Reading Blog: Slaughter House - Five (Pg. 153-182)

Kilgore Trout is a very influential and important character in Vonnegut’s book, since he is used as a mediator by the author to express and most of the times mock the American society throughout his book. For example, Kilgore Trout’s book Gutless Wonder is a parody of an army of robots that weren’t accepted in society, not by the fact that they lacked a conscious, but because they had a terrible halitosis. “Trout’s leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.” (Vonnegut 168). The robots are basically a metaphor of the North American soldiers that savagely threw napalm on the Vietnamese during the war of Vietnam, and then felt as if they were doing the right thing. Vonnegut attacks the uncivilized behavior of the Americans comparing them with steel robots who were incapable to feel any emotion such as merci; however, that isn’t Vonnegut strongest attack, the author emphasizes more on the fact that the United States civilians instead of discriminating the U.S. soldiers for their merciless frenzies, they are rejected due to the fact that they have bad breath. Bad breath is a simple, and rather common, condition of the human beings, but the lack of feelings isn’t a common condition in people.
Once again Kilgore Trout is used by Vonnegut as the way to mock society, and, in this particular case, to mock the Christians.

That’s right. And I’m not the only one who’s listening. God is listening, too. And on Judgment Day he’s gong to tell you all the things you said and did. If it turns out they’re bat this instead of good things, that’s too bad for you, because you’ll burn forever and ever. The burning never stops hurting.
Poor Maggie turned gray. She believed that, too, and was petrified.
Kilgore Trout laughed uproariously. (Vonnegut 172).

In this excerpt, Kilgore literally laughs on Maggie’s face for believing the lies he had just said, which in fact, are the believes of all medieval Christians, and some in the present.
“… as though you all of a sudden realized you were standing on thin air.” (Vonnegut 175). This quote reflects mankind, or any living thing for that matter. We are always standing on the thin air of life, which will eventually fall at any time, and bring us our sudden death. Humans, for the simple fact that they rely heavily in other things, will always be on thin air, since the thing they depend on, depend on another things (and so on) causing a chain reaction if one fails. For example, Colombian industry relies on the price of the dollar, which varies depending on the global consumption of people. This implies that if the people acquire, for any given reason, many dollars, then the price of this currency will fall, causing as a direct action the bankruptcy of the Colombian industries, and so on and so forth.
In contrast to the mockery that Vonnegut handles against the United States society, Vonnegut places the German society in a very high and noble place, making it seem as if they were almost heavenly. “The blind innkeeper said that the Americans could sleep in his stable that night, and he gave them soup and ersatz coffee and a little beer. Then he came out to the stable to listen to them bedding down in the straw.” (Vonnegut 181). Here, the quote clearly implies that the Germans treat the Americans, although they have recently demolished Dresden, with respect and tolerance. This German behavior can also be seen throughout the book, in the ways the American prisoners of war are treated by the Germans (relatively good).