"Unbearably Sour"

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a World War II novel whose title is a word followed by a number: Slaughterhouse 5. 

 

It is hard to discuss the novel without immediately delving into the stylistic implications of the author’s narrative choices. Veteran Billy Pilgrim travels through time. His time travel is involuntary. As a result, the storytelling is non-linear. It is made up of a string of moments, with jumps from early life to the war, from civilian life to outer space, etc. There is another science-fiction element: aliens abduct Billy Pilgrim and take him to their home planet Tralfamadore. As creatures who see things in four dimensions, all the events of a person’s life appear before them simultaneously.    

There are only three titles for vocal music in the novel: “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” “Hail, hail, the Gang’s All Here,” “Wait till the Sun Shines, Nelly.” The author goes so far as to mention the origin of the second song, the musical Pirates of Penzance. However, lyrics have a tendency to appear without formal introductions (no title). This is the case of the Christmas carol “Away in a Manger,” two awful “polish” songs and “Leven Cent Cotton.” The only musicians mentioned in the story are Frank Sinatra and Johann Sebastian Bach. The crooner’s name is only there as an example of a Hollywood cast in a war movie. His singing abilities are of no importance at all in the book. 

There are no female singing voices in the text. All male singing voices are amateurish. In the camp in Germany, the singing men are the English POW. In Billy’s home and on the doomed airplane over America, there is a barbershop quartet of optometrists. Singing is often a gateway to profanity. When the English perform their musical version of Cinderella, there are some slight adaptations. The barbershop quartet calls itself the “Febs”, an acronym, we are told, for “four-eyed bastards.” While their songs are tame in Billy’s home, the singers unleash vulgarity on the airplane to the great delight of Billy’s father-in-law. If we focus on these moments and add the Yon Yonson song to the mix, it is hard to take singing seriously in the text.  

And yet, arguably the most important moment in the book comes when Billy hears the barbershop quartet in his home. This is a breakthrough moment with regards to the protagonist’s memory. Unconsciously, our hero makes a sonic and visual connection between the barbershop quartet and one of his most traumatizing memories. Having no grasp of how his mind is operating, the WWII veteran has an emotional breakdown. This is the second mention of “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here” so the musical connection is hard to miss. In fact, some of the lyrics appear in italics, with no other separation from the text (the lines reappear in quotation marks later on). But the author goes further than this inclusion and writes about harmony. He describes the alternation between “sour” chords and “sweet” chords. Adjectives are paired with adverbs: the former with “unbearably”, the latter with “suffocatingly.” While there is something chemical about the description, it stands as a tribute to music and its connections with memory.

The second assault on Billy’s nerves comes from the quartet’s interpretation of “’Leven Cent Cotton.” The writer reproduces ten lines from the song with a neat separation. This is more than the old POW can endure and he flees the scene. He takes refuge in his upstairs bathroom, only to find out that his son Robert is in there, sitting on the toilet while holding a guitar, an instrument he cannot play. Here is another association of music and vulnerability.

The song that Vonnegut considered most significant in his WWII fiction was the carol “Away in a Manger.” Indeed, a quatrain is reprinted in the epigraph as well as in in the final chapter. For Vonnegut, summoning the silent figure of Baby Jesus was the best way to describe the main character’s attitude towards the things he witnessed.

    

Click here to listen to an arrangement of "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" for percussion. 

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse 5, Vintage Books, 2000