adam bogar - farewell, hello, farewell, hello - tralfamadorian thought as religion in...

Ádám Bogár

Károli Gáspár University of the Hungarian Reformed Church

Faculty of Arts (2004-2011) MA in English Language and

Literature, specialization in North American Literature and

Culture, member of the Kurt Vonnegut Society

“Farewell, hello, farewell, hello:” Tralfamadorian Thought as

Religion in Slaughterhouse-Five – A Geertzian Account

Religious studies (as the name suggests) deal with the study of religions, yet the definition

and classification of religions have long been a challenging issue. There have been numerous

theories and classifications proposed, the enlisting of which is certainly beyond the scope of

this paper, some concepts however need to be taken note of. Graham Harvey refers to

religions in general as “human activities [...through which h]umans approach that which is of

considerable, and sometimes ultimate, significance for them, by means of ceremonies,

identification, and other expressions of reciprocal or hierarchical relationships.”1 What may

be seen as a refinement of this definition is found in Clifford Geertz’s seminal essay “Religion

as a Cultural System.” He states “[w]ithout further ado” that a religion is

(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and

long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a

general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura

of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.2

There may be objections made to the range of validity and workability of this definition,

nevertheless it offers a quasi-functionalist framework that actually can be a possible way of

interpreting and approaching religions. The handling of religion is a problematic question in

US novelist Kurt Vonnegut’s ouvre, and his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five is no exception

to this. Tralfamadorian thought, that of an alien race, is offered as the novel’s philosophical

framework instead of the common Western Christian (or Puritan) heritage usually present in

canonical twentieth century US texts. In this essay I use Geertz’s insights to probe Vonnegut’s

1 Graham Harvey: Introduction. In: Indigenous Religions : a Companion. Ed. Graham Harvey. Cassel, London,

UK & New York, US, 2000. p. 3.

2 Clifford Geertz: Religion as a Cultural System. In: The Interpretation of Cultures : Selected Essays. Basic

Books, New York, US, 1973. p. 90.

invented Tralfamadorian philosophy for traces of its being a religion.3

Religions’ consisting of symbols is very much emphatic in Geertz’s definition.

He explains religions as systems of symbols, which in his view

are extrinsic sources of information. By “extrinsic,” I mean only that—unlike

genes, for example—they lie outside the boundaries of the individual organism

as such in that intersubjective world of common understandings into which all

human individuals are born, in which they pursue their separate careers, and

which they leave persisting behind them after they die. By “sources of

information,” I mean only that—like genes—they provide a blueprint or

template in terms of which processes external to themselves can be given a

definite form.4

Briefly speaking, this suggests that religions are systems that help people making sense of the

world surrounding them. Billy Pilgrim, the antihero of Slaughterhouse-Five, ex-POW veteran

of WWII claims to have been kidnapped by an alien species coming from the planet

Tralfamadore, and that these creatures have told him “many wonderful things to teach

Earthlings, especially about time.”5 Moreover, Billy “has come unstuck in time [...] He has

seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in

between. He says.”6 For Billy the aliens from Tralfamadore provide a source of information

extrinsic to him.7 What he learns from Tralfamadorians is that

3 I chose Geertz’s early views as a theoretical framework mainly because if I consider Tralfamadorian thought a

religion, then I have to regard it as a fictional religion (since there is no such religion in existence). There are

numerous fictional religions to be found in Vonnegut’s works, the most notable ones being Bokononism in Cat’s

Cradle and the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent in The Sirens of Titan. The latter novel also features a

“planet Tralfamadore in the Small Magellanic Cloud” (Kurt Vonnegut: The Sirens of Titan. Gollancz–Orion,

London, UK, 2004. p. 123.), which is populated completely and exclusively by machines. Geertz’s earlier works

display a bias towards functionalism, which clearly shows in “Religion as a Cultural System,” and in considering

a fictional religion such functionalist approach may prove more profitable. Additional reasons for my choice are

rather arbitrary: Geertz’s essay originally was published in 1966, while Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969, making

the two writings close contemporaries. Moreover, Vonnegut received his MA in anthropology for his 1963 novel

Cat’s Cradle from the University of Chicago, incidentally where Geerzt was faculty member between 1960 and

1970. It is therefore likely, although certainly not sure, that Vonnegut may have had been catching up with recent

work in anthropology and thus, Geertz’s work may have been known to him.

