The Sirens of Titan

1.2 Everybody is a marionette of the universe
Although the story is set in the far future, Vonnegut does not alter the mankind in any of its features. The terrestrials in the novel lead basically the same lives as people nowadays. Therefore, the main topic of this subchapter is not devoted to the humankind as such, but to two of its representatives. The two representatives I have chosen to describe are also the two main characters of the novel, Malachi Constant and Winston Niles Rumfoord. Their fates fade into one another. Although different in personal qualities, they change throughout the story so much that their roles are actually swapped. Malachi, dull, conceited, consumer oriented with no feelings for anybody, becomes a modest, wise man with great affections towards his ‘mate’ Beatrice. On the contrary, Rumfoord’s role of a dignified, wise man with the ability to foresee and affect the future gradually develops into a mere pawn with no power to change his fate. Such alterations in the roles of the principal actors upset the black-and-white world of, otherwise strictly established, roles of heroes and villains so typical of the science-fiction genre (Pettersson 179,180). The protagonists, Malachi and Rumfoord, with their changeable roles support the idea that the sci-fi is not the right drawer for Vonnegut, in fact they emphasize the postmodern aspect of “playing games” in his work.


1.2.1 An ordinary millionaire Malachi Constant
The protagonist of the book is the richest man in America of the twenty-second century Malachi Constant. Originally of Hollywood, California, he possesses extraordinary luck, which he has used to expand his fortune. After his father’s death, Malachi inherits Magnum Opus, the Los Angeles Corporation. The fact of attaining such a fortune without the slightest endeavor draws a parallel to the fact that Malachi’s father, Noel Constant, also amassed this great capital without ‘lifting a finger’ or being intelligent. His father Noel Constant is cast into a role of a loser that does not abound in any remarkable abilities or intellect, but despite this becomes a rich owner of a prosperous company:
Magnum Opus began as an idea in the head of a Yankee traveling salesman of copper-bottomed cookware. That Yankee was Noel Constant, a native of New Bedford, Massachusetts […].

He took the Gideon Bible that was in his room, and he started with the first sentence in Genesis. The first sentence in Genesis […] is: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Noel Constant wrote the sentence in capital letters, put periods between the letters, divided the letters into pairs, rendering the sentence as follows: “I.N., T.H., E.B., E.G., I.N., N.I., N.G., G.O., D.C., R.E., A.T., E.D., T.H., E.H., E.A., V.E., N.A., N.D., T.H., E.E., A.R., T.H.,.”

And then he looked for corporations with those initials, and bought shares in them (Vonnegut 71-74).
Malachi Constant not only comes into his father’s fortune, but he also inherits inexplicable luck, as it can be hardly called a method, in his financial affairs. But, like his father, he has done nothing significant with his life: “He is not even well-educated. He had been thrown out of the University of Virginia in the middle of his freshman year” (Vonnegut 11). Malachi leads a wasteful, empty life of a millionaire who has enormous means and possibilities, but is not able to use them efficiently. Vonnegut shapes Malachi’s character in a way so as to provide a typical representative of the consumer society of the 1950s, and casts him in a role of a space traveler. The progress of the story and the events Malachi has to go though and which shape his character conveys the author’s message that there are many things in our lives which can neither be explained nor do they make sense. “The people who can’t understand it are people who have to believe, for their own peace of mind, that tremendous wealth can be produced only by tremendous cleverness” (Vonnegut 73). Both Malachi and Rumfoord have obvious roles of a puppet that can not influence who and how ‘pull its strings’. By contrast, Malachi’s character, although being a part of an uncontrollable game, shapes and changes. A typical consumer, influenced by a series of coincidences, becomes a character that finds his ‘own face’, although in his declining years. Malachi’s transformation already begins with his stay on Mars, where he, for the first time, starts recognizing his feelings for Beatrice and their son Chrono. However, the identification with his inner ideas and affections is aggravated by brainwashing. All Martians are brainwashed as they are not supposed to remember or feel anything. In this, the reader can clearly see Vonnegut’s attitude towards the authorities. He was “a frequent lecturer, telling audience to be skeptical of authority and stay true to their humanity in a dehumanizing world” (CNN). Later on Mercury, Malachi, free from the control of the antenna in his head, is given one more chance to order his thoughts and feelings. Malachi’s character finally takes shape on Titan, where he finds his way to Beatrice’s heart and accepts Chrono as his son. His stay on Titan becomes his life’s destiny as he lives there as long as his ‘mate’ is alive. After her death, there is no point for Malachi in staying on Titan any longer: “’My mate died today […]. It’s a lonely place here now that –‘ He shook his head” (Vonnegut 313, 314). This moment is a real climax of Malachi Constant’s personality. Not only his inner beliefs and feelings have matured, but he is also given a right to make his own, meaningful decision. So, after the whole life space travel, being drawn by Rumfoord from planet to planet, he himself chooses a place to live the rest of his life:
“Indianapolis, Indiana,” said Constant, is the first place in the United States of America where a white man was hanged for a murder of an Indian. The kind of people who’ll hang a white man for murdering an Indian – “ said Constant, “that’s the kind of people for me.” (Vonnegut 314,315).
Malachi’s comeback at the end of his voyage and his life, as well as his self-discovery stands as a symbol for a destiny every terrestrial should aim for. The fundamental legacy of the novel that there is neither divine guidance nor point in trying to ‘explain the world’ is one of the primary beliefs of postmodernism (Trávníček 622).


