Verboden boeken 06: Slachthuis Vijf

Inhoud

Slachthuis Vijf of de Kinderkruistocht verscheen in 1969, op een moment dat de Amerikaanse samenleving in een diepe crisis verkeerde. Martin Luther King en Robert Kennedy waren juist vermoord, her en der vonden rassenrellen plaats, de jeugd kwam massaal in opstand tegen de ouderen en de Vietnamoorlog werd alsmaar uitzichtlozer. Geen wonder dat Slachthuis Vijf, een boek dat zich fel tegen de oorlog keert, veel bewonderaars en nog meer tegenstanders kende. De laatsten wilden vooral de jeugd waarschuwen teen het gevaar van de roman en verbrandden het boek in het openbaar. Tevergeefs. Het verhaal van Billy Pilgrim, die het gruwelijke bombardement van Dresden op 13 februari 1945 meemaakt (Vonnegut zelf was krijgsgevangene in Dresden toen het bombardement plaatsvond), sprak vooral de flowerpowerjeugd enorm aan. Drammerig antioorlog is het boek niet: het is soms uiterst komisch, de hoofdpersoon bezit het opvallende vermogen reizen door de tijd te maken, en satirische en ironische uitvallen werken als tegengif tegen mogelijke moralistische braafheid.

Bespreking

A class act of breaking genre barriers

Billy Pilgrim is quite detached from reality. Not just because he acts like a lunatic, he also suffers from the ability of seeing reality as it really is. Time is just an illusion. That's what he learned after he was abducted by aliens to the planet of Tralfamadoria. Reality isn't that important to Billy because he can to jump to different points of time in his life. One period of his existence seems to become the hub of his travels: the attack on Dresden, Germany at the end of World War II.

While I was expecting an anti-war novel when I opened this novel, I was completely taken by the sci-fi part of the story. Or isn't it? It's never really clear if the time travel is symbolic or implied reality. Being very much fascinated by the theoretical implications of manipulating the fourth dimension, I myself decided to go ahead with the travels being real. And Kurt Vonnegut certainly doesn't disappoint on that level, indeed. He got his facts straight. At this level Slaughterhous-Five is a thought-provoking sci-fi novel that can be ranked with the best.

But this book is so much more. The time travel can be seen as a narrative tool to contrast many of the emotions our main character goes through. Although Billy is emotionally completely detached from everything that happens around him -yes, he knows when he is going to die- the reader gets to fill in the blanks easily. This is really very powerful and also helps keep the pace in the story. But most of all it brings the involvement to a intense level of rawness.

The anti-war part of the book might be a little bit dated. At the time of its first release it was not done to focus a story on the not so heroic aspects of war. No hero can be found in Slaughterhouse-Five and that fact might, at the time, have been really ground-breaking. Nowadays it's less common to read about the glamour of war and this only adds to the praise of authors like Kurt Vonnegut.