[A] comparison between Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse V offers interesting insights into the shift in attitudes, the change in political culture, and the transition in the general cultural atmosphere [during the decade of the sixties]. The two books are particularly suited for comparison because there are many points of similarity between them. To mention only the most obvious, both deal with World War II, both assert a strongly antiwar position, both are highly critical of other features of modern life, both present the individual protagonist as a victim, both are written in a narrative style which violates normal time sequence, both are cited as examples of black humor, and both are also cited as examples of the literature of the absurd. With all these similarities, the differences between them become especially revealing and instructive. (pp. 19-20)

In Catch-22 the central problem is how the individual may survive in a hostile system, find methods of beating it or changing it. Vonnegut's central concern, not only in Slaughterhouse V, but in most of the rest of his novels, is the relationship between man and his own nature or between man and God. He is trying to come to terms with the dichotomy between man and whatever it is that is responsible for the universe being organized the way it is.

However, if one does read Slaughterhouse V as a political fable, the moral is clear: the individual is a pawn of forces he cannot control, and all he can hope to do is to learn to accept, be kind, and to love. Billy Pilgrim is mired in his fate. Even his ability to travel in time does him no good; it does not contribute to his freedom or his happiness; it affords him no way of escaping from or controlling the absurdity, injustice, or brutality of the world; it simply places him in the midst of a system of recurring cyclical patterns which confirm the lesson he learns during his captivity on Tralfamadore: everything that is now, always was, and always will be. In other words, everything is unchangeable. Knowing this, Billy's one major effort to have an effect on his world is to become a crusader for the Tralfamadorian message that it is futile to struggle against one's fate, trying to teach others what he has learned for himself, that the only wise course is to learn to accept things as they are.

Note that the subtitle of the book is "The Children's Crusade." Overtly, this subtitle is intended to reinforce the book's antiwar theme, but it does more than that. It indicates Vonnegut's belief that all crusades are children's crusades. Indeed all crusades are childish, first because they are futile gestures, mere playacting having no consequences except for the possible release of the aggressive fantasies of those who participate in them, not a wholly desirable occurrence, second because all men are childish, dependent, at the mercy of forces beyond their control. One cannot control one's fate, so one should simply allow things to happen; one will probably be better off in the long run; this is the way to make life reasonably tolerable.

This overt message is reinforced by the tone of the book. Both Heller and Vonnegut have been called black humorists, and Catch-22, whatever else it may be, is a very funny book. Slaughterhouse V, on the other hand, does not provoke laughter. The dominant mood is, rather, sadness, resigned sadness, and compassion for most of the characters in the book. In addition, while there are more laughs in Catch-22, there are also more violence and horror than in Slaughterhouse V. The latter certainly does not lack horrifying events—there is nothing in Catch-22 comparable to the extent of the death and devastation produced by the Dresden raid—but the raid does occur offstage; we do not see it, only its aftermath. It is not so much an event in the novel as its setting, its premise. In Catch-22 the death of a single individual, Snowden, is presented with more dramatic intensity, in a more shocking fashion, than the death of 130,000 people in Dresden. And this difference in dramatic intensity is characteristic of the books as wholes. There is far more dramatic contrast in Catch-22 than Slaughterhouse V. In fact, it seems that Vonnegut is deliberately writing in a monotone, flattening dramatic rises and falls so as to make one event seem approximately as important as any other event, tending to produce the impression that the sequence of events adds up to nothing more than one damn thing after another. There is climactic action and intensity in Catch-22 because there are discernible goals for action; things move in a particular direction. In Slaughterhouse V they do not; things move in cycles; there is no progress. (pp. 24-6)

[Another difference is that] while Heller preaches the ethic of action, involvement, and responsibility, Vonnegut preaches the ethic of passivity, tolerance, and love.

A large part of this difference stems from the different angles of vision employed by the two men. Heller's vision is essentially political…. [The] central problem of Catch-22 is the attempts of the individual to survive in a hostile bureaucratic system. Vonnegut's vision, on the other hand, is religious, or perhaps more accutately, cosmic. Yossarian is contending against a human conspiracy; if there is a conspiracy against Billy, it is a cosmic one; if there is a system for him to fight against, it is the whole universe; there are no bad guys for him to defeat, except, perhaps, God. Indeed, Billy is not even engaged in a contest, for there can be no contest where there is no possibility of victory. For Yossarian, to survive constitutes a victory. For Billy, survival is not crucial, for he is fully aware of the inevitability of death; the manner of its coming is a rather trivial issue and makes little difference in the total economy of the universe. All he can hope for is a few good moments in life to cherish. Indeed, from the more general, more cosmic, more universal view that Vonnegut takes, the victories won by Heller's character may very well turn out be defeats. (pp. 26-7)

