Paul Lazzaro and the Paradox of American Soldiers' Morality

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One of Kurt Vonnegut’s major focuses when creating his “anti war-novel” Slaughterhouse-Five is to dispel different things he believes to be false regarding the conventional wisdom surrounding war. I believe that one of the things Vonnegut wants to challenge is the idea that all soldiers who are deployed in armed conflict zones are heros. One way Vonnegut does this is definitely through the story of Billy Pilgrim. Billy is incompetent and uninterested in the American War effort and through the lense of Trafalmadorain logic, Vonnegut exposes us to this idea that Billy has no impact on the ultimate American success or failure in the war. But most of all, Vonnegut shows us this through the character of Paul Lazzaro, an American POW of the Germans with Billy. Lazzaro in a normal war-novel might be portrayed heroically: he is clearly a hardened fighter who will not let anything get in his way and block his goals. Unfortuenly, Lazzaro is obsessed not with the Americans winning the war or American ideals, but with revenge. Vonnegut portrays characters who truly believe in the American war effort like Derby in an ironic and pitiful sense, but as righteous people. He just portrays Lazzaro as a total...asshole. There’s no mincing words on him. The Nazis are known in history for committing War Crimes on their enemies. Lazzaro seems more intent on committing War Crimes on dogs and American soldiers. This is obviously an extremely controversial viewpoint.
The conventional wisdom is that all veterans deployed to military zones are heros. And they are… these are people who put their lives on the line for our country. And our country doesn’t have the cleanest history, but the US stands for values I will always be proud of. I completely agree with Vonnegut that the binary narrative where all Americans are infallible heros and all enemies of America deserve to die is extremely problematic. But America lost so many brave men and women in the last century fighting for Democracy. And war is extremely problematic, but how else could we have expected to stop Adolf Hitler and Japan? I feel people like Darby deserve a little bit more respect in my opinion than Vonnegut gives them. He put his life on the line to fight for America. Some American soldiers in WWII may be terrible human beings like Lazzaro. But the vast majority of them are still heros because they protected the greatest American ideal: Democracy. Because no matter how well Howard Campell can argue how messed up and racist our 1940s society was, it was the troops who put their lives of the line to preserve these ideals and allow a true reformation since then

Comments

  1. Mayahuel MalikMarch 20, 2020 at 5:36 PM

    to be honest I kind of liked how vonnegut made the veterans unheroic in nature. You had a good balance of loser soldiers, bloodthirsty fighters, and patriots who fought bravely for america. In this way vonnegut doesnt give a binary image to the typical soldier, and raises conversations about how we see veterans of war. I thought it was a fresh take, and despite its controversial nature, it was interesting to see.

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  2. SimonMarch 24, 2020 at 3:51 PM

    In this case yes, I think the veterans deserve a bit more credit than Vonnegut is giving them, but he’s not completely wrong. I mean we hear all about the war crimes committed by the Germans during WWII, but it wasn’t just them. There were many cases of Allied troops being just as brutal, the only difference is that we won the war and thus were able to cover it up (for example, Americans used flamethrowers on the Japanese in WWII, which was against the Geneva convention). And yes, stopping people like Hitler is important, but not every war we’ve been in for the past century has been about protecting freedom. Many times, it was about protecting trade interests in the guise of protecting freedom and democracy. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t respect everyone who has put their lives on the line in the military, but I don’t think we should universally regard all of them as heroes. War isn’t heroic, its brutal and we should regard it more skeptically than we currently do.

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