The Human Pedestal
Ridley Scotts Blade Runner and Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse Five are two works that at first glance appear to offer no similarities. Slaughterhouse Five is an anti-war novel written about the Dresden bombings in World War II, whereas Blade Runner stands as an American science fiction film written in the early 80s depicting the “cyberpunk” view of life in Los Angeles in 2019. The two settings are completely spread apart and offer no reference to the other. In addition to the diversity of setting is the gap in plot and format of the two works. However, the work of Scott and Vonnegut offer a mutual connection to answering a strong, age old question of the human mind and the value of human life. The main focus of this essay will be to analyze the viewpoints the two works offer in understanding philosophical importance of the human sanctity by narrowing two questions, “what makes human life more sacred, or of higher purpose then other life forms, and what does moral action have to offer for this question?”
I will begin by first analyzing how Kurt Vonnegut uses his novel Slaughterhouse Five to bring awareness on how the “unmoral” acts of war bring about the complete destruction of human standards and promote animalistic behavior. Slaughterhouse Five is set in Germany during World War II. It is the story of a young soldier who goes through the war and life with no hope in humanity due to being scarred from the tragedies of war at such an early age. Vonnegut uses vivid imagery in describing the setting to show the misery brought out by war, thus exposing emotions from the reader that could not be fueled from a film. However, unlike a typical anti-war novel would be expected to portray, Vonnegut does not use strong fear and emotion with his main character Billy Pilgrim in an effort to raise awareness of the tragedies of war. Instead Vonnegut uses the honest approach of indifference and loss of hope to express his thoughts against the war. Some people believe that Vonneguts novel is simply science fiction and actually question his sanity. In contrast Vonnegut prides himself on his deeper level of writing and his suffering as a P.O.W released him into the first hand horrors of war. Josh Simpson, a graduate student from Eastern Kentucky, wrote an essay about Vonnegut and the dual meanings of his writings. Simpson tells about how one of Vonneguts biggest fears was to be viewed as a far-fetched science fiction novelist, and prides himself on the meanings behind his peculiar style of writing, “I argue that although Slaughterhouse-Five on the surface is Vonneguts Dresden novel, on a much deeper level it is also the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man so tormented and haunted by the burden of the past that he finds it necessary to “reinvent” his own reality.” (1) Billy Pilgrim is simply hopeless in humanity and believes there is nothing he can change.