1.2.2 The powerless god Rumfoord
Winston Niles Rumfoord is the second most important figure in the story that helps Vonnegut to express his moral believes; therefore he pays attention to Rumfoord’s description. Rumfoord comes from a wealthy New England background, which classifies him as a dignified, proud and mighty man. To build up such an image, the narrator says:
Winston Niles Rumfoord was a member of the one true American class. The class was a true one because its limits had been clearly defined for at least two centuries – clearly defined for anyone with an eye for definitions. From Rumfoord’s small class had become a tenth of America’s presidents, a quarter of its explorers, a third of its Eastern Seaboard governors, a half of its full-time ornithologists, three quarters of its yachtsmen […] (Vonnegut 26).

Moreover, his dignity and might are not predetermined only by his origin but also the impression he makes on other people makes his superior:

Winston Niles Rumfoord was much heavier than Malachi Constant – and he was the first person who had ever made Constant think that there might actually be a person superior to himself […].

Winston Niles Rumfoord was something else again – morally, spatially, socially, sexually, and electrically. Winston Niles Rumfoord’s smile and handshake dismantled Constant’s high opinion of himself as efficiently as carnival roustabouts might dismantle a Ferris wheel.

Constant panicked before the very moderate greatness of Rumfoord

(Vonnegut 20,21).

In addition, Rumfoord’s private fortune helps him to fund the construction of a personal spacecraft and become a space explorer. While traveling in the universe, his ship enters the “chrono-synclastic infundibulum” and he becomes aware of the past and the future, he predicts future events and his predictions always come true, unless he is lying deliberately:
“I can read your mind, you know,” said Rumfoord.

“Can you?” said Constant humbly.

“Easiest thing in the world,” said Rumfoord. His eyes twinkled. “You’re not a bad sort, you know –“ he said, “Particularly when you forget who you are.” He touched Constant lightly on the arm. It was a politician’s gesture – a vulgar public gesture by a man who in private, among his own kind, would take wincing pains never to touch anyone

(Vonnegut 22,23).

This ability of his makes him look even more powerful. On the other hand, the powerful man Rumfoord is well aware of the fact that he is a mere part of a cosmological mechanism like anybody else. “His superior knowledge includes the realization that free will is an illusion” (Pettersson 188). Although he directs all the happening on the planet Earth and other celestial bodies and arranges Malachi’s space travel, he appears a more helpless prisoner of time than anybody else: “‘Tralfarmadore,’ said Rumfoord bitterly ‘reached into the Solar System, picked me up, and used me like a handy-dandy potato peeler!’” (Vonnegut 285). This typically postmodern belief that a human life is nothing more than ‘a game of chess’, in which each of us is only a pawn, permeates throughout the whole novel. Rumfoord perfectly fits Richard Dawkins’s theory of postmodernism in which he asks whether or not postmodernism claims only to be ‘playing games’: “Isn’t it the whole point of their philosophy that anything goes […]“ (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia)?

