As we discussed in class, the role of the Tralfamadorians, and the alien narrative, was largely discussed in its role in the anti-war novel. There were a lot of varying opinions, and I felt like I was the only one who took the aliens as being a crucial component to making Slaughterhouse-Five an anti-war novel. In fact, I'm not sure we could see it as an anti-war novel without the aliens, rather than just as a grim depiction of war.
Throughout my reading of the novel, I wondered how Vonnegut would frame Slaughterhouse-Five as anti-war. And I wondered how the alien narrative fit in. And both of these began to make sense on page 116. Here, Billy tells the Tralfamadorians about the war, saying, "Earthlings must be the terrors of the Universe! If other planets aren't now in danger from Earth, they soon will be. So tell me the secret so I can take it back to Earth and save us all: How can a planet live at peace?"
Rather than respond with a response, the aliens covered their eyes, an expression indicating how stupid his statement was. The point of this? Earth's wars are insignificant in the scope of the universe, and nothing the Earth does will have an impact on the events of the universe throughout time. Rather, it is the Tralfamadorians who end up destroying the universe, despite any accidental attempts by warring Earthlings.
While back in Dresden and during the war we get a largely negative depiction of war and imprisonment, that's a pretty standard depiction. I haven't seen anything, outside of military propaganda of the time, which promoted war as a fun, happy time. The negative depiction of WWII by Vonnegut serves to make us dislike the war and sympathize with Billy and the other soldiers who went through the hardships, but the anti-war angle of the novel comes from the fact that the fighting of this war meant nothing. WWII cost thousands upon thousands of lives, yet did nothing to change the course of the universe, and even Earth didn't have a huge change in its course, despite the change of powers. Part of this meaninglessness of WWII, as told by Vonnegut, is also aided by his hesitation to mention Nazism and its evils, and then does so quite fleetingly. The evils perpetrated by the Nazis aren't the moral basis on which the war is based in Vonnegut's narrative: the war is a war between Americans, Englishmen, and Russians against the Germans. We don't see why the Germans must be defeated. All we see is a war between these two sides, a war which ultimately ends up ruining and/or ending the lives of many, making the Earth a worse-off place at minimal benefit to the Universe (that is, in the context of the novel...in no way am I saying we shouldn't have fought Germany or Japan for what happened, it's just that that is not brought up, and seemingly irrelevant to, the story Vonnegut chooses to depict.)
Vonnegut uses the aliens in Slaughterhouse-Five to illustrate the futility of human actions, specifically of war and its massive consequences, by showing how human perception of war, and the dangers humanity possesses to the universe, are completely unimportant to those who understand the Universe's fate, and as a result, show the pointlessness of their happenings. Rather, the aliens choose to focus on the happy parts of their lives, while humanity bases itself in its futile conflicts. In my opinion, Vonnegut is pointing out that all wars are pointless, and as a result, are bad, rather than just categorizing all wars as bad in general. The fact that they are pointless drives home why there shouldn't be any, because they fail to accomplish anything meaningful.
