Kurt Vonnegut
Mattatoio n.5 o La crociata dei bambini

I first read Slaughterhouse-Five more than a decade ago, at a time when I had experienced several bereavements and had lived in close company with death. For this reason, the idea of the inhabitants of the planet Trafalmadore left a lasting impression on me, as they believe that death is just a moment when an individual is unwell. The Trafalmadorians can ignore death: for them, it's enough to observe the other moments of life that always exist and that they can always find, just as humans can at any moment look again at a landscape.

From that moment, death continued to walk with me but at a certain distance, so I reread the book this weekend and was able to better appreciate the other ideas.

Although Kurt Vonnegut only finished the book in 1969 and the story's timeline spans from 1922 to 1972, the central topic is the bombing of the city of Dresden. The book's narrator is Yon Yonson and appears only in a few scenes of the story. The protagonist is Billy Pilgrim, whose life the book, starting from the second chapter, recounts. All, the writer, the narrator, and the protagonist witnessed the carpet bombing that turned Dresden, the "Florence on the Elbe," into a lunar landscape.

Billy was born in 1922 in Ilium, New York. As a child and a boy, he had a quirky look and a Coca-Cola bottle-shaped body. While attending evening courses at the school of optometry, he was drafted into the army for the Second World War. He served in the infantry in Europe, was taken prisoner by the Germans, and brought to the open city of Dresden. He survived the bombing.

After being discharged, he resumed his studies. He was treated in a veterans' hospital and received electroshock treatment. He married the daughter of the founder and owner of the school of optometry. He became very wealthy.

He had two children, Barbara and Robert.

At the beginning of 1968, a group of opticians, including Billy, booked a plane to go from Ilium to Montreal for an international optics convention. The plane crashed on top of Sugarbush Mountain in Vermont. Everyone died except Billy. During those days, his wife also died in a crazy car accident while she was heading to see Billy at the hospital.

Once healed, Billy did not return to work. He went to New York and managed to get into a late-night radio talk show. He said that in 1967 he was kidnapped by a flying saucer. The flying saucer came from the planet Tralfamadore. He also said that he traveled through time in a disordered and random, involuntary and spastic way. He recounted what he learned in these two journeys.

The novel follows Billy's schizophrenic wandering back and forth within the scenes of his life in a delicately satirical narrative made of similes and antithetical comparisons.

There are almost no characters in this story because most individuals who appear are battered, mere indifferent toys in the hands of immense forces.

There are almost no characters in this novel because the Tralfamadorian idea of time, which permeates part of the narrative, excludes self-determination. It excludes the beginning, development, and end, excludes suspense and morality, excludes causes and effects.

There are no dramatic confrontations during the war conflict; the soldiers are moved by invisible hands. There are no great passions or conflicts in the post-war world: no desire for conquest leads Billy to the altar. No will to become rich leads Billy to accumulate a fortune.

So, what is the central point of this novel? Is there a point?

I think there is a point, and that point is Billy.

Indifferent to war, marriage, and work, Billy is the one who serenely accepts the things he cannot change, has the courage to change those he can, and has the wisdom to understand the difference.

In the hospital, he meets Rumford, a superman, who advocated belligerent theses in an essay on American bombings and that of Dresden. To him, who considered him a subhuman, whiny, and indolent being, he raised doubts, telling him: "I was in Dresden when it was bombed. I was a prisoner of war." And again, to Rumford, who did not want to listen to him, he said: "We don't need to talk about it. I just want you to know: I was there."

From this moment, Billy ceases to be an indifferent toy and decides to forcefully communicate to the world an antagonist message of universal brotherhood.