2.1 Bloody and flaming Mars
Mars, the second smallest planet after Mercury, is a planet that has drawn attention of astronomers ever since people became aware of the existence of other planets than Earth. It is the second planet on which the story of The Sirens of Titan is set. There is no reliable information about when Mars was observed for the first time, but it is likely that it was between 3,000 and 4,000 BC. All ancient civilizations such as the Babylonians and the Greeks knew about this, so-called “wandering star” (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia). It is the closest planet to Earth, easily observed from Earth when in opposition to the Sun, and the one which has always been the source of speculations about being a possible place of existence of life. Therefore it is not surprising that it has become a setting of many science fictional books and films. Kurt Vonnegut decided to give Mars a role in his novel too, and it is needless to say that not an unimportant role. Mars is the first destination of Malachi Constant’s cosmic travel.

The narrator does not seemingly pay much attention to the depiction of this planet, except a few details. The rusted orange surface of solid iron (Vonnegut 97), as the ground of Mars is described, is likely to have been inspired by the real astronomical knowledge of this planet. Mars’s colour is red due to the fact that its surface contains of iron compounds (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia). This is not the only similarity between the real planet Mars and Mars in The Sirens of Titan. In the novel, the only city on Mars is called Phoebe and: “nobody knows why it is called Phoebe” (Vonnegut 127). For anybody who is interested in astronomy and particularly in Mars, there is an obvious connection with Phobos, the bigger satellite of two Mars’s satellites. Both satellites Phobos and Deimos were discovered by Asaph Hall in 1877, who named them after the god Mart’s sons. In translation Phobos means fear and Demios terror. Neither name evokes pleasant images but only one of them poses a real threat for Mars and it is Phobos. Phobos orbits Mars faster than it rotates around its own axis, which slows down the rotation and also reduces the distance between the planet and the satellite. It is estimated that in fifty thousands years, Phobos will hit into Mars causing total destruction of the satellite and great damage of Mars (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia). Taking this prediction into consideration, the fact that the narrator names the only city on Mars Phoebe seems to have a symbolical meaning. The name Phoebe symbolizes a city that is doomed and this is the case of Phoebe in the novel. The dwellers of Phoebe are people brought from Earth in order to lead a war against people living on Earth. But having been brainwashed and made constantly obey orders, transmitting into their brains by antennas, they do not realize how horrifying a fate awaits them. They are supposed to be sacrificed so as to change the situation on Earth:

It was Rumfoord’s intention that Mars should lose the war – that Mars should lose it foolishly and horribly. As a seer of the future, Rumfoord knew for certain that this would be the case – and he was content.

He wished to change the World for the better by means of the great and unforgettable suicide of Mars (Vonnegut 174).

Therefore the above cited sentence: “nobody knows why it is called Phoebe” (Vonnegut 127) does not seem to be true for the author. It appears not to be coincidence that Kurt Vonnegut chose precisely the name Phoebe for the city predetermined for self-destruction. Furthermore, the name Phoebe can in a similar way symbolize the fear that is likely to rise in a reader’s mind. It evokes a fearful image of being misused and not being able to act according our own will. The question is whether such an image represents the motif of cosmological determinism or whether it is supposed to draw a link to the social determinism, or if it refers to the postmodern idea of playing games. Rumfoord’s intention to sacrifice thousands of lives for higher aims, as he claims that: “they are going to fight for the privilege of being the first army that ever died in a good cause,” (Vonnegut 142), supports Vonnegut’s conviction that the culture we live in determines our lives strongly. On the other hand, as it has been already stated in the previous chapter, Rumfoord’s whole life and all his deeds appear to be ruled by extraterrestrials from the faraway planet Tralfamadore. And yet, the Tralfamadorians are robots whose bodies are powered and lives are organized by “a phenomenon known as UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. “UWTB is what makes universes out of nothingness – that makes nothingness insist on becoming somethingness” (Vonnegut 138), and this emphasis the postmodern aspect in the novel.

All this evidence points to a conclusion that Kurt Vonnegut works with an idea of cosmological determinism and “its two aspects, predestination and extraterrestrial influence” (Petterson 177) to parody science-fiction practices. This parody as well as metafictional determinism denoting his postmodern sensibility “indicate the main affinities in Vonnegut’s fiction: postmodern (self-reflexiveness), science fiction (a broad perspective on human existence), and naturalism (sociological and physiological influences)” (Pettersson 35). A close reader can spot various features of different literary genres. A close reader can also sense what Vonnegut wants Mars to symbolize. Mars is to be a symbol of war and violence. The two images, the sacrificial Mars city of Phoebe, the dwellers of which start the war against the planet Earth, and the ideology of enslaving and humiliating Martians’ minds, evoke such a symbol in the reader’s mind. A perceptive reader that is, at least slightly, interested in astronomy can immediately understand why Vonnegut chooses Mars for war symbolism. Due to its red or pink-orange shade, already the ancient cultures considered Mars as a symbol of fire and blood, which might also be the possible reason why it was given its name after Mart, the Roman god of war (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia).

