The Sirens of Titan

Reading The Sirens of Titan was overwhelming. So many ideas were being thrown around that I found it hard to decipher exactly what Kurt Vonnegut was approving, what he was denouncing. One of the more clear messages concerned free will, but, my having read Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-five, Breakfast for Champions, and Timequake before, this was expected and not surprising. Free will is something that Kurt Vonnegut frequently problematizes, over and over, in both the macro and micro aspects of his novels. Here, I discuss just a little bit how this issue presents itself in Timequake.

Rumfoord Niles is the first problem posed to free will in The Sirens of Titan. Having been turned into a wave phenomena, Niles materializes and dematerializes periodically on earth (while staying forever on Titan, the moon of Saturn). When on earth, he comes bearing news: the future. As nothing more but a wave particle floating through space and time, Niles is privy to the future, and he has no scruples telling some strange things to his wife, Beatrice. He also wants to inform Malachi Constant, the novel's protagonist, about the future, for his and Bee's futures involve each other greatly. Both Bee and Malachi, though, think Rumfoord's predictions are preposterous and want to avoid them (which includes Bee and Constant in space together, as mates and with a child). This is, of course, impossible for both of them. Take a look at Beatrice as she watches, from the comfort of her living room, the space-ship she should've been on take-off without her.

 She had proved so many good things. She had proved that she was mistress of her own fate, could say no whenever she pleased--and make it stick. She had proved that her husband's omniscient bullying was all a bluff--that he wasn't any better at forecasts than the United States Weather Bureau…During the countdown, Beatrice's mood was bird-like. She could not sit still and she could not keep quiet. Her restlessness was a result of happiness, not of suspense. It was a matter of indifference to her whether The Rumfoord was a fizzle or not…The Rocket went up with a roar. It was a flawless shot. (93)

Thinking she has successfully escaped the future and asserted her own will, she is tricked by "two supposed representatives of the mortgage-holders of the estate" who get her to think she is checking out a metal building outside, only to really put her into a flying saucer and lickety-split send her out to Mars. This is only one of the many episodes where a character's will is ripped out from right under their feet. Poor Beatrice is subjected to this again when on the flight to Mars she is looked up in a closet and kept there captive. Malachi, having been told the woman in the closet is too beautiful for any one to behold and wanting to prove his sexual prowess, essentially rapes and impregnates Beatrice. The key though, is that he does so not knowing it was her in the closet. Though he wanted to avoid Rumfoord's predictions, he unwillingly brought it to fruition.

So, the reader sees that this Niles Rumfoord is able to predict the future and events of the world, predictions that are "un-avoidable." But as the book progresses, it becomes questionable if Niles is just predicting--is he actually controlling a lot of the ways the future pans out? He definitely controls the Martian Army, constituted of bamboozled and kidnapped men who get their memory wiped out and antennas lodged into their brains. These antennas allow someone "in control" to dictate your movements and obedience to orders. Perfect for controlling soldiers, this is an eerie, science-fictiony image that definitely speaks of the ways in which Kurt fears we are controlled. Having been a soldier himself, Vonnegut must know all too well the ways in which free will is suspended and orders take on all importance in the army. Clearly, he does not like this, and likes even less the thought that events in our day-to-day life may be ruled by someone else's volition.

Malachi Constant is now Unk the lonely Martian Soldier whose had his memory wiped; who is missing his friend, a friend he unknowingly executed with his own bare hands; who was to participate in the great Martian War against Earth, a war that failed miserably; who ended up stranded on a distant planet with another Martian soldier named Boaz for years. Finally, after Mars and  Constant figures out how to get back to Earth, but now certain things are clear.
Rumfoord choreographed the war. Rumfoord wanted Constant to get stuck and lost for years--it was he that made Unk and Boaz's ship "malfunction" and travel somewhere other than Earth. He then established his own religion (which is a topic to discuss all on its own) on Earth, changed society. When Unk arrives, the town is ecstatic, for his arrival has been told of by Rumfoord (Unk is in fact very much the "sacrificial" one whose arrival was long awaited). Rumfoord brings about the (unemotional, awkward) reunion of Bee, Constant, and their child only to turn it into a public trial which ends in guilt and exile for the family. Exile to Titan, where Constant was once told by Rumfoord he would end up. Not only does Rumfoord prophesy the future, he seems to be orchestrating it.

So, according to what happens to Beatrice, we are unable to control what happens to us. According to Rumfoord's religion, whose God is apathetic and absent, there's no room for a Divine hand in the events of our lives, either. It seems Rumfoord is the one who is in control. But then, suddenly, Salo comes into the picture and the power changes hands again.

Salo is a machine from the planet Tralfamadore whose spaceship has broken down in Titan, where he meets and befriends Rumfoord. It turns out that for thousands and thousands of years, for about as long as humanity has been progressing, Salo has awaited for his home planet to send back a missing piece (which happens to be in the hands of Unk and Bee's son, on their way now to Titan). While waiting, Traflamdorians have been manipulating our actions through the Universal Will to Become (that which was the cause of the Universe, the cause of matter from nothingness) in a manner that would send messages to Salo, way off in Titan. For example, Stonehenge and Easter Island are simply Tralfamadorian text messages.

It turns out even Rumfoord was being used by the Tralfamadorians, for Tralfamadorian purposes, though he doesn't like it one bit. In the end, the issue of who is in control of us is pushed to the realm of the absurd: we've been used by a distant planet to further the deliverance of a small piece to a single machine named Salo.

I wish I could talk more about The Sirens of Titan, particularly go into the satire religion, but this post has gone on longer than I wanted it to. I'll write another one soon on a bunch of new books, good and bad.