Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan: Human Will in a Newtonian Narrative Gone Chaotic

Abstract

The paper “Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan: Human Will in a Newtonian Narrative Gone Chaotic” explores the notion of human identity in its relation with the issue of free will as portrayed by Vonnegut’s 1959 novel The Sirens of Titan. Written at the very threshold of the postmodernist period, Vonnegut’s novel invites a shift of perspective in the interpretation of ‘reality’ —namely, a transition from the modern Newtonian to a postmodernist chaotic scientific paradigm. The novel suggests an implicit counter-message parallel to and subtly undermining its apparent affirmation of determinism. For this purpose, the paper focuses on the way in which some passages in the novel reflect some of the major theories about the chaotic behavior of molecular systems, basically temporal irreversibility and the combination of chance and necessity in molecular creative processes. Finally, the paper analyzes the metaphysical macrocosmic implications of these theories as depicted in Vonnegut’s novel —firstly, as an answer to the individuals’ felt inability to find their identity through decision-making; and secondly, as a way out of constraining, totalizing explanations of the world and the collective paranoia which the search for those explanations may bring about.