3.1 Freezing and burning Mercury
The planet Mercury, which is the closest planet to the Sun in our solar system, plays an important part in the book. Mercury is the second planet, after Mars, which the main character Malachi Constant visits. Malachi, nicknamed by his fellow soldiers Unk, accompanied by another soldier from Mars, Boaz do not intend to land on Mercury. They leave Mars together with other thousands space ships which are supposed to attack Earth. Nevertheless, the automatic pilot-navigator of the space ship Malachi and Boaz travelled with carries Unk and Boaz to the planet Mercury first and then from there to Earth. It is Rumfoord that sets their space ship computer to land on Mercury because he wants Unk to stay in a safe place and not to be killed in the war between Mars and Earth (Vonnegut 176). Moreover, it also seems that even Vonnegut has his precise idea about for what purposes should Mercury in the novel serve. This chapter do not only analyse the description of Mercury from the astronomic point of view, but it also tries to explain what reasons could Vonnegut have to describe this planet in the way he does.

Mercury, similarly like many other planets, derives its name from mythology. In this case it comes partly from Roman mythology, to which the god of commerce, travel and thievery Mercury belongs, and from Greek mythology too, as Mercury is the Roman counterpart of Greek god Hermes, known as the messenger of the gods (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia). “The Romans named the planet after the fleet-footed messenger Mercury, probably for its fast apparent motion in the twilight sky” (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia). Mercury is a very small planet just 1.4 times the size of the Moon and is similar to the Moon in many aspects. Its surface is heavily cratered and very old. Nevertheless, Mercury is much denser than the Moon; to be precise it is the second densest celestial body in the solar system, after Earth. On the other hand the density of Mercury’s atmosphere is so small that it can be hardly considered atmosphere at all: “Mercury actually has a very thin atmosphere consisting of atoms blasted off its surface by the solar wind. Because Mercury is so hot, these atoms quickly escape into space. Thus in contrast to the Earth and Venus whose atmospheres are stable, Mercury's atmosphere is constantly being replenished” (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia). The absence of atmosphere causes enormous differences in temperature between the dark side of Mercury and the side exposed to the Sun. The temperature on the dark side of the planet reaches minus 180°C, whereas the opposite side radiates with plus 500°C. Until 1962 Mercury was thought to keep that same face to the Sun much as the Moon does to the Earth, since it was believed that one day on Mercury was the same length as a year. But it is now known that Mercury rotates around its own axis three times in two of its years (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia).

The description of Mercury in The Sirens of Titan meets the features of the real planet in many ways. Unk and Boaz land on the dark side of the planet:
One side of Mercury faces the Sun. That side has always faced the Sun. That side is a sea of white-hot dust.

The other side faces the nothingness of space eternal. That side has always faced the nothingness of space eternal. That side is a forest of giant blue-white crystals, aching cold (Vonnegut 184).

The planet with its freezing side and its hot side corresponds to the astronomical knowledge about Mercury. Even the fact that its one side always faces the Sun seems to be based on the astronomical observations, since the book was written in 1959 when this was still believed. But imagination is given a scope in the detailed description too:
It seemed to Unk and Boaz that their ship was settling slowly among skyscrapers over which searchlights played.

“They aren’t shooting,” said Boaz. “Either the war’s over, or it ain’t begun.”

The merry beams of lights they saw were not from searchlights. The beams came from tall crystals on the borderline between the light and dark hemispheres of Mercury. Those crystals were catching beams from the sun, were bending them prismatically, playing them over the dark side [...].

It was easy to mistake the dense forest of giant blue-white crystals for skyscrapers, stupendous and beautiful (Vonnegut 187,188).

Such crystals are not known to exist on the planet and therefore seem to be a mere figment of the narrator’s imagination. However, it is the imagination which helps to create the image of Mercury as a beautiful planet. Moreover, Mercury in the novel does not have any atmosphere as there is a vacuum and this is generally believed to be true for the real planet. Although the absence of atmosphere is regarded unsuitable for any form of life, it does not seem to be a problem for Unk and Boaz. They both learned how to survive in a vacuum during their service in the Martian army. The technique so-called “Schliemann breathing” was taught to every recruit of the Martian army, servicemen of which Unk and Boaz were. Since the atmosphere of Mars does not contain oxygen, it has to be provided in other way than by lungs breathing. To solve this problem, Vonnegut conceived special pills, Goofballs, which every Martian has to take in regular intervals. The pills release the necessary oxygen into the small intestine through which it is absorbed into blood (Vonnegut 148). So, on condition that the method of breathing which Vonnegut describes in the book was possible, Mercury could be the place suitable for man to live in.

