam at the time, and the death of Vonnegut's father. So it goes. These are used to nail in one of the story's main purposes, showing how widespread death is, and how some people just don't care. King and Kennedy were both mourned by the nation; Vonnegut's father by his family; and those in Vietnam scarcely by anyone.

On a side note, Vonnegut says of his father "He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust." This short passage serves to show Vonnegut's anti-war views.

The second and third paragraphs compare alien cultures described by Pilgrim and Trout. On Tralfamadore, the aliens state that they have a greater interest in Darwin's philosophy that corpses are improvements than Jesus' philosophy that death can be overcome. When describing Trout, Vonnegut makes a humorous juxtaposition of the alien's interest in both Darwin and golf, an odd pairing, although it would make sense for alien cultures to have a different sense of importance.

Next, the trip to Dresden undertaken by Vonnegut and his old war buddy O'Hare is described. It is seemingly a rather trivial passage. However, two parts are important. One describes Vonnegut mentally reliving his experience in the bombing of Dresden while staring down at the modern city from his airplane seat. This passage provides a dark tone to the passage. The next describes O'Hare's finding of the world's population growth and death rates. After reading it, Vonnegut remarks dryly "I suppose they will all want dignity." He says this not because he does not believe that they should have dignity, but because through his own experiences he has found that the world's leaders appear to not believe there is enough dignity to go around.

The final part of the chapter describes Pilgrim's experiences after the bombing. He and a Maori are made to dig holes for corpses. The Maori dies of dry heaving after smelling the rotting bodies. So it goes. Due to his death, the Germans decide on a new strategy of immolating the corpses with flamethrowers. So it goes. Meanwhile, in another part of the city, poor old Edgar Derby is found with a stolen teapot. Even in the face of a horrendous massacre, the Germans still take time to shoot him. So it goes. Finally, at the end of WWII, Pilgrim steps outside his stable, alone in Dresden. Only the birds are there to speak to him. The book ends on the bird asking the unanswerable and incomprehensible question of "Poo-tee-weet?"As Vonnegut himself once said, "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre."