Free Will In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

Humans do not have free will. Humans can not make a conscious decision without it being affected by their past experiences, or the beliefs they were taught at a young age. Humans strive towards the idea of being able to make their own decisions and set their own path in life, but in the end, everything you do, is a product of past events.People want free will because we want to be unique. The idea of making your own decisions and being able to separate yourself from everyone else is what some people base their lives around. Everyday in our lives we watch events unfold around us, some for better, and others for worse, that no matter how much we believe we affected them, their is no evidence supporting we directly caused them. Kurt Vonnegut did not have free will, and he knew it. His book, Slaughterhouse Five, was a …show more content…
The things we do, do alter the path but we do not control our actions. They are the end product of all of our experiences, and even our genes up to that point in our lives.”’We know how the universe ends...and earth has nothing to do with it, except that it gets wiped out too...We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers.’ ‘If you know this...isn’t there some way you can prevent it?’ ‘He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him. The moment is structured that way.’ ‘ So… I suppose that the idea of preventing war on earth is stupid too.’ ‘Of course”(Vonnegut 117). The Tralfalmadorians could see moments in the future. They knew that they were going to blow up the universe, but they also knew that they could not change it. Billy Pilgrim had a hard time understanding this because of his human emotions that would lead him to try to change the outcome, however the Tralfalmadorians knew that they could not change what could happen. The outcome would be the universe being destroyed by the Tralfalmadorians and there is nothing that could change