On the other hand, there are a few differences between the way the narrator sees Mercury and the astronomical knowledge. The major difference can be found in the likelihood of possible survival of a man in unfavorable temperatures of the planet. Unk and Boaz land on the bottom of deep caves of Mercury, which provide suitable environment for survival as the caves are cozily warm in their depths (Vonnegut 185). However, according to observations of astronomers, there are shallow craters on Mercury; similar to craters on the Moon, but the existence of deep underground caves is unlikely. Consequently, the extreme temperature on Mercury makes it impossible for a man to live there. Even any other forms of live are highly improbable to endure such conditions. Nevertheless, the author does not deal with these obstacles at all and enables Unk and Boaz to spend parts of their lives on Mercury. Moreover, there are other living creatures, so called harmoniums, which dwell on the planet permanently.

All in all, although the real planet Mercury is not a favourable celestial body for life, the narrator gives it an image of a beautiful and harmonious planet and enables the protagonist Malachi stop there for some time. This stop seems to have a symbolical meaning for Vonnegut. It appears that the peaceful and harmonious image of Mercury has its purpose to establish Mercury as a counterbalance to the war between Mars and Earth. Moreover, this stop has a significant meaning in Malachi’s life. It is a stop when he, accompanied only by Boaz, has plenty of time to organize his thoughts and values in his head, and makes him determined to find Beatrice and their son Chrono. Therefore, Mercury does not serve Vonnegut as a peace symbol, but also as a symbol of self-determination. This symbol of self-determination is also distinguished in Boaz’s case. Boaz is captivated by splendid harmoniums and the way they cohabitate peacefully with the planet and each other and he decides to spend the rest of his life on Mercury: “I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I’m doing good, and them I’m doing good for know I’M doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home” (Vonnegut 214,215).

3.2 Could harmoniums exist?

This chapter is concerned with creatures that live on Mercury called “HARMONIUM - The only known form of life on the planet Mercury. The harmonium is a cave-dweller. A more gracious creature would be hard to imagine” (Vonnegut 184). Vonnegut pays a great attention to harmoniums’ description in which the reader can see his affection for these creatures. When fully mature, harmoniums are translucent, diamond-shaped, a foot high, eight inches wide and very thin like the skin of a toy balloon. They are very similar to spineless kites with four feeble suction cups, one at each of their corners. The cups enable them to cling to the deep walls of Mercury’s caves, where harmoniums live. The harmonium is nourished by vibrations produced by the song the planet Mercury sings and reproduces by flaking. The creatures have only one sense, touch, and there is only one sex. When mature, they do not deteriorate but stay in full bloom as long as Mercury sings its song (Vonnegut 185, 186). The planet Mercury has not been explored enough to invalidate the existence of such creatures. However, the data about this planet are in favour of the theory that any form of life on Mercury is highly unlikely. This provokes to ask the question what could possibly inspire Vonnegut to invent harmoniums and why he endowers them with such qualities.

The most straightforward association is a musical instrument as it is commonly known. The certain connection between this musical instrument and Vonnegut’s Mercurial creatures can be seen. They are both concerned with music. Nevertheless, a real musical instrument produces music whereas harmoniums from Mercury absorb music as their only source of energy they live on.

The second possible connection could be made with Harmonium (1923, rev. ed. 1931) the first collection of poems by Wallace Stevens. In this case, there is not only one aspect but two in which Stevens’s and Vonnegut’s works can be compared. Firstly, it is the choice of colours that both authors used in their works, which in Stevens’s Harmonium is, according to some literary critics, supposed to be symbolical:

Vendler notes that the first task undertaken by the early critics of Stevens was to "decode" his "symbols" […]. Colour symbolism is a vital part of Stevens’ poetic technique, according to a symbolist critics writing in 1975, who propose the following colour scheme for reading Stevens.

blue – imagination

green – the physical

red – reality

gold – sun

purple – delight in the imagination

Vendler accuses the decoders of producing "some commentary of extraordinary banality". It seems safe to affirm however that Stevens's symbolism is in aid of a polarity between "things as they are" and "things imagined". Imagination, order and the ideal are often symbolized by blue, the moon, the polar north, winter, music, poetry, and art. Actuality and disorder are often represented by yellow, the sun, the tropic south, summer, physical nature. For instance, sun and moon represent this duality in Harmonium's ”The Comedian as the letter C”, in which the protagonist, Crispin, conceives his voyage of self-discovery as a poet to be

(Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia).

