When being asked which came first, the egg or the chicken, we don’t know what to respond. We encounter ourselves in a dilemma because the chicken was born from the egg, but the egg produced the chicken. A circle has no beginnings. When time travels in circles, there are two alternatives: time has no beginning and no end, or the time’s beginning is consequently its end. Since we had to come from somewhere, our life’s journey has to have a beginning, but might have no end when the latter is its beginning and vice versa. In Slaughterhouse-Five, time is not quite linear but an eternal cycle that recycles into an endless loop that starts where it ends. With a song that the end creates its beginning, and the allusion of the birds’ singing, Vonnegut makes time an essential role in the story he is about to relate.
The closing words of Chapter 1, “It begins like this: Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet?” (Vonnegut, 22), invokes that the author wrote this chapter after the rest of the book, which further leads us to believe that the book itself is part of this everlasting loop. Taking into account that Billy Pilgrim is “unstuck” in time, the main character of the story is possibly condemned to the loop’s fate, ending in the same place where it all started. Being unstuck in time is to be in a state of incoherence or lack of clarity. This incoherence is constantly present in the narrator’s perception of time and the events as he recreates an unclear image of what was the firebombing of Dresden. Additionally, the fact that the narrator constantly accedes to alcohol in order to remember the past might contribute to the constant irregularity of time present in the context of the story.
The closing words of Chapter 1, “It begins like this: Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet?” (Vonnegut, 22), invokes that the author wrote this chapter after the rest of the book, which further leads us to believe that the book itself is part of this everlasting loop. Taking into account that Billy Pilgrim is “unstuck” in time, the main character of the story is possibly condemned to the loop’s fate, ending in the same place where it all started. Being unstuck in time is to be in a state of incoherence or lack of clarity. This incoherence is constantly present in the narrator’s perception of time and the events as he recreates an unclear image of what was the firebombing of Dresden. Additionally, the fact that the narrator constantly accedes to alcohol in order to remember the past might contribute to the constant irregularity of time present in the context of the story.
The unclear memories that the narrator displays in the story make him a victim of humanity’s big dilemma of ignorance towards history. “Does who do not know history, are condemned to repeat it”, therefore the fear of Mary O’Hare of their children having a repeated fate of their parents (a massacre) comes to be the curious place where the story is heading. “It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after massacre, and it always is, except for the birds… Poo-tee-weet?” (Vonnegut, 19). Mary O’Hare fears that the writing of this book will lead to the repetition of history itself. Then, since there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre, the writing of a book is symbolized through the bird song, since it’s the only stain of life after such event. Everything else remains quiet. Hence, given that the author was able to write the book we are now reading, the book itself is a sign of the outcome of war. Ending the book with the birds’ song leaves the story at its inevitable fate of starting at its end, or ending at its beginning.
