Escape alienation

 　　The French philosopher Foucault once emphasized that the most appropriate way to understand society is war. As one of the representative writers of postmodernism in the United States, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) creatively used science fiction elements in his representative work "Slaughterhouse No. 5", and used the protagonist Billy to break through the space limitation. The journey reveals the cruelty of war, the absurdity of the world, and the morbid social phenomena such as panic after the rational principle is broken. "Indeed, the conclusion is beyond doubt that Billy's space travel was a mode of escape." While Americans are proud of their democracy, prosperity, liberty, and rights, social problems of all kinds need to be addressed, abuses of power , out-of-control technology, rampant violence, and indifferent emotions all show the alienation of postmodern social order. Facing the extremely terrifying life epitomized by "World War II", especially the bombing of Dresden, Germany, Billy "escaped" to Volkswagen Star 541, an alien planet without war and death in his eyes. "Escape" is a common theme in American literature, such as escaping into nature, into the west, into death, into nothingness, etc.; 'escape' means escaping from painful and unsatisfactory reality and into a utopian ideal world. "Imagination is the only way for us to escape. Where do we escape? To what is called the good—perhaps a better life, or a better place." Billy travels through space temporarily in the novel Get rid of the painful alienation predicament. Escape from the side reflects Vonnegut's observation of the alienation dilemma in postmodern society, and expresses the author's ultimate humanitarian concern for postmodern human living conditions and life forms.

Escape One: Alienation between Man and Society

　　In the first half of the 19th century, with the development of industrialization in the post-Civil War America, free competitive capitalism slowly transitioned to monopoly capitalism, and wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of a few financial giants. The self-reliance that Emerson preached evolved into a cult of ambition, a lust for money and power. From Bentham's utilitarian point of view, individuals lose their economic virtues in the enjoyment of wealth, and the "emptiness" of the subject itself disintegrates the original value ethics and is completely materialized.

Kurt Vonnegut

　　Behind the apparent economic prosperity lies misery and misfortune, and individual lives are filled with a strong sense of disillusionment and frustration. In the novel Slaughterhouse Five, a German major during the war tries to explain Americans' lack of discipline and self-esteem through a report written by American Nazi Campbell: Americans mistakenly believe that the rich get rich easily and the poor It failed because of its own stupidity; the U.S. military gave soldiers poor uniforms, while officers from the wealthy class were well-dressed, fueling the self-hatred of the poor. Apparently, Vonnegut intends here to "make the most direct attack on the American class system and the wealth myth that underpins it." The American Dream used to be an American obsession, but with the development of technology and people's increasing dependence on it, political problems have arisen, because this dependence requires a certain social cost. With the advent of war, the role of science and technology in national security issues has been greatly enhanced, and a lot of resources have been devoted to expensive weapons research, which deviates from the goal of the capitalist welfare state. For most ordinary people, the American Dream has become out of reach. In the novel, a large number of soldiers who survived the war and returned to China suffered heavy physical and mental injuries, but after returning to China, they found that they had become the bottom of the society and were facing unemployment. As a result, many disabled veterans make a living by rhetoric and deceit. The protagonist, Billy, sacrifices his marital happiness in exchange for a prosperous life, but the pain in his marriage makes him unbearable. This reveals the devastation to the masses by the highly institutionalized and centralized bureaucracy under the banner of American democracy and freedom. Social ecologist Bookkin argues: “If we do not see capitalism upending a fundamental dimension of the traditional social composition—the wholeness of the human community—we will grossly underestimate its unprecedented destructive role. . . . Community begins to disappear, capitalism invades and destroys the realm of social life."