4 Geertz, C.: Religion. p. 92.

5 Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade. Delacorte, New York, US, 1969. p. 23.

6 Vonnegut, K.: Slaughterhouse-Five. p. 20.

7 Billy’s account on the planet Tralfamadore, its inhabitants, and his newly acquired understanding of time in

Slaughterhouse-Five have been in discussed extensively by critics. Josh Simpson for example argues that Billy

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can

look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how

permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests

them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows

another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone

forever.8

That linear time is an illusion is Billy’s main point to be introduced to Earthlings. This feature

of time that one may be unstuck in his temporal relations and observe joyful moments in life

instead of mirthless ones is the organizing principle of Billy’s Tralfamadorian-inspired

thought, its underlying system of symbols.

Geertz sets out in his definition that such systems of symbols are to “establish

powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men,” wherein the

expressions “mood” and “motivation” is worth pondering about a little. In Slaughterhouse-

was “so tormented and haunted by the burden of the past that he finds it necessary to ‘reinvent’ his own reality”

(Josh Simpson: “This Promising of Great Secrets” : Literature, Ideas, and the (Re)Invention of Reality in Kurt

Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions Or “Fantasies of

an Impossibly Hospitable World” : Science Fiction and Madness in Vonnegut’s Troutean Trilogy. In: Kurt

Vonnegut (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views). Ed. Harold Bloom. Infobase, New York, US, 2009. p. 148.), and

Susanne Vees-Gulani refers to Billy’s “fantasies [which] seem to be the result of memories of particularly

traumatic events, and a vivid imagination which he employs as a ‘sense-making’ tool to deal with his war

trauma” (Susanne Vees-Gulani: Trauma and Guilt : Literature of Wartime Bombing in Germany. Walter de

Gruyter, Berlin, Germany, 2003. p. 163.). Martin Coleman points out that

Vonnegut’s narrative strongly suggests that when Billy Pilgrim travels in time, physically he

remains in the environment that prompted the experience of coming unstuck. The opening

narration includes the expression “he says” three times, suggesting skepticism about Billy’s

account. Accounts of Billy’s time travel show that he goes nowhere. […] Billy Pilgrim’s

experiences need not be interpreted as experiences of time travel; rather one might suspect that

he cannot make sense of temporal relations. (Martin Coleman: The Meaninglessness of

Coming Unstuck in Time. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society : A Quarterly Journal

in American Philosophy 44. [2008: 4] p. 685.)

The questions whether Billy Pilgrim really has been kidnapped (or abducted) by aliens or not, or those

concerning the nature and origin of his experiences (if considered his experiences at all), are really interesting

ones, however they are not within the scope of this paper. I regard Tralfamadorians as existent, because for Billy

they do exist, and what Billy says and does is in manifold ways determined or at least influenced by this

existence.


Five a number of all-pervasive moods are present and have been recurringly pointed out by

critics. An emblematic mood is Billy’s acquiescence (or quietude) concerning whatever life

brings or may bring about, a mood that probably most emphatically shows itself in Billy’s

reply to the crowd protesting over his announcement of his imminent death:

Billy predicts his own death within an hour. He laughed about it, invites the

crowd to laugh with him. “It is high time I was dead.” he says. […] “It is time

for you to go home to your wives and children, and it is time for me to be dead

for a little while–and then live again.”9

Laughing over one’s own death, and accepting it contently is by no means commonly human–

the protest of the crowd clearly indicates it. Still, this “serene” acceptance of all things and

events to come is a mood central to such a Billy-Pilgrimesque experience. This acquiescence

is augmented by leniency, characteristically embodied (not to say en-tombed) in the phrase

“EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL, AND NOTHING HURT,”10 the truth of which

“startled”11 Billy, and which is found a fitting epitaph for him. As I referred to “serene

acceptance” above, the Niebuhrian12 Serenity Prayer that is framed on Billy’s office wall must

be mentioned. It is said to express “his method for keeping going,” and it goes

GOD GRANT ME

THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT

THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE,

COURAGE

TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN,

AND WISDOM ALWAYS

TO TELL THE

DIFFERENCE.13

Billy claims to be “keeping going” this way, by accepting everything he cannot change, even

if “the past, the present, and the future” is included in these things, even if actually everything




12 I here contend that the original author of the quoted form of the Serenity Prayer is US theologian Reinhold

Niebuhr, although this view has been challenged a number of times (see e.g. Fred R. Shapiro: Who Wrote the

Serenity Prayer? Yale Alumni Magazine 71. [2008: 6],

www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2008_07/serenity.html, 9 Oct, 2011.).


is included in the things he cannot change.14 The Serenity Prayer occurs in the novel once

again: it is seen engraved on a locket hanging in the neck of adult movie star Montana

Wildhack, who has been abducted by Tralfamadorians to be Billy’s mate in the zoo he was

showcased in on the alien planet. She is a more faithful interpreter of the prayer, since

although she cannot hope to see her home or even Earth again, still, in the penultimate chapter

we can see her having a baby. She decided to keep humankind alive in that far away alien

planet, to keep herself and Billy alive in a way through their common offspring even in an

utterly helpless situation like that.15 Billy did not intend to reproduce, and although he has a

daughter and a son on Earth (besides the baby on Tralfamadore), he does not show signs of

fatherly love towards them, he instead seems to be upset by their existence, a reason of which

may be that he sees the continuation of his life in them.16 That Billy seems to have no

14 This is a very weak point in Billy’s Tralfamadorian philosophy, regardless of its being considered a religion

or not. For the lack of space I do not intend to elaborate on this topic here, the failure of Billy’s philosophy has

been widely discussed in many insightful essays, including (but by no means limited to) those by Martin

Coleman (Coleman, M.: Meaninglessness, pp. 681-698.), Peter Reed (Peter Reed: The End of the Road :

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade. In: Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Ed. Harold

Bloom. Chelsea House, Philadelphia, US, 2001. pp. 3-26.), and in chapter 4 of Donald Morse’s book (Donald

E. Morse: Imagining Being an American : The Novels of Kurt Vonnegut (Contributions to the Study of Science

Fiction and Fantasy 103). Praeger–Greenwood, Westport, US, 2003.).

15 It is made clear in the novel that having a baby on Tralfamadore is entirely Montana’s idea:

In time, Montana came to love and trust Billy Pilgrim. He did not touch her until she made it

clear that she wanted him to. After she had been on Tralfamadore for what would have been an

Earthling week, she asked him shyly if he wouldn't sleep with her. Which he did. It was

heavenly. (Vonnegut, K.: Slaughterhouse-Five. p. 115–116.)

It is no surprise that Billy was not that busy in keeping life going (which is by the way a serious contradiction

with his claim concerning the Serenity Prayer, see Vonnegut, K.: Slaughterhouse-Five. p. 52.), since we learn

that even his mother

upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and

weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and

Billy didn't really like life at all. (Vonnegut, K.: Slaughterhouse-Five. p. 88., my italics)

16 This lack of love is very much visible in the hospital scene after his wife Valencia’s death. Billy is visited

first by his daughter Barbara, then by his son Robert, and in both cases he shows complete ignorance towards his

children, although both are (understandably) upset:

Billy's daughter Barbara came in later that day. […] Doctors had given her pills so she could

continue to function, even though her father was broken and her mother was dead. […] Her

brother Robert was flying home from a battlefield in Vietnam. “Daddy—” she said tentatively.

