Helplessly falling for The Sirens of Titans. An early novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Geez Louise, it’s been a bloody long time since I’ve read a Vonnegut. The last time I’ve read him was maybe some time after uni. If I look at my spreadsheet of the last Vonnegut book I read, it was in 2010. That book was Cat’s Cradle and I really did not like it at all, I guess to the point that I’ve been avoiding him for almost fifteen years. But I’m in that funny period in my life where I’m revisiting the authors of my youth and either am becoming disenchanted with them or appreciate them even more.
I’ve always been lukewarm to Vonnegut though. I wasn’t crash hot about Slaughterhouse 5 because I wasn’t really buying the message of just letting things be, that things are as they are in the past and the future (and therefore present). But in my youth, I had trouble accepting that. I had trouble accepting that you can’t change the course of how things are, that there is nothing but to accept. As I got older and perhaps wiser, I realise that I need to relax this thought to some degree, that there are other things that I should accept and things that I could change, just like Billy Pilgrim’s Alcoholics Anonymous Mantra. Thankfully I never became an alcoholic.
In The Sirens of Titan, there is a slight cameo by the Trafalmadorian and also the underlying concept of things are just as they are in the past and present. There is no line between good or bad, that everything just is. Yet, at the end of the book, this mantra also goes to shreds, that everything just fell on its head, and in the final revelations of the novel we realise that there is even less meaning than what we had just swallowed. And I realise, personally, how much of a comic, absurdist genius Vonnegut really was.
The absurd journey of the space traveler
Malachi Constant is a lucky man, but that’s about to change really quickly. After inheriting his father’s wealth which he accumulated by investing in the stock market following companies which coincide with the alphabets of the bible, he had it made. His father runs this extraordinary snowballing pattern of wealth from a small hotel room in room 223. Malachi continued through the passages of the bible after he passed on, becoming filthier rich.
When he was invited to the intermittent passing through of Rumfoord via a teleport, a space traveler who had become a wavelength traversing the universe, his fate was unfolded to him. Rumfoord predicted that Malachi would procreate with his wife (Rumfoord’s that is), travel to Mars, Mercury, back to earth and end up in Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. In reaction to this, Malachi sold off companies that may remotely be connected to space travel and started to lose his wealth in a drastic manner.
He woke up penniless, being kidnapped by Martian agent, converted to a soldier with his memory wiped. His job, as a new soldier named Unk, was then to follow orders and to lead a Martian invasion against earth. But Rumfoord had other plans for him, and after diverting his ship to Mercury with his commander, Boaz, leaving the Martian troops absolutely decimated on earth, he had to find a way to escape from the caves of Mercury.
Following it so far? I don’t blame you if you’re not. Malachi managed to escape Mercury, returning to earth finding it much changed. Much of the earthlings now, after their devastating victory against the martians have converted to a new religion of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. He was part of a prophecy, but also a victim of that prophecy. He was immediately exiled with his former mate and newfound offspring to Titan.
We find that, all along, this whole confabulated scheme was to bring a spare part to a Trafalmadorian, Salo, who was stranded on his way to the edge of the universe and befriended Rumfoord in his journey. The spare part was the good luck charm that Malachi’s son, Chrono had been carrying all his life, a spare part which he had found on Mars, unknowingly holding the key to his universe. We find, in an absurd turn of event, that the purpose of all human civilisation was to send this spare part to Salo so he could continue on his journey.
His task was to deliver a message, unbeknownst to him, to whoever it might be at the end of the universe: a simple dot on a piece of paper, the dot representing “greetings” in Trafalmadorian.
Odysseus fell to the sirens
For a two hundred odd page novel, there was a lot to unpack in the story. All that. All of that, just so a robo alien from an obscure planet was able to continue on his journey so that he could say “greetings” to another stranger who may or may not kill him at the other side of the universe. That is equivalent of having a breakdown in the middle of the Nullarbor desert, sending a message to your mate to contact the local MP to get the parts from a factory in Taiwan, and if they won’t give them to you then start a war to get that piece. Actually, that’s not even remotely close.