Thus, while Heller offers instruction in how we may achieve solutions to our problems, Vonnegut offers perspectives on how we may learn to live tolerably in a world we cannot change. (p. 27)

Catch-22, read as a political fable, offers a moral which is completely consistent with the morally involved, activist, reformist orientation of the early sixties: the system is brutal, unjust, and irrational, but it is also vulnerable. It is run by other human beings, and they are both identifiable and fallible; therefore, effective resistance by the individual may be possible. We must, however, be careful in our choice of methods of resistance; we must devise methods which those in authority do not expect, which their institutions are unequipped to deal with, which will take them unaware. Unconventionality in one's style of resistance is of value in itself. Also of value is the example of resistance. Even minimal success, even the mere fact of having declared oneself in opposition, will encourage others to resist, and there is always the possibility that someone will devise an effective strategy. Even if that strategy results only in one's own salvation as a direct consequence, it may have important indirect consequences in that it may encourage others to undertake their own forms of resistance.

Vonnegut stands in a somewhat different and more complex relationship to the politico-cultural climate which surrounds him. On the one hand, he expresses the more chastened view of the possibilities of political change through individual action that had become widely prevalent at the end of the sixties. Echoing the cultural radicals' idea that society cannot be significantly changed unless men's minds and hearts are changed first, he exemplifies the decay of reformist hopes, just as Heller had earlier exemplified their full flowering. On the other hand, Vonnegut also reacts against certain tendencies in the protest movement of the later sixties, especially the tendency toward apocalyptic utopianism. His universe is one in which the basic rule is moral relativism. There are no villains in Slaughterhouse V, or indeed in any of his other works. Of course he has moral values, but unlike Heller, he does not feel that the lines between good and evil can be drawn with absolute precision. Further, he feels that those who draw such lines are likely only to cause suffering in the long run. He attacks all pretensions to dominance, mastery, and control base upon convictions of righteous certitude. He is preaching against America's attempt to control the destiny of Southeast Asia, but he is also preaching against those who gave up the hope of achieving limited, immediate, proximate goals in favor of trying to achieve sweeping changes and impose their own vision of the good society, through revolutionary violence if necessary. The Green Berets are not his only targets; so are the Weathermen.

In many ways, Vonnegut's view has much in common with the orientation of the counterculture as described by Theodore Roszak. According to this view, science, technology, and technocratic rationality are tools for the manipulation of things and people in a search for short-run solutions to those problems defined as susceptible of solution by those techniques. This obsessively narrow concern with such problems and techniques ignores the long-term consequences of those acts. For this overemphasis on rationality, we must substitute a reawakened belief in the intuitive, mystical powers of the individual. The vision and the search turn inward. The external world is the province of the technocrats, the bureaucrats, the manipulators, so let us take the internal world for ours. We may not reform society, but at least we will not hurt others; our individual search for peace and tranquility in a regimented, manipulated, absurd world will not destroy the chance of others to do the same. While sympathetic to this view, Vonnegut would find in it a tendency toward oversimplification. He would certainly agree that man's enslavement to science and the machine holds dangers of dehumanization and worse—this, in fact, is the main theme of two of his novels, Player Piano and Cat's Cradle—but he would also emphasize that the rejection of technology does not guarantee salvation. For Vonnegut, like Hawthorne, the human heart is the fundamental problem, and any change that does not alter man himself will be inconsequential.

In this connection, we may note that Vonnegut is not totally committed to the idea that the individual cannot change his society. Indeed, he writes out of a conviction that artists can have an impact on their world. Art has a purpose to him, and it is an important one, but it is essentially passive. The artist can change the system, but only at the price of not becoming part of it, only by giving up the hope of affecting it directly. Vonnegut has said that his purpose as a writer is to get people before they become generals and presidents and "poison their minds with humanity." But this works only on those who have not yet become generals and presidents, not on those who are generals and presidents already. Another way of saying this is that the artist's function is to provide society with new perspectives, to change people's angle of vision, not to preach direct cures, not to offer prescriptions for social ills, but to point out their existence and to provide new diagnostic techniques. While this is certainly an important, even a vital, function, and while it may over time lead to significant social changes, one must recognize that the artist's influence is likely to be indirect and gradual rather than direct and immediate. The artist's effectiveness as reformer is limited; substantial improvements, if they can be achieved at all, can be achieved only in the long run, probably a very long run. In the meantime, Vonnegut says, we should be kind, be tolerant, and seize upon and cherish the few moments of simple pleasure that come our way. It is significant that the high point of Billy Pilgrim's life is the nap he takes in the back of a wagon a few days after the destruction of Dresden. So much have the horizons of hope shrunk from Catch-22 to Slaughterhouse V. (pp. 31-3)