The Tralfamadorians: Familiar Aliens

by Ben Newman

*spoilers for Slaughterhouse - Five

Slaughterhouse - Five is an anti-war book released in 1969, by Kurt Vonnegut. The novel follows Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran. In the introductory chapter, Vonnegut--who is himself a character (and first person narrator) in the book--details his struggle with writing the book. Immediately, readers can pick up on Vonnegut’s writing style. Sentences contain few words and are often very abrupt and unexpected. Vonnegut will often cover the deaths of characters in one sentence and will quickly jump to another topic. Slaughterhouse-Five begins to stand out amongst other books very early on with the introduction of the Tralfamadorians (an extraterrestrial race). A primary reason to read Slaughterhouse-Five is the Trafamadorians--characters who are pivotal to the book through their relationship with the protagonist (Billy Pilgrim) and who serve as a foil for humanity as a species.  

Billy Pilgrim claims to be unstuck in time, causing him to randomly move between different times in his life. This ability to look into the past or future is a trait that Billy shares with the Tralfamadorians. The Tralfamadorians are plunger-shaped 4-Dimensional beings able to see all of time at once. These things relate to each other in the story to make the book what it is, and entertain the reader. When Billy Pilgrim is kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians, he asks why he in particular has been chosen by them. They respond by telling him that his question is very “earthly,” and that there was no particular reason as to why he was chosen, saying, “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.” (Vonnegut 77). This is the reader’s first dialogue from a Tralfamadorian, and it captures a large amount of who the Tralfamadorians are as a species. Vonnegut’s writing is captivating in this way, as it introduces characters designed to grab our attention.

Tralfamadorians, being able to see all of time, do not feel grief when someone dies. They know that they, being able to see all of time, will be able to see them again when they are alive. Billy, himself, takes on some of these mannerisms. This is represented by the author’s writing, “So it goes” after every mention of death. Billy, like the aliens, is always rather nonchalant when it comes to the idea of death. He is not phased by it, and why should he be? He will always jump to another point in his life, with seemingly no end to Billy’s existence. Billy, in all that he has experienced, has become almost a Tralfamadorian himself.

One insightful aspect of the Tralfamadorians comes when they reveal to Billy that humans are the only species they know of to have a concept of free will. Tralfamadorians, seeing all of time, already know what happens and thus have no say in the outcome of things. This lack of free will and no sympathy or grief for the dead seems so unlike the lives of humans. That is, until you notice the context of the novel. Billy is a soldier, he constantly jumps through time back to the War, where people withhold mercy from their enemies and look upon the dead with little compassion in their hearts. They callously believe if it were not the enemy dying, it would be themselves. The Tralfamadorians as characters point out the hypocrisy in the readers’ thinking that the Tralfamadorians are more callus than humans. How could something like war ever occur on this planet, something so dehumanizing, so alien? The Tralfamadorians are very compelling in this way. They are 4-Dimensional creatures described as being shaped like plungers. They are seemingly written to be outlandish and far from human, and yet Vonnegut uses them to make readers reevaluate what it means to be human.

In conclusion, the Tralfamadorians--in their relationship to and in contrast to Billy--represent a humanity that has lost the things which made them human. Tralfamadorians do not fight against adversity; they see there is no point in doing so. They have seen the end of the universe, and as it is revealed later, it is the Tralfamadorians’ fault for the demise of their own world. Slaughterhouse-Five reminds readers that we are not Tralfamadorians. We are human. We do not know what will happen, and for this reason, perhaps humans are better than the Tralfamadorians. It is this lack of knowledge that gives people free will to try to change things that they see as wrong. By contrast, these aliens redefine what it means to be human.