Earth’s landmarks which visible from space, such as the Great Wall of China, were mere messages for Salo to let him know that help is on the way. Imagine to have the knowledge where your existence was only to serve for something trivial. Do we need any purpose in that case? Yes. Despite the absurdism of the purposelessness of life (or our perception of it), the purpose itself is superficial compared to the actual existence. This is all over again, Sisyphus rolling up an impossible boulder and finding happiness as he walked down the slope to retrieve it.
For Malachi, this happiness is found much later on, when he realises that bliss is to be able to love those around him. That this, though not close to anything like purpose, was able to keep him in a strange planet alive away from civilisation and other humans who are not his mate and child. Or we can interpret Malachi’s life as the constant denial of having such a miniscule a purpose (him and other humans in history before him) as to deliver a spare part to an alien being. Malachi himself tried to refute this existence of humanity as a mere errand boy in writing, but deep down it is a difficult fact to refute.
How do you feel when everything’s a sham?
The sirens of titans, three ridiculously good looking young women a la Zoolander’s magnum reputation, that would make any prom queen on earth look like a retarded kid missing a face, were nothing more than artificial constructs, mere statues that at the end of the novel were rotting with decay. They are the culmination of the pointlessness of Malachi’s struggles and goals, that he was initially drawn in to the sirens, only to be stranded for good in titan.
And it is an apt symbolism for us. How real are our goals? Will our new year’s resolution benefit us in a real, fulfilling way, or are we just chasing ghosts that don’t exist? In the world of Vonnegut, where nothing that happens to you is really ever good or bad, everything is all part of your general experience. In this case, it matters not if you’re chasing to be the world’s wealthiest man, or the world’s wealthiest person. Life is a zero sum game that had already unfolded, giving us the illusion of free will. So what matters then?
Maybe we need to look elsewhere. We should not overlook Malachi’s mate Boaz, who decided on his own volition to stay in Mercury to interact with the harmoniums for the rest of his life:
“I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I’m doing good, and them I’m doing good for know I’m doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home.”
There is something somewhat profound in this. When was the last time you knew you were doing an act of good? I can’t remember the last time. Did we even think then whether the good we think we do were doing someone or something some level of harm? In a novel that is pretty darn nihilistic, we can take solace in Boaz’s newfound enlightenment.
The actions of our lives might have already been predetermined. This could be a sad thought. But we perhaps have some say on how we react to what happens to us, regardless whether the story had already been written and there’s no way for us to rip up the pages and bind them with another story. There is a need for stoicism in this and to find contentment regardless of the situation. The more books that I read, the more that I think about the boulder’s of Sisyphus and him walking down the slope, and consequently, Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus.
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Vonnegut would write his most famous work, Slaughterhouse 5, a decade later in 1969. Perhaps the world around him had changed some by then. There is a greater distance from the great war, but the Vietnam War would bring back memories and past traumas of the Dresden bombings, of which Vonnegut was a miraculous survivor. Yet, I prefer the comic absurdism (or nihilism) of The Sirens of Titans.
It is a messier novel, but for me, it offers more hope and something to strive towards. But I was much younger and much more foolish when I read Slaughterhouse 5 and it is more than likely that I would change my mind about it on a re-read. But I had re-read that book and still didn’t think much of it.
I think it was Boaz that made the difference. Boaz, who was a borderline sadistic commander who controls his chain of command at the push of a button, Boaz who’s laser focused on the invasion’s destruction (though whose I don’t think he knows either), Boaz who finally settles in Mercury to entertain the harmoniums with the rhythms of his body. Maybe he’d get sick of it after a while. In the story, the purpose of the greater humanity was to deliver a spare part to an obscure alien, but Boaz had found his own and was happy with it. Lucky bastard.
