Sirens Of Titen
Sirens Of Titen"It took us that long to realize that a purpose of
human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love
whoever is around to be loved." (Vonnegut:220)
The Sirens of Titan is Kurt Vonnegut's second novel. He has
written it in 1959, seven years after his previous Player Piano.
It has been described as a pure science fiction novel and, after
only one reading, it really can be considered to be one. The
intricate plot and fascinating detail may obscure the serious
intent of the novel. If compared to other novels by this author,
it makes much smoother reading because there are much fewer
subplots, digressions and simultaneous developments. The
storyline of Sirens of Titan is much more straightforward than in
the other works (e.g. Slaughterhouse-Five, Galapagos, Hocus
Pocus, Breakfast of Champions etc.)
"The Sirens of Titan, for all its wonderings,
futurity and concern with larger, abstract questions,
transmits a greater sense of direction and
concreteness. Rather surprising, too, is the fact that
the novel with its science fiction orientation, with
its robots and near-robot humans, and with its several
central characters who are intentionally presented as
being rather cold-hearted, generates more human warmth
than Player Piano which is directly concerned with the
agonies of exploring and following conscience, emotion
and love. Three possible explanations for this
fenomenon present themselves: first, Vonnegut's skill
has grown in the intervening seven years; second, the
science fiction mode affords the author more
detachment, and he is less didactic in this work;
third, the positive forces, particularly love, carry
more weight." (Reed:66)
The Sirens of Titan has been, as many other Vonnegut's books,
influenced by his experiences from World War Two (The
Fire-bombing of Dresden was a benefit just to one man, to Kurt
Vonnegut. Over the years, he got five dollars for each corpse, as
he himself says.) The war is not the novel's primary target, yet
it has a great effect on it.
"In this, his second novel, Vonnegut discovered an
answer to Dresden, but he did not yet know how to apply
it. Winston Niles Rumfoord's discovery that 'everything
that ever has been always will be, and everything that
ever will be always has been' (Vonnegut:19-20) lies
inert in the novel, separate from its aesthetic
resolution. In order to exorcise Dresden with this new
vision, Vonnegut had to rid himself of his youthful
notions if romanticism and liberalism, to acquire
a context for Rumfoord's theory of time, and to isolate
and to define the aesthetic problem raised by Dresden."
(Somer)
Vonnegut writes about the Martian Army planning an
unsuccesful attack on Earth, probably thinking about the years he
spent in army himself. He describes the soldiers as unthinking
puppets controlled by radio. In order to implant the antenna into
a soldier's brain, his head must be shaved. He also mentions
several individuals, who did everything voluntarily. Unk's son
also adds to this image of a soldier: when you are 14 years old,
they shave your head and you become a man. This Vonnegut's
description of a soldier is highly ironic.
Another important thing in The Sirens of Titan is
Vonnegut's image of God and various religions. He describes how
people blindly and hungrily follow Gods. I think that Vonnegut
presented a wonderful example of this in the part when Unk and
Boaz were stranded on Mercury.
"Boaz's home vault had a boor on it, a round
boulder with which he could plug the vault's mouth. The
door was necessary, since Boaz was God Almighty to the
harmoniums. They could locate him by his heart beat.
"Had he slept with his door open, he would have
awakened to find himself pinned down by hundreds of
thousands of his admirers. They would have let him up
only when his heart stopped beating." (Vonnegut:142)
Vonegut creates a new kind of religion, the Church of God
Utterly Indifferent. In this concept he illustrates that God
Almighty doesn't care about his creations (an idea that was
probably conceived by Dresden as well). That's why people can
stop blaming everything that happens to them, bad or good, on
God. This is also what circumscribes the main theme of the novel.
"While an indifferent universe may confirm no
purpose in our existence, we can give meaning to life
by the way we lead it." (Reed:86)
Vonnegut hints at this by the first sentence of the novel:
"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within
himself." (Vonnegut:7) However, it becomes more clear at the end,
when Unk is finally on Titan with Rumfoord, Bea, their son, and
Salo the Tralfamadorian. It turns out that the whole point of
human civilization on Earth was to deliver a spare part for
Salo's space ship and that the whole point of Salo's space
wandering was to deliver a message saying only, "Greetings!" to
a distant world.
"The point, as it always is when Vonnegut takes us
to another planet, is to give us some perspective on
man's pride, so that we can quit worrying about how we
fit into cosmic purpose and start worrying about how we
can be kind to each other." (Olderman)