And yet, despite Derby's obscurity, I don't think I'm alone in admiring Derby and I think Vonnegut did this intentionally. Derby is a good man. Just on paper, he looks like a wholesome, everyday American - a teacher and a family man. And in person, his wholesomeness still holds. We see him volunteer to assist pathetic Billy Pilgrim when they arrive at the British camp, he assumes leadership of the American troops when no one else does, and he gives a rousing speech about American values and our unbreakable alliance with the Russian peoples (a sentiment our current President shares with him.)
It's not just the presence of benevolent actions that makes Derby my favorite, though. What's also significant is the absence of any shitty actions. Derby simply doesn't do anything that would explicitly make me hate him. In any other novel, that might be a pathetically low bar, but in Slaughterhouse-Five, a story with such characters as the bloodthirsty and idiotic Roland weary and a protagonist who cares about nothing and no one, Derby is basically eligible for sainthood.
It's not just the presence of benevolent actions that makes Derby my favorite, though. What's also significant is the absence of any shitty actions. Derby simply doesn't do anything that would explicitly make me hate him. In any other novel, that might be a pathetically low bar, but in Slaughterhouse-Five, a story with such characters as the bloodthirsty and idiotic Roland weary and a protagonist who cares about nothing and no one, Derby is basically eligible for sainthood.
It makes sense then, in this grand anti-war narrative, that Derby should be treated the way he is by the powers-that-be (that is, Vonnegut.) Despite what we may think of the Second World War and, indeed, American war in general, the battlefield is no place for a good man like Derby. His belief in American ideals, admirable career as a teacher, charming nuclear family to return home to, and all-around good nature, are horribly unbecoming of a military man. And thus, Vonnegut proceeds to take an enormous dump on him. His acts of kindness are received with no gratitude, his rousing speech about American-Russian brotherhood is met with an awkward silence, and, of course, he's shot for holding a teacup after surviving a firestorm that took tens of thousands of lives.
(It's not just that he's shot for holding a teacup, which is already an anticlimactic death in the midst of the Second World War, his death is also anticlimactic within the novel's own pacing. We know from the very beginning that Derby is going to receive this awful death. So we expect (or at least I did) a lengthy description of the event we've heard so much about. Instead, we get, "Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot." It's actually an anticlimax that parallels the bombing of Dresden itself, which is almost skimmed over in the midst of a memory (not time travel) after having been built up to for the entire novel.)
(It's not just that he's shot for holding a teacup, which is already an anticlimactic death in the midst of the Second World War, his death is also anticlimactic within the novel's own pacing. We know from the very beginning that Derby is going to receive this awful death. So we expect (or at least I did) a lengthy description of the event we've heard so much about. Instead, we get, "Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot." It's actually an anticlimax that parallels the bombing of Dresden itself, which is almost skimmed over in the midst of a memory (not time travel) after having been built up to for the entire novel.)
But then, the question should be raised, why not make Derby the protagonist? We seemed to have come to the general consensus that Vonnegut's intention is to blur the lines of morality and deromanticize the nature of war and destroy the idea that it's some awesome and heroic adventure. So then why not portray the futility of the hero?
One reason might be that protagonizing Derby (definitely not a word) would still be romanticizing war to an extent. Derby's trials and tribulations could be seen as a form of martyrdom. It might send the message that although war itself is gross, it creates heroes. Portraying any type of hero in war fails to reflect that Vonnegut and his companions, in the words of Mary O'Hare, "were just babies." Not heroes. Not martyrs. Not soldiers. Not Derby. Therefore, it would make sense for Vonnegut to avoid putting emphasis on him.
However, Vonnegut doesn't straight up deny the existence of people like Derby. He very well could. If Derby were gone, all that would be left are shitheads and it seems like Vonnegut views humanity as an enormous collection of shitheads, a common sentiment among anti-war narratives. But he includes Derby, showing that he believes in the existence of non-shitheads (otherwise known as good people.) So maybe Vonnegut isn't that concerned with moral relativism. Perhaps he's concerned about Derby, and how he's affected him. Perhaps Vonnegut feels guilty about Derby's death.
