Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
It is obvious that Vonnegut has been through a lot from what we read in Slaughterhouse-Five. He made his fortune from being an optometrist and married a rich girl. He had his downs during the war, where people saw him as a burden and avoided him whenever possible. There really aren’t much left on earth that he hasn’t experienced. On page 116, he wrote:
“As you know, I am from a planet that has been engaged in senseless slaughter since the beginning of time. I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen…and I have lit my way in a prison at night with candles from the fat of human beings who were butchered by the brothers and fathers of those schoolgirls who were boiled.”
Probably the cruelty of war numbed him. He grew insusceptible to death and simply didn’t bother sympathizing oppressed characters such as the guy who got killed in the elevator. All he would ever say about "plain old death" is “so it goes” like his Tralfamadorian friends … and maybe even laugh it off with some dry humor of his. Anyways, tearing is really not his way of responding to frustration and exhaustion. He has seen way too much during the war to care. If he sheds a few drops of tear every time he sees a catastrophe, I bet there won’t ever be an end to the crying.
Another reason why Vonnegut prefers laugh over tears is probably because one of his main tasks during the war was to gather corpses after the war. I can imagine how tedious always having to do the cleaning job after war can be, especially when realizing that most of the dead soldiers had the face of a teen. The image of picking bodies up could have caused him to loath cleaning, and prefer laugh over tear since there’s less cleaning to do afterward.
NancyAnother reason why Vonnegut prefers laugh over tears is probably because one of his main tasks during the war was to gather corpses after the war. I can imagine how tedious always having to do the cleaning job after war can be, especially when realizing that most of the dead soldiers had the face of a teen. The image of picking bodies up could have caused him to loath cleaning, and prefer laugh over tear since there’s less cleaning to do afterward.
Poo-tee-wee
What a fantastic ending to this post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your ideas here, Nancy. There must be a point in our minds where an emotion can completely saturate our consciousness. Likely his war experiences left him a very changed man. Crying changes nothing, in the end, and you can only cry to a point. It won't bring people back, but maybe laughing will make the time we have left a bit better than it would have been.