Slaughterhouse Five

In Slaughterhouse Five, I don’t think Billy was limited or empowered by language, though not because language was incapable of empowering or limiting him. Rather, I think that due to Billy’s own passive nature, nothing empowered or limited him at all through the book, with the possible exception of when he attempted to get his message on aliens out through the radio. In that one instance, language may have empowered Billy. Due to the time-tripping nature of the novel, it’s difficult to tell what exactly the result of this radio venture was, other than irritating his daughter. Regardless of that, for the most part Billy was content to be a passive spectator of his life and had really no need to empower himself, since his very nature limited him to doing almost nothing. I think that the opposite is true of Vonnegut. I think that at times language is very empowering for him, as he uses it to write a novel and get his message out through clever satire, however I think during other times in the novel he also illustrates its limiting nature. For example, I think that he ends the novel, “poo-tee-weet” because “there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everything is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is except for the birds. And what do birds say? All there is to say about a massacre” (Vonnegut 19). I think that there is no way to explain a massacre in a way that will get a reader to understand what a massacre is really like so instead he uses what birds say about a massacre and leaves it up to the reader as to what bird’s or anyone can say. In addition, Vonnegut says at the very beginning that his book is a failure, and I think that is because, like how he cannot quite remember war, he cannot quite convey his message through simple words. In Slaughterhouse Five, I think that the only person who really struggles with language in the book is that author because so many of his characters are unbothered by their position that they have no need for language.