Time Controlling Aliens (First Impressions of Slaughterhouse Five)

The structure of the first chapter can be categorized under the title of a “frame narrative”. A frame narrative can be described as “a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story”. Vonnegut employs this technique by writing in a first person, although he refers to himself as Yon Yonson, and walks the reader through the process of writing the secondary story which is the focus of the novel (chapter 2 onwards).  This dynamic is made evident at the end of chapter 1 where Vonnegut writes:

“I’ve finished my war book now . . . It begins like this:

             Listen:

                        Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. “

On the next page, Vonnegut begins chapter 2 with the same lines, indicating that the rest of the novel is the war book that he was referring to initially.

While chapter 1 may not be a part of the core storyline, it does emphasize the theme of time that that may suggest possible foreshadowing by Vonnegut. When the narrator and the two girls cross the Delaware River, the dynamic of reflecting on the passing of time is introduced. Vonnegut states:

“We went to the New York World's Fair, saw with the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors.

And I asked myself about the president: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. “

Not only does the narrator recognize the past and future, it is suggested that time itself may be a physical concept, one that has width, and depth, one that can be manipulated. Manipulation of time is further explored as the narrator is stuck in a hotel. It is described:

“The time would not pass. Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only with the electric clocks, but the wind-up kind too. The second hand on my watch what which ones, and the year would pass, and then we switch again. There's nothing I could do about it. As an earthling, I had to believe whatever clocks said — and calendars.

The narrator suggests a lack of control here as he says, “There’s nothing I could do about it”. It’s also stated that somebody was messing with all of the clocks indicating a possible entity that’s responsible for manipulation of time. This is further supported as he refers to himself as an “earthling” implying there are non-earthlings (time controlling aliens?).  With the end of chapter 1 and beginning of chapter 2, Vonnegut once again refers to time as he says “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time”. While it is not clear how time will affect the plot of the novel (time controlling aliens might be a bit of a reach), it can be inferred from the first chapter that the manipulation of time will be a greater theme in the development of the book.

First impressions of Mumbo Jumbo

When I first started reading Mumbo Jumbo I immediately thought “What the hell is going on”. The novel starts out rather jarringly with strange, made up words, common grammatical errors, and seemingly random illustrations that don’t relate to the text in which it is placed next to. All this combines to confuse the reader upon first laying eyes on the text.

In addition, Ishmael Reed introduces a rare (in the context of novels) but not unfairly structure in the “opening scene” by placing the title page, publishing information, etc. in between the first and second chapters. We discussed this in class and it gives the book an almost cinematic feel yet there seems to be a few distinct differences that make it more appropriate in films than in books. For one, while watching a film in a theatre setting, the viewer is forced to sit through the credits regardless and if one were to watch it in a home with access to fast forward, the initial scene may catch the viewer's attention enough to start watching at which point the viewer may be too cozy to be bothered to reach for the remote in order to skip the couple minutes of credits. Meanwhile, who reads the title page in a book? No one. And even with the structure of Mumbo Jumbo I’d assume readers would simply skip past it as usual. In fact, it is so uncommon for chapter one to be before the title page that it may lead the reader to not realize the existence of chapter one all together. It was brought up that part of the reason the title page, etc. are always placed before the start of the book is because it is the way things have been done forever. It’s true that traditionally this has been the case but it appears to me that this placement/order occurred due to increased intuitiveness for the reader.

While recovering from my initial shock, I, as a result of discussions, started to notice a deeper meaning apart from the seemingly nonsensical narrative on the surface. It was brought up that Jes Grew, a made up “anti-plague”, sounds very similar to “just grew” and may refer to the spread of jazz (also supported by the fact that Jes Grew originated from New Orleans) which some may have viewed in a similar way one would view a plague. The book even references an earlier occurrence of Jes Grew which happens to occur in the same era as that of ragtime, leading to further evidence that Jes Grew is hinting at the spread of genres of music with origins in African-American culture. While on the surface the book seemed ridiculous, as I read through more of it and got past the initial shock, it’s starting to make more sense to me. Poking around online, I found that Harold Bloom, a literary critic and professor at Yale University, stated that the novel was one of the 500 most important books in the Western canon (“The Western canon is the body of books and, more broadly, music and art that Western scholars generally accept as the most important and influential in shaping Western culture”). I think it’ll be interesting to see why Bloom puts Mumbo Jumbo up on a pedestal.