Slaughter House Five

“It is just an just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. ‘When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes’” (27).

This view is similar to the one in Siddhartha about the false existence of time. Vonnegut however suggests that such an outlook is numbing to the natural human reaction to death and behaving in such an indifferent manner makes us ultimately inhuman.

Siddhartha

“But today he only saw one of the river’s secrets, one that gripped his soul. He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new…that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time…This discovery made him very happy. Was not all sorrow in time, all self-torment and fear in time? Were not all difficulties and evil in the world conquered as soon as one conquered time, as soon as one dispelled time?” (104).

Siddhartha realizes that in one's perception of time, there exists a necessity for sorrow resulting from a recognition of an end. If one is able however to ignore time, death does not exist. This is a very different outlook on a similar matter that Vonnegut addresses in Slaughterhouse V.