Vonnegut’s harmoniums are creatures that change the coulour of light the caves produce and that might be perceived as an allusion to Steven’s Harmonium. Since the harmoniums are translucent,: “when they cling to the walls, light from the phosphorescent walls comes right through them. The yellow light from the walls, however, is turned, when passed through the bodies of the creatures, to a vivid aquamarine (Vonnegut 185). It is a questing whether Vonnegut’s choice of coulours to portrait harmoniums was inspired by Stevens, so as to create the same symbolical impression or whether it is just incidental. Whatever the answer to such a question is, it is apparent that the authors not only use the same colours, yellow and blue, but they also carry similar symbolical meaning. Yellow stands for something that is physical and natural, which are the caves on Mercury. On the contrary, imagination as something transitory and ungraspable is expressed by blue. Vonnegut’s harmoniums are creatures that change yellow light penetrating their bodies into bright aquamarine blue. In other words, the luminous, fragile and peaceful cave dwellers seem to be mediums conveying the author’s imagination. The usage of both colours, blue and yellow might also express “a polarity between "things as they are" and "things imagined"” (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia).

Secondly, there is a link between Crispins, the protagonist of the poem The Comedian as the letter C, which is the longest poem of Steven’s Harmonium, traveling to find himself (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia) and Malachi Constant, the main character of The Sirens of Titan, whose space voyage helps to find and give his life sense. Bo Pettersson claims that in The Sirens of Titan there are even more allusions to various literary classics. Constant’s travels and his meeting with the sirens very much remind readers of the Odyssey. Besides, Constant’s deep belief in divine guidance, which he often comments with: “I guess somebody up there likes me” (Vonnegut 20), is close to Dr. Pangloss’s philosophical optimism and even Constant’s later contentment as a gardener seems to have roots in Candide’s thoughts. “Since ‘The comedian as the letter C’ is a picaresque and metaphysical travelogue with allusions to both the Odyssey and Candide, it seems likely that Vonnegut had it in mind while writing The Sirens of Titan “ (Pettersson 225).

Lastly and most importantly, the word harmonium itself is associated with harmony. To evoke harmony in the reader’s mind seems to be the main author’s aim why he ‘stars’ harmoniums in his novel. They are described as flat kite-shaped organisms which live in harmony to each other and to their surrounding: “There are creatures in the deep caves of Mercury. The song their planet sings is important to them, for the creatures are nourished by vibration. They feed on mechanical energy. The creatures cling to the singing walls of their caves. In that way, they eat the song of Mercury” (Vonnegut 185). The way in which the harmoniums are depicted further makes them fantastic, outstanding creatures:
There is one last characteristic of the creatures that has not been explained on utilitarian ground: the creatures seem to like to arrange themselves in striking patterns on the phosphorescent walls.

Though blind and indifferent to anyone’s watching, they often arrange themselves so as to present a regular and dazzling pattern of jonquil-yellow and vivid aquamarine diamonds […]

Because of their love for music and their willingness to deploy themselves in the service of beauty, the creatures are given a lovely name by Earthings.

They call them harmoniums

(Vonnegut 186,187).
Although their only sense is touch, they use their colourful, glaring bodies and organize themselves so as to create beautiful, spectacular ornaments on the walls of Mercury’s caves. However, they do not have any preceptors to perceive visual reality, nor are there any other living creatures on Mercury which could observe their magnificent performance. The lives of these subtle inhabitants seem to be devoted to beauty and harmony. Harmoniums do not know any trouble-causing things such as hunger, envy, ambition, fear, indignation or religion, not even sexual lust as their sex can not be distinguished because they are one like another (Vonnegut 186). Harmoniums do not bear one feature which could spoil their harmonious existence. “There is no way in which one creature can harm another, and no motive for one’s harming another” (Vonnegut 186). All this suggests that Vonnegut uses harmoniums to fix the image of Mercury a harmonious planet.