　　Through time travel, Vonnegut juxtaposed the Allied bombing of Dresden during World War II with the Vietnam War, in order to subvert the so-called "justice" of war instilled in the American people by the media. After the bombing of Dresden, Billy Space traveled to life after the war to hear a lieutenant commander speak: "The Americans had no choice but to keep fighting in Vietnam until they were victorious...intensify the bombing, if They stubbornly blew North Vietnam back to the Stone Age.” The Italian scholar Agamben began his thinking on the issue of alienation from the perspective of biopolitical criticism. His analysis of the nature of the Nazi massacre and the slaughter of life is a kind of “death politics”. This gave birth to the "death alienation" in modern democratic politics. Western developed countries headed by the United States have always advertised that they attach importance to "human rights". Agamben pointed out the relationship between totalitarianism represented by Nazism and modern democracy in World War II. Western "human rights" ignored the dimension of death. But the death dimension has important ethical value. "Human rights" include not only the right to life but also the right to die. If people are deprived of the right to die normally, it is the most fundamental alienation of human existence. In "Slaughterhouse No. 5", all kinds of deaths are full of chance and absurdity, and people completely lose the right to die normally. For example, civilians in the undefended city of Dresden were killed innocently; young soldiers were slaughtered by the bureaucratic government to take to the battlefield; Billy's wife died of carbon monoxide poisoning; He narrowly escaped the carpet-like bombing of Dresden, but was shot for taking a teapot while clearing the ruins to dig up the body; Weary was robbed of his shoes by the Germans and died of gangrene on his feet; even the protagonist Billy died. Killed by paranoid comrades after the war...

"Slaughterhouse Five"

　　Billy, who was listening to Nazi reports during the war, fell asleep and woke up in 1968. At the time, he was writing to the newspapers about his experience on Volkswagen 541. Then travel to his own peaceful and peaceful home on Volkswagen star 541 and beauty star Montana, where they are like the purest Adam and Eve, and the Garden of Eden is like a beautiful womb far away from war and technology.

Escape 2: Alienation between people

　　Alienation of man refers to the fact that man sees himself as an alien rather than the creator of his own behavior. Alienated people are as alienated from themselves as they are from others, unable to simultaneously have a clear and effective relationship with themselves or the external world. In a morbid society, where despair, depression, anxiety and numbness are everywhere, people are prone to feeling alienated.

　　Vonnegut explores the various specific causes of alienation among people, and he attributes the primary cause of alienation to war. After "World War II" Billy's life seemed peaceful, but in fact his mind was full of death and pain, and the shadow of death shrouded the post-war society. Billy's feet are depicted as "blue and white", the color of the feet of corpses on the battlefield. Billy lives in the Veterans Hospital and hides under a blanket when his mother visits him—an embarrassment to him because of her mother's painstaking efforts to give him life, and he has no attachment to it. For Billy, life is full of despair, so he refuses it like a mother who refuses to give it to him. Different life experiences and the mother's lack of perception of her son's inner pain have created an invisible spiritual barrier between them, which is doomed to lead to the failure of communication between mother and son. Memories of war catastrophes make Billy a marginal individual unlike others, and a deep sense of alienation makes him tired of those around him and despair about their way of life and values.

　　Whether in the real world before, during, or after the war, there is a lack of emotional communication between people. In the novel, Billy and a few comrades were escaping the German army on the battlefield of World War II. Under time travel, he suddenly returned to the scene where his father taught him how to swim when he was a child. The terrifying experience of being thrown into the water by his father made him unforgettable. During the war, he only felt the cruelty and terror of the war, but he did not have self-affirmation or concern from his comrades-in-arms. After marriage, Billy lives in a family with indifferent family. His wife has never been able to enter his inner world. In the hustle and bustle of material desires, she only pays attention to the commodities that are endowed with symbolic meanings - diamond rings, famous cars, luxury houses and gourmet food; Daughter Barbara is busy running the family business Billy left her, but is indifferent to her elderly and mentally ill father, and is ashamed of Billy preaching about an alien time concept. In a world without love, everyone lives as a machine.

　　Tormented by a lack of happiness, understanding, and intimacy, Billy escapes to Volkswagen 541 and meets his lover, Montana, whose baroque stature reminds him of the beautiful city of Dresden before the bombing . In Billy's view, Volkswagen 541 was an ideal, peaceful place, free from death, war and carnage; it was somewhat relieved that being with Montana was one of the few happy moments in his life his sense of alienation.

Kurt Vonnegut

　　Indeed, the unpredictability and meaninglessness of everyday life is linked to the violence of war, which causes and deepens Billy's sense of alienation. As long as there is war on Earth, interpersonal relationships will never be harmonious. As a postmodern humanist, Vonnegut not only deconstructs the absurd world, but also hopes that people will build harmonious and caring interpersonal and family relationships to deal with various living conditions. One of the representatives of ecological postmodernism in the United States, Charen Sprittnik, believes that people exist in a network of relationships, blood relationship, friendship relationship, community connection... There are many, many, for the well-being of a country, these as important as GDP.

