I have not read this book in over 20 years but when the subject came up last night, I decided to look it up on wikipedia to get an idea of what others thought of the "story".
Here is an excerpt on the major themes:
"Vonnegut most thoroughly explores the ideas of fate, free will, and the illogical nature of humans. The main character is "unstuck in time," meaning that he experiences the events of his life in a seemingly random order, with no idea which part of life he will "visit" next. As a result, his life does not end with death; rather, he experiences his own death jumbled amongst so many of his other experiences. This is followed with confirmation by one of the Tralfamadorians, who says, "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe... Only on Earth is there any talk of free will". This device is central to Vonnegut's belief that the vast majority of humanity is completely innocent; that is, they do what they do because they must.
To the Tralfamadorians, everything always exists at the same time, and for them everyone is therefore always alive. They too have wars and tragic events (they destroy the universe testing spaceship fuels), but when asked by Billy what they do about wars, the Tralfamadorians reply that they simply ignore them. Vonnegut uses the Tralfamadorians to conflict with the theme he actually presents. Life, as a human, is only enjoyable with the unknown. Tralfamadorians do not actually make any choices about what they do, but have power only over what they think. To humans, ignoring a war is not an acceptable choice when we actually have free will. In the first chapter, Vonnegut (as the narrator) is told that writing an anti-war book is like writing an anti-glacier book. In the main body of the book, this belief that war is inevitable is represented by the Tralfamadorians. Their hapless destruction of the universe suggests that Vonnegut does not sympathize with their philosophy.
This illogicality of human nature is brought up with the climax of the book. Ironically the climax occurs not with the bombing of Dresden, but with the execution of a man who committed a petty theft. In all of this horror, death, and destruction, so much time is taken on the punishment of one man. Yet, the time is still taken, and Vonnegut seems to take the outside opinion of the bird asking, 'Poo-tee-weet?'"
Since I often thought of these things as a child and young adult, I understand why I was attracted to Vonnegut's writing...It would be interesting to see how I will feel when I will decide to read his writings as an adult...
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03-15-2007 02:16 PM 