“Daddy—?”

But Billy was ten years away, back in 1958.

motivations in life apparently counters the applicability of Geertz’s definition. In my view

however, Billy’s having no motivation is so much basic and pervasive in the novel that I

rather consider him to have robust non-motivations, established deeply in his personality by

the system of symbols discussed earlier.

Geertz also requires religions to provide “conceptions of a general order of

existence,” which in Billy’s case is the conception of a non-causal predetermined world.

Tralfamadorians teach Billy that the notion of free will is a mere Earthling illusion: they have

already “visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and […] have studied reports on

one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”17 Thus, the notion of free will

is not known outside of Earth. That Billy learns of linear time’s being illusory has already

been mentioned. This assertion is further extended when he is told that “here we are […]

trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why,”18 which briefly and preremptorily

rules out all possibilities of a causal explanation of events. Human attempts for such causal

explanations are denounced by Tralfamadorians, referring to humans as “the great explainers,

explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or

avoided,” and noting that such attempts are vile, since “[a]ll time is all time. It does not

change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.”19 This is the general

order that Billy recognizes on his “Pilgrimage”20 to Tralfamadore, that “[e]verything is all

right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does.”21

That “aura of factuality” aiming to make “the moods and motivations seem

uniquely realistic,” prescribed by Geertz, is probably the most problematic part of the

definition. An important aspect of a religion is that faith is inescapable for regarding it as real

and existent. It is faith that creates religions, the teachings and general appearance of which

are not necessarily credible for everyone. This “shortcoming” of religions is why the presence

of faith, even of conviction is inevitable, since the sole formal evidence a believer has for

[…]

Billy Pilgrim opened his eyes in the hospital in Vermont, did not know where he was.

Watching him was his son Robert.

[…]

“Dad—?”

Billy Pilgrim closed his eyes again. (Vonnegut, K.: Slaughterhouse-Five. pp. 162–164.)17 Vonnegut, K.: Slaughterhouse-Five. p. 74.



20 And thus he adds an interesting color to the commonly drawn Bunyanesque parallel.


what he believes in is his belief itself. This may seem tautological, belief however is not

meant to be the subject of empirical inquiry. This is the reason why presenting empirical

evidence in support of the pertinence of one’s religion is impossible or at least fallacious.22

That Billy Pilgrim really has been abducted by Tralfamadorians and was told all the things he

claims to have learnt from them is of course questionable. The novel leaves this question

open. As I stated before, I regard Tralfamadorians as existent, because for Billy they do exist,

and what Billy says and does is in manifold ways determined or at least influenced by this

existence.

An additional aspect of Billy’s attitude, which may support his being a prophet

of Tralfamadorian religion, is its inherent martyrdom. Peter Freese decribes him “[a]ppointing

himself a missionary, bringing the philosophy of Tralfamadorian fatalism to troubled

humans,”23 and indeed he is seen preaching to others about the benefits of observing and

understanding the world and life the Tralfamadorian way. Billy claims to have seen and

experienced his own death several times, he has even recorded his account on it on tape: “I,

Billy Pilgrim, the tape begins, will die, have died and always will die on February thirteenth,

1976. At the time of his death, he says, he is in Chicago to address a large crowd on the

subject of flying saucers and the true nature of time.”24 He also foretells the way his death

occurs and the circumstances thereof:

Billy is speaking before a capacity audience in a baseball park [... and]

predicts his own death within an hour. He laughed about it, invites the crowd

to laugh with him. “It is high time I was dead,” he says. “Many years ago,” he

said, “a certain man promised to have me killed. He is an old man now, living

not far from here. He has read all the publicity associated with my appearance

in your fair city. He is insane. Tonight he will keep his promise.”

