You can't choose your family, so it goes.

Satirical science-fiction war history books don't have too much time to discuss family issues, there's enough going on. However, ruminating on the big ideas Kurt Vonnegut's unique tale Slaughterhouse Five alludes to, a new approach to the argument of fate vs. free will emerges and applies to the question of individuality.

Tralfamadorian mantras teach us to go with the flow, "so it goes". Their all encompassing view of time, the goal to be "unstuck" from the "amber" that holds us, actually seems to me a more binding theory. In regards to the individuality issue, a Tralfamadorian would simply state that one was born to his or her parents, and that moment and the moments that shaped said being have, are, and will always be in existence the way they were meant to be. The idea of a deviant cannot exist if their concept were to be taken very literally.

By the way the aliens present their theory, itt sounds like good living without the consciousness of time, surfing moments as they pass. However, the fact that one's personality as they grow can be questioned stems from us "Earthlings" being more concerned with free will. It's a bottomless concept and goes against the seemingly peaceful wisdom of the Tralfamadorians, but I would say it's a key vehicle of change.

None of us wish to be exactly like our parents. Evolution of ideas and modifications of the system would not have it. Humans may rebel against the system a bit too often or try to take matters into their own hands, despite some wisdom from parent's experiential guidance. But the guts to go against time's mandates, being neither stuck or unstuck as the Tralfamadorian dictionary would describe it, I think brings us to enlightenment and mostly good development.

I would rather we not all be of the same, or seven different sexes, all with no distinct characterization. A crowd of palm faces and plunger butts with no want of control, aware of their imminent doom because one guy pushes a button. That kinda freaks me out.

A born artist is a whole new kind of kid

James Joyce, in his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, offers an infiltration into a mind deeply perplexing, hidden to the world except through the medium of (often too interpretive) art. Stephen Dedalus, the young man portraying the artist's growth, is an Irishman.

Though not too much narrative is dedicated to the Dedalus family, strength in history and Catholic faith run deeply in this heritage. What is interesting about these components of Irish life is that each piece can be so divided against the other. For example, at the Christmas dinner table, Stephen's family argues the balance of religious piety versus loyalty to Ireland and its political figures. Though Stephen should likely have an opinion on the matter or grow into one as his family would impress upon him, he, as an artist and a maverick, goes into neither.

While on a walk with his father and uncle, the two older men show off their town and reminisce their lives centered in relationships, school, and goofing off typical of a young man of Stephen's upbringing. Stephen realizes that his brain doesn't work this way: "Nothing moved him or spoke to him from the real world unless he heard in it an echo of the infuriated cries within him. He could respond to no earthly or human appeal, dumb and insensible to the call of summer and gladness and companionship, wearied and dejected by his father's voice." Though his parents encourage Stephen to pursue acceptable aspirations, and his mother, traditional to Irish culture, sees Stephen as a god (here is where they might have a little something in common), he generally isolates himself from others and is not concerned with anything but that complies with his unique method of perceiving and processing.

Rather than acquiescing to the pressures of his family and inborn heritage, Stephen finds more of himself in aesthetics and contemplative ideas rather than the physical father and mother, or any other institution for that matter, family, Catholic spirituality, school, etc.

Invisible man, imperceptible family stability

Ralph Ellison uses extreme ambiguity to his advantage in telling the complicated story of the invisible man, or how one becomes the invisible man. For one to become invisible, his or her foundation of identity is unusually loose.

Ellison's protagonist, being nameless from the beginning, neglects the influence a parent bears as the first characteristic they press upon their child after birth. Because Invisible Man solely follows the one character's internal growth as a bildungsroman, the reader has little information to find possible parental influence in the narrator. Except, possibly, from the lacking self-confidence of the invisible man that brings him to his predicament in the manhole at the end of his journey.

The only direct wording from a family member mentioned in Invisible Man comes from his grandfather, preaching a passive aggressive position toward the prejudice that haunts the narrator his entire life. One might assume that those words that stick with the invisible man had been the driving wisdom for the rest of his family, and the beliefs of his parents. If this is true, the invisible man doesn't diverge far from his paternal influence. Though he attempts to defy oppressive situations, for example giving his speech at Battle Royal for a small shot at recognition and better education, the narrator adheres to the innocence and passive nature his blood teaches him. This passable characteristic keeps him vulnerable to the identity that society thrusts upon him as an African American, whichever group he happens to be in at the time.

The invisible man has no roots, no identification, and that's the point. This is not a book that can give me a conclusive answer to my question in the affirmative direction. However, I feel the narrator's omitted family history and childhood from the book emphasizes how lost one becomes without a strong parental foundation.