Escape Three: Alienation Between Man and Nature

　　The rapid development of science and technology has brought about worsening ecological problems. In a sense, the history of human civilization can also be regarded as the history of human plundering and destroying nature. Human beings always pay attention to their own development, and recklessly demand from nature, which greatly destroys the ecological balance and causes a global ecological crisis, while the conquest and exploitation of nature directly lead to the so-called "natural death". Paul Taylor, an important representative of contemporary Western biocentrism environmental ethics, extended the object of moral concern to non-human creatures and advocated equal respect for all life values. He rejected the theory of human superiority, describing the "respect for nature" ethic as life-centred rather than human-centred. "We humans are also ordinary members of the community of life, and humans are not superior to other creatures." Taylor believes that in order to solve the problems brought about by technological development, we must return to the virtues of human beings, and humans must view the world "from the perspective of natural order". , and assume a sense of responsibility and mission to the ecology. Spring Nike believes that the foundation of ecological social ideology is a chain that includes all elements such as the universe, the earth, the nation, and the bioregion. Human beings are by no means the only subject of the world, so it is necessary to properly handle the relationship between humans and nature.

　　In World War II, although the Anglo-American Allied Forces claimed that the bombing of the undefended city of Dresden was a just blow to the Nazi forces, in fact it was a tyrannical massacre of civilians, destroying the beautiful city and destroying the human ecological environment. , "Everything is carefully designed, so it is more thorough, no animal or plant can escape the catastrophe." Before the bombing, Dresden was full of life, with green trees and flowers, and people and animals coexisted harmoniously; after the bombing, the entire city was reduced to ruins in a sea of ​​fire, becoming a slaughterhouse for all life. Billy and his comrades were planning to ride around town looking for some souvenirs, and they found a two-horse carriage that other soldiers thought was "no more responsive than a six-cylinder Chevy", but Billy was sharp He noticed that the horse's mouth was badly cut by the bit, the hoof was split, and they were in pain every step of the way. He burst into tears—he didn't cry for anything else during the war. If it were not for wartime, human beings would be indifferent and indifferent to the suffering of animals. In the constant destruction and destruction of nature, human beings are increasingly far away from their "homeland" and lose their sense of belonging. In the devastated postmodern society, human selfish desires are inflated, wildly destroying the natural ecological environment, occupying and destroying the living space of other creatures, and making the relationship between humans and animals extremely deteriorated...

　　Frye, a Canadian literary critic, believes that the real original sin is the blind destruction of the natural paradise due to human greed. The goal set by human beings before is to return to the natural paradise, and this will be a long and difficult process, because human desires are presented in the form of cruel wars, and the violent development of science and technology has seriously damaged the ecological environment. Doomed to be estranged from the natural environment deteriorated by the war. Vonnegut imagines a distant utopian alien planet full of natural beauty, where man and nature live in harmony; Billy and his bride have a warm home to dwell poetically, returning to nature both physically and spiritually , immersed in temporary tranquility - only in a state of peace, without fear, can man and nature live in harmony. Vonnegut expressed his longing for the coexistence of man and nature through space travel full of science fiction.

　　In "Slaughterhouse No. 5", the only way to get rid of all kinds of sickness and alienation of human society is to escape to a peaceful alien planet through space travel, which is actually the author's way of thinking about the predicament of human existence in the absurd times and the small and difficult human beings. Ironic solution. Humanity's failure to properly position itself in the universe has triggered war crises and ecological crises, which in turn have prompted humans to re-examine the meaning of life. "All outstanding writers and critics have a 'community impulse', that is, looking forward to a better society in the future, an organically generated, dynamic and cohesive community that transcends kinship and geography." Based on his profound thinking on postmodern society, Vonnegut urges people to establish a sense of crisis in a sci-fi way, jump out of the anthropocentric mindset, and establish a correct outlook on the world, nature, and life. Under the trend of the integration of human destiny , revealing the other in the subjective sense, from indifference to the other to establishing a harmonious and symbiotic relationship with the other, so that more and more lives are cared for and respected, so that life can be far away from worry and enhance the sense of happiness. Human beings urgently need to take responsibility for a larger community of life, and building a harmonious community of life is an urgent desire in the depths of human consciousness, and it is also the way out for mankind to move towards a better future.