“Billy
Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. [. . .] Billy is spastic in time” (23).
Is
he? Or is Billy unable to come to terms with his war experiences? Or is Billy’s
unstuckness a reflection of Vonnegut’s own inability to recall the actual firebombing
of Dresden? As Vonnegut said in an NPR
interview in 2003, “You can’t remember pure nonsense [. . .] the pointless
destruction of that city.” And so on.
In
the fourteen years that I have been in my current teaching position, numerous
students have joined the armed services. My first year at this high school was
one year after 9-11. Students felt a need to join. As a school community, we
have been fortunate that not a single former student has died while serving. At
least not a physical death. But those students who joined in the early 2000s,
who were deployed into areas of combat are not the same students who walked
across the graduation stage. Those personalities have ceased to exist. So it
goes.
I
have former students who have attempted suicide; have become alcoholics,
homeless, some roaming the beaches of California probably wishing that they had
been abducted and transported to Tralfamadore; have served, been honorably
discharged, and still searching for the stability that they believed the service
would provide. And so on.
My
father joined the navy in 1958. A safe time to enlist since the U.S. was between
conflicts. My father was seventeen years old, a senior in high school who hated
school. With no other prospects, he skipped school knowing that he would be
kicked out of school for skipping and went straight to the recruiting office.
He may not have been able to articulate what he was seeking, but the navy
provided an escape. He was stationed in Key West. The closest he came to battle
was being on his ship, the U.S.S Bushnell, while the movie Operation Petticoat was filmed in the same port.
My
father-in-law was drafted in the late 1960s. One of his brothers was also
drafted. So as to not station both men in combat, the brother was sent to
Alaska; my father-in-law was sent to Vietnam. I know that he saw battle, but he
rarely spoke about it. When I met him, he was a recovering alcoholic working as
a drug and alcohol rehabilitation counselor. He seemed normal. He was as normal
as my father who had never seen battle. Except that my father-in-law couldn’t
stand the smell of Asian food and would not eat rice.
In
the NPR interview, Vonnegut explains that the Vietnam war “freed writers” to
write about war. He “made war look so ugly” because “the truth can be really
powerful stuff.”
Eventually
my father-in-law learned to eat rice. And, eventually, my father-in-law developed
renal (kidney) cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, insufficient
evidence exists to point at Agent Orange as a cause of renal cancer in
Vietnam veterans. And I don’t know if my father-in-law was ever exposed to
Agent Orange. He was recovering from the renal cancer on his kidneys when he
died from the renal cancer on his lungs. Because renal cancer can spread
to the lungs. So it goes.
As
I said earlier, as a school community in the past fourteen years we have been fortunate
to not have a death related to military service. As a county, however, we have
not been so lucky. A young man originally from Oakland, Illinois, died
from wounds suffered from an IED explosion. His mother is a teacher at our
middle school. As his body was transported back to the area, all the students
from the high school and middle school went out to the road to stand at
respectful attention. For many, it was their closest connection to 9-11 and the
conflict in the Middle East. And so on.
On
that day, and for a few days before, I worried about a Westboro Baptist Church
presence. They are the church that protests at military funerals in an attempt
to spread their message that the United States will continue to suffer as long
as it tolerates homosexuality. While I could cite that information somewhere on
the Internet, I had a personal conversation with the daughter of the founder, the
daughter who successfully argued before the Supreme Court that picketing
funerals is covered by the First Amendment. While the church was not picketing military
funerals when we had that conversation, she made it clear that they viewed all
publicity and all forums as acceptable ways to spread their message. And all
messengers are acceptable, including the children. Another Children’s Crusade. And
so on.
When
the case went before the Supreme Court, ten years after I had last lived in
Topeka, Kansas, and last had to work with her, I knew that the WBC would win their
appeal. They are First Amendment lawyers; they are not stupid people. They are just
passionate in a narrow-minded bigoted way. Much like any person who believes
his or her views are the only right views. When the leader of the church died a
couple years ago, he had been ousted from his leadership position. The rumor,
or maybe the hope, was that he had recanted
his position against homosexuality. So it goes.
According
to the Tralfamadorians, “[a]ll moments, past, presents, and future, always have
existed, always will exist” (27). Literally? Only the Tralfamadorians will be
able to tell us. But let’s look at history. According to Vonnegut, “war is
murder” and that is why it was and is so difficult to write about, so “unspeakable”
(NPR interview). Every war and military conflict in the past involved murder.
Every war and military conflict in the present involves murder. And every war
and military conflict in the future will involve murder. So it goes. It just
depends which side you are on whether you call it murder or justifiable.
And so on.
Eighteen
years old is considered an adult in our society (our American society), but “wars
were fought by babies” (Vonnegut 106) who could only deal with the ugliness and
the murder by acting like robots who “had no conscience, and no circuits which
would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground”
(Vonnegut 168). Stephen Crane utilizes similar machinery metaphors in The Red Badge of Courage, even though he
had never witnessed war. But Edgar Derby had witnessed war, and he reads Red Badge while waiting for Billy
Pilgrim to recuperate (Vonnegut 105). And students who have witnessed war via
social media are frequently assigned Red
Badge as an example of quality American literature. And so it goes.
A
few years ago I analyzed the war literature included in junior English/American
literature anthologies expecting patriotic and heroic propaganda. But the literature,
the short stories, the excerpts, the poems, the memoirs, portray war as ugly.
As unspeakable. And yet our students still voluntarily join the armed services.
And so on. To them, literature is fiction; it is not real. The
Children’s Crusade continues past, present, and future.
Slaughterhouse-Five could be post
Vietnam literature or post 9-11 literature or post Civil War literature. Our
children join believing they are adults. Believing they will be heroes.
Believing they are the good guys. And if we are lucky, they return to us a
little wiser but otherwise unscarred—physically and emotionally healthy. But I
worry about each one of my students who joins. In my opinion, the really lucky
ones never leave the States. They may be disappointed, but their smiles are
intact. They may continue to “spend eternity looking at pleasant moments”
(Vonnegut 117) like the Tralfamadorians. For all of my students joining the
military, I want to be able to write “and so on” after their names and stories.
I hope that I never have to follow their names and stories with “so it goes.”
Did
I become unstuck in time? Have a couple spastic hours writing this blog? I don’t
think so. But my mind did wander. I visited a number of places and former
students. I traveled backward in time. And I traveled forward in time to events
that I hope take place.
Kurt
Vonnegut was one of the authors that I really wanted to meet in person. That
never happened. But I’ve listened to a recording of his voice. And I’ve read
his words. I believe his words. And so on.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Laurel, 1988. Print.