Vonnegut is constantly mentioning "Poor ol' Edgar Derby." Though his appearances are quiet, they are frequent, with Derby appearing in nearly every 1944 passage. And even when he's not onscreen, his name pops up here and there, with Vonnegut casually name-dropping the man who was shot for stealing a teacup.
Although it's mentioned in a nonchalant manner, we've learned time and time again with Vonnegut that nonchalance isn't to be trusted. We've learned that, if anything, the most deeply troubling aspects of the war, are described with extreme informality. So Vonnegut glosses over Derby's death, likely one of the most horrifying events. But his guilt leaves us a clue, the constant repetition of Derby's name. It's almost like the memory of Derby is ringing around in Pilgrim's (or Vonnegut's head, unable to shake the fact that he, a dull optometrist got to live, while a good man like Derby died.
A similar phenomenon occurs with Wild Bob, whose trademark catchphrase, "If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, ask for Wild Bob!" is repeated frequently in the final pages of the novel. Wild Bob, for the brief time we knew him, was only ever concerned with finding his men. He was, just like Derby, an essentially good man. And he dies ungloriously in a boxcar, never to return to be on call in Cody, Wyoming. And that kills Pilgrim/Vonnegut - a useless piece of shit old fart, who got to live and thrive while the heroes died.
However, Vonnegut doesn't straight up deny the existence of people like Derby. He very well could. If Derby were gone, all that would be left are shitheads and it seems like Vonnegut views humanity as an enormous collection of shitheads, a common sentiment among anti-war narratives. But he includes Derby, showing that he believes in the existence of non-shitheads (otherwise known as good people.) So maybe Vonnegut isn't that concerned with moral relativism. Perhaps he's concerned about Derby, and how he's affected him. Perhaps Vonnegut feels guilty about Derby's death.
Vonnegut is constantly mentioning "Poor ol' Edgar Derby." Though his appearances are quiet, they are frequent, with Derby appearing in nearly every 1944 passage. And even when he's not onscreen, his name pops up here and there, with Vonnegut casually name-dropping the man who was shot for stealing a teacup.
Although it's mentioned in a nonchalant manner, we've learned time and time again with Vonnegut that nonchalance isn't to be trusted. We've learned that, if anything, the most deeply troubling aspects of the war, are described with extreme informality. So Vonnegut glosses over Derby's death, likely one of the most horrifying events. But his guilt leaves us a clue, the constant repetition of Derby's name. It's almost like the memory of Derby is ringing around in Pilgrim's (or Vonnegut's head, unable to shake the fact that he, a dull optometrist got to live, while a good man like Derby died.
A similar phenomenon occurs with Wild Bob, whose trademark catchphrase, "If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, ask for Wild Bob!" is repeated frequently in the final pages of the novel. Wild Bob, for the brief time we knew him, was only ever concerned with finding his men. He was, just like Derby, an essentially good man. And he dies ungloriously in a boxcar, never to return to be on call in Cody, Wyoming. And that kills Pilgrim/Vonnegut - a useless piece of shit old fart, who got to live and thrive while the heroes died.
This is an interesting post, I definitely agree with your points about how Vonnegut doesn't have a lot of admirable people in this novel except for, as you say, Edgar Derby and Wild Bob. It seems like that's all just part of Vonnegut's ongoing illustration of how everyone, from the most immoral to the most wholesome people, are in the end still "listless playthings of enormous forces."
ReplyDeleteI think that this is definitely because vonnegut is trying to make an anti-war novel. He is unable to have a "hero" that survives because that could be then taken as the main character that everyone empathizes with over billy. I would certainly abandon billy as the "title character" if Derby survived.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I sort of took Derby's repeated inclusion as evidence that Billy, for all his time in Tralfamadore and his subsequently Tralfamadorian view of time, is still human, and is still suffering from PTSD and grief somewhere in his brain. Billy can't quite get over the fact that this objectively great man was shot for a tiny little thing, but he refuses to actually process it- and, thanks to Tralfamadore, he doesn't have to. I think Vonnegut's choice to include a character like Derby could've been a further satirizing of war novels- rather than portraying humanity as inherently cruel and unworthy of saving, as many war narratives trying to achieve some kind of shock value, Vonnegut is reminding us that good people do die in war- it just doesn't matter any more than anything else that ever happens.
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