22 Carl Sagan reports on a dialog he had with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama about the neccessity of updating

religious views (in that case, those of Tibetan Buddhism) if scientific advancement would disprove them. The

Lama was firm that such changes in religions and in Buddhism in particular would then obviously have to be

made, even if the disproven tenet would be such a central one as e.g. reincarnation, “[h]owever—he added with a

twinkle—it's going to be hard to disprove reincarnation” (Carl Sagan: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a

Candle in the Dark. Ballantine Books, New York, US, 1996. p. 270.). This is to say that empirical scientific

study and religious belief are two different paths leading upwards two distinct mountains.

23 Peter Freese: Vonnegut’s Invented Religions as Sense-Making Systems. In: The Vonnegut Chronicles :

Interviews and Essays (Contributions to the Satudy of World Literature 65). Eds. Peter J. Reed and Marc Leeds.

Greenwood, Westport, US, 1996. p.155.


There are protests from the crowd.

Billy Pilgrim rebukes them. “If you protest, if you think that death is a

terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said.” Now he closes

his speech as he closes every speech with these words: “Farewell, hello,

farewell, hello.”25

He calms the police officers offering him their protection saying “it is time for me to be dead

for a little while–and then live again.’ ”26 Prophesizing his own death and further life

associates Billy with Jesus Christ, who

going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto

them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed

unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to

death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to

crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.27

Jesus also had his own self-proclaimed protector during his capture in the garden of

Gethsemane, whom he calmed down and assured that what is happening is meant to happen

so:

And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and

drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear.

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they

that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot

now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve

legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it

must be?28

Although there is major difference between the reasons of accepting death in the case of Jesus

(the active, voluntary fulfillment of God’s word) and in that of Billy (the passive acceptance

of being “trapped in the amber of this moment”29), the similarities of the two prophesies

however are as well notable. Christianity as a religion is based on the life, deeds, and

teachings attributed to Jesus the Christ or Messiah. He is present in Christian thought as the

model of perfect human existence, what he teaches and does is exemplary for all followers of



27 Matt. 20:17–19 (Bible passages quoted from the King James Version)

28 Matt. 26:51–54


Christianity, and it is hardly arguable that without Jesus there would be no such religion as

Christianity. His persona constitutes the basics of Christian thought, as does that of Billy in

the case of the Tralfamadorian one. Such similarity has of course been observed by many

critics. William Rodney Allen for example writes that

Like Christ, Billy brings a new message to the world, although it is a very

different one from his predecessor’s. And like Jesus he is an innocent who

accepts his death, at the hands of an enemy who reviles and misunderstands

him, as an opportunity to teach mankind the proper response to mortality. Both

Billy and Jesus teach that one should face death calmly, because death is not

the end. In the Christian vision the self after death proceeds forward in time

eternally, either in heaven or hell; for Billy, however, “after” death the soul

proceeds backward in time, back into life. […] Thus Billy, the new Christ,

preaches that human beings do have eternal life—even if there is no life after

death.30

Also, Freese writes that Vonnegut “simultaneously makes Billy a latter-day Christ crucified

by a world of cruelty and lovelessness and a postlapsarian Adam pinning for a return to

paradise.”31

As a conclusion, a Geertzian approach to religion can be applied significantly

well to Tralfamadorian thought as seen in Slaughterhouse-Five. Fictional religions are

abundant in Vonnegut’s works, and although I do not intend to say that he actually meant

Tralfamadorian philosophy to be interpreted as a religion, note must be taken of the fact that it

offers itself for such interpretation, and a carefully applied approach can refer

“Tralfamadorianism” to the ranks of fictional yet scathingly intelligent religions procreated by

Vonnegut’s creative genius.

30 William Rodney Allen: Slaughterhouse-Five. In: Kurt Vonnegut (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views). Ed.

Harold Bloom. Infobase, New York, US, 2009. pp. 8–9.

31 Freese, P.: Invented. p. 155.

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