Summary: An outrageous romp through space, time, and morality. The richest, most depraived man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation...and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell.
About the Author: Kurt Vonnegut established himself in the literary pantheon and on the school syllabus with his brilliant antiwar novel Slaughterhouse-Five, but he has endured as a purveyor of mind-warping, surreal fiction that also happens to be funny.
Analysis: Vonnegut begins his novel by immediately telling us what the issues are that he, and we, will be concerned with: “Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them . . .Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward–pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about . . .What were people like in olden times, with their souls as yet unexplored? The following is a true story from the Nightmare Ages, falling roughly, give or take a few years, between the Second World War and the Third Great Depression.”
That is, the contrast, possibly “debate,” between those who search “outwardly” for the meaning of their lives, and those who search “inwardly.” The Sirens of Titan is a story from a time before individuals were able to find such meaning within themselves.
Perhaps it would be helpful, at this point, to ask: what do we mean when we speak of a life’s “meaning?” In order to answer this question, or at least to posit some remarks which may be helpful in understanding Vonnegut’s novel, I would like to use as a guide the lecture, “Existentialism,” by Jean-Paul Sartre. In the history of philosophy, generally, “meaning,” or “purpose,” has been derived from the “essence” of a thing–that is, what a particular being “is.” Sartre uses the example of something that is “manufactured:” “ . . . for example, a book or a paper-cutter: here is an object which has been made by an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept.” This “concept” exhausts the object’s essence. It tells us, and the artisan, what it is that he is producing. “Thus, the paper-cutter is at once an object produced in a certain way and, on the other hand, one having a specific use . . .” “Use” is another word for meaning or purpose in this context. A paper-cutter is an object which cuts paper. “This” is what it “is.” Since it is this being, its meaning in existence is to cut paper.
Now there are some implications to the above understanding which, from one point of view, are problematic; and it seems that Vonnegut has recognized them. The first is that objects which have an essence, in other words, “are” something, and thereby have a purpose, cannot be, at the same time, free beings. Because something is what it is, it cannot choose to be something other. Thus there is a conflict between the ideas of “being” or “essence” or “object” and freedom. Since Man, for Sartre, is a freedom, it follows that he is not a being (and, therefore, a “nothingness;” that is, a “no-thing”). It also follows, for Sartre, that Man’s life is meaningless, without purpose. But it is this “lacking” of being and meaning which creates both the possibility for us to choose ourselves and the meaning of our lives. Here we also discover Sartre’s atheism. If God created Man, just as the artisan above created the paper-cutter, there is the implication that God “knew” what he was creating; that is, God knows the essence of Man. Therefore, Man is some “thing.” Since Man is this being, he does not possess the freedom to make himself into something else. There is a contradiction at work, for Sartre, in the belief that God “created” us as “free beings.” This is a problem for the major Western religions which, by one reading, state that Man is both a creation of God’s and a free being who is to be held morally responsible for his actions.
One way to understand those who “search” for the meaning of their lives “outwardly” is that they are attempting to discover what it is that God created when he created Man. As I have said, this is one understanding. There may be those who search for the meaning of their lives and the question of God never occurs to them. In Vonnegut’s novel, Rumfoord’s establishing of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent may be an example of this (with, perhaps, Rumfoord taking the place of God). Either way, the point is that the attainment of meaning in one’s life is at the sacrifice of oneself as a free and autonomous being.
The example of God as creator, or the belief that my life is meaningful, and thus the loss of myself as a free being, means that I can never be solely for myself. Myself as a being whose existence is meaningful means that I am subservient to this meaning; or to the being of God who created me. This, Vonnegut tells us, is one of the consequences, dangers, of searching for meaning outwardly.
Searching for the meaning of one’s life outwardly may be a danger, may put in jeopardy everything we value about human existence, but it is still nonetheless a seductive project. Who really wishes to look within themselves for the purpose of their life? Such a thought would imply that one is ultimately responsible for their own life. It would seem to be more comfortable if one could blame someone or something outside themselves. This is why this kind of thinking survives today. This desire to deny oneself as a free being, and to lose oneself within a larger reality, Sartre calls, “bad faith,” and Deleuze, among others, a giving-in to the “fascist within.” Here is also the meaning of Vonnegut’s title: the “sirens” are those who call us away from ourselves, outwardly, and who put us as free beings in danger (as they put Odysseus in danger in The Odyssey). It is telling the Vonnegut’s sirens are objects, statues.
