Free Will In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, explores ideals of free will and predetermination. Free will is the ability to make choices and control one's own fate, and predetermination is when actions are decided beforehand and never influenced by human choices meaning it is set in stone. Kurt Vonnegut uses both ideals to state that without the concept of free will, humans will have nothing to do with their time, making them useless and without purpose. Like in many scientific fiction novels, Vonnegut includes alien life forms into Slaughterhouse-Five. These aliens are from a planet named Tralfamadore, and the aliens themselves are called Tralfamadorians. The Tralfamadorians play an important role in the story to represent predetermination

Free will is not real. It is a facade that humans have created to gain control over their lives to provide an answer for their purpose in life, because without purpose, what is the point of living? Humans long to have control, as seen in the wars that have ravished this earth since the dawn of time. This thirst for knowledge and power creates a paradox—free will— that deems actions as decisions made by oneself. Many people intertwine free will and morality together; right or left, burger or salad, and good or evil. Free will is used to justify the righteousness that religions focus on. The Atlantic published an article discussing free will written by Stephen Cave that says, “Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as ‘moral liberty’ — the capacity to discern and pursue the good”. Humans hold on to the idea of free will due to their unwillingness to let go of what society is telling them what is moral and right, because being right is a purpose. This is an important inclusion in Slaughterhouse-Five due to

To humans, time is seen as two-dimensional. We can only see one second to the next, meaning that everything must go in order in a line. As a Tralfamadorian said, “I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is” (Vonnegut 109). The alien is implying that no matter what happens, time and choices are already decided. Nothing is undecided because time and actions happen simultaneously; the Tralfamadores believe it depends on what part is under observation. Predetermination is birthed from time, as time is birthed from predetermination. In order to have an action carried out doing Task A, it has to be done at a certain time. Likewise, time occurs while an unlimited amount of actions are occuring. Time does not occur without actions, and actions are happening at all times due to the fact that they are predetermined. Nothing is spontaneous; everything happens because it is supposed to