Free Will In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

Humans do not have free will. Humans can not make a conscious decision without it being affected by their past experiences, or the beliefs they were taught at a young age. Humans strive towards the idea of being able to make their own decisions and set their own path in life, but in the end, everything you do, is a product of past events.People want free will because we want to be unique. The idea of making your own decisions and being able to separate yourself from everyone else is what some people base their lives around. Everyday in our lives we watch events unfold around us, some for better, and others for worse, that no matter how much we believe we affected them, their is no evidence supporting we directly caused them. Kurt Vonnegut did not have free will, and he knew it. His book, Slaughterhouse Five, was a pessimistic anti-war book that often hinted at the idea that no matter what we do, the outcome will always be the same. Although Vonnegut was against the idea of sending troops to war, he still understood that war was inevitable.”’Is it an anti-war book?’...’You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?’...’I say, why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?’What he meant of course was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers”(Vonnegut 3). Just as war will always rage on, glaciers will float around. There is nothing we as people can do to change the way the world works. Since the dawn of civilization, and even before, there has always been human conflict. The idea of fighting to resolve our problems is rooted deep in our brains. These roots affect our everyday actions , along our past experiences. In the end, we as individual beings do not make our own decisions, but what our brain has learned and how it was programmed decide what we will do.”American psychologist William James once suggested that war is so prevalent because of its positive psychological effects. It creates a sense of unity in the face of a collective threat. It binds people together – not just the army engaged in battle, but the whole community. It brings a sense of cohesion…”(Taylor, Steve. "Why Do Human Beings Keep Fighting Wars? | Steven Taylor." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 05 Aug. 2014. Web. 30 Mar. 2017). Humans have always fought wars, because our brains have always told us to fight. It’s not a conscious human decision, but the end product of how our genes have been built up for thousands of years. Humans are a lot like robots. Our brain functions to take in and process everything around us. When we are given a task we think of the most logical way to complete the task. When robots are given a task they think of the most logical way to complete the task. The only difference between humans and robots is the sense of emotion, the idea that we are all unique in doing what …show more content…
The things we do, do alter the path but we do not control our actions. They are the end product of all of our experiences, and even our genes up to that point in our lives.”’We know how the universe ends...and earth has nothing to do with it, except that it gets wiped out too...We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers.’ ‘If you know this...isn’t there some way you can prevent it?’ ‘He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him. The moment is structured that way.’ ‘ So… I suppose that the idea of preventing war on earth is stupid too.’ ‘Of course”(Vonnegut 117). The Tralfalmadorians could see moments in the future. They knew that they were going to blow up the universe, but they also knew that they could not change it. Billy Pilgrim had a hard time understanding this because of his human emotions that would lead him to try to change the outcome, however the Tralfalmadorians knew that they could not change what could happen. The outcome would be the universe being destroyed by the Tralfalmadorians and there is nothing that could change