There are many examples in The Sirens of Titan where, due to searching outwardly, it is discovered that one is only a part of something else. A first case would be that of the Tralfamadoreans who have used all of human history for the sole end of getting a spare part to a broken- down spaceship to one of their fellows, Salo. But the more interesting case is that of Rumfoord. Rumfoord, it could be said, has a mystical vision of oneness. When he enters the chronosynclastic infundibulum, during a space flight, he experiences the unity of time: “it came to me in a flash that everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been (expressed a bit differently in one of Vonnegut’s other novels, Slaughterhouse-Five).” In other words, Rumfoord knows the future. This is only the beginning of an almost endless irony, as Rumfoord must already know all of the events which will occur in the novel (including, most importantly, that his own actions are all dictated by the Tralfamadoreans, and that one day everyone will know how to search for the meaning of their lives within themselves. But then mysticism is “beyond” or “other than” thinking). If such a mystic vision is correct, then there is no need for an outward searching (or there is no need for “only” an outward searching): if oneness is everything and everything is one, then within myself is everything there is. As Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te Ching: “Without stirring abroad/ One can know the whole world;/ Without looking out of the window/ One can see the way of heaven./ The further one goes/ The less one knows.” Rumfoord I believe understands this, and decides that he will free humanity from such outward seeking (but what Rumfoord has perhaps failed to understand is that oneness also includes outward searching. And further, outwardness is inwardness, and inwardness is outwardness). The way he will go about this will be to use outwardness, making others merely a tool of his will, in order to cure humanity of outward searching. Irony again. The result is, again, the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. If God is unconcerned with His creation, why should His creation search out his will? Or be concerned with what the creator was thinking when he brought the world into existence? As the Reverend Redwine expresses it when Malachi Constant exclaims, “Thank God!:” “Why thank God? . . .He doesn’t care what happens to you. He didn’t go to any trouble to get you here safe and sound, any more than He would go to the trouble to kill you.” With the search for God removed from desire, the only place left to search, thinks Rumfoord, is within oneself. But even with the overt belief in God eliminated, there persist subtle expressions of the belief that one, in some way, is favored by the universe. One example of this is the belief in fate, the Medieval “wheel of fortune.” In order to exclude this temptation the followers of Rumfoord’s church carry around with them weights in “handicap bags.” While supporting such a “moveable burden,” any advantage that could come one’s way would never be mistaken for the favor of the Fates. As Redwine tells Constant: “You should be glad, not sorry, to carry such a handicap . . . No one could then reproach you for taking advantage of the random ways of luck (further irony: Malachi’s father, Noel Constant, made his great fortune entirely through luck. As Ransom K. Fern, Noel Constant’s manager, notes: “. . . you [Noel Constant] are the luckiest man who ever lived.” Thus, as Malachi is fond of saying: “I guess somebody up there likes me”).”
But what are the possibilities of an inward search for meaning, especially since, as the Tralfamadoreans and Rumfoord demonstrate, the course of time is already laid-out? To what degree is there freedom and choice in a fatalistic world? Here we are reminded of Spinoza’s Ethics. For as Spinoza has it: “I say a thing is free, which exists and acts solely by the necessity of its own nature.” The answer, for Vonnegut, is given near the end of the novel, and is realized by both Malachi and Beatrice Rumfoord: “‘Only an Earthing year ago,’ said Constant. ‘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.’” Or as Beatrice says previously: “The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody . . . would be to not be used for anything by anybody (we should note here the contrast between Beatrice and her husband. Rumfoord is outraged at the idea of being anything but an autonomous being. And yet, ironically, as we have seen, he is willing to put, through force, others in this position–all in order to free them! Irony again).” So freedom sits alongside fate. Such is a mystic (non-)concept. Perhaps the character who has understood this all along is Malachi and Beatrice’s son, Chrono. As Vonnegut tells us: “Chrono did not have a sense of futility and disorder. Everything seemed in apple-pie order to him. And the boy himself participated fitly in that perfect order.” What Rumfoord sees as being “used” is actually order. What Spinoza calls, “Nature” (or “God”). Thus Chrono thinks: “It was all so sad. But it was all so beautiful, too.” Another mystic sentiment.
So freedom is necessity and necessity is freedom. And from this we are again led to the mystic assertion that outward searching is inwardness and inwardness is searching outward. Given this I would propose that what The Sirens of Titan is declaring is that it is the order, and therefore the intention, of one’s search for meaning that is important. If one begins by looking outwardly, then one risks missing oneself as a free being (and, as in the case of Rumfoord, others as well). One runs the risk here of constituting one’s religion as a kind of fascism. Here may also be implied, as we can see from Rumfoord’s character, the importance of humility. For whenever religion is turned into a “knowledge,” a situation which is implied when one must search outwardly, which also implies that there are some who “know” and some who do not, then arrogance or egoism may arise. And as such turn any religion into a poison. Perhaps here is Vonnegut’s corrective for fundamentalisms of all kinds. But if one begins one’s search by looking within oneself, then one discovers the dignity of oneself, and others as well; and it is from this position that the ego opens out to realize its relationship to the rest of existence. This kind of outwardness is affirmed at the end of the novel, though not unironically, when Constant, just before his death, is told that he will enter paradise and that “. . . somebody up there likes you.” This ending is ironic because it is a hallucination. But, then, nothing is mysticism is certain. If that Buddha ever comes down the road, we are told, he needs to be killed.
Henry A. Jimenez
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