Schlachthaus Fünf


Bird CageKurt Vonnegut is dead. vonnegut.com has a placeholder image of an empty birdcage with an open gate. I’d always felt that Death was a running theme in the man’s work, from the time I first cracked Slaughterhouse 5 in a high school lit class, to now, this moment when I first learned of his death.

Vonnegut never pitched Death as a villain in his work, but more as a relief or a last resort. His characters longed for it, loathed it and fought it, yet accepted it as a reasonable and sensible conclusion once all other avenues had failed. But their lives continued for better or for worse, and their antics and mishaps kept their relationships with Death constant. There were never any happy endings, or sad. There were only endings that never quite ended - until now.

In a way, I believe Vonnegut never intended an ending to his work because it was inextricably tied to his own life, and for the man and his work, there was only one ending possible, and that would have to be written by somebody else.

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