.jpg)
Why would Vonnegut, in trying to make sense of and write truthfully about his war experience, choose this story (aliens, Billy) as his way to write about war? Any hints from returning to Chapter 1/reading about about his writing process?
Please try to answer at least one of these questions, or ask a BIG question of your own. Make sure you start your reflection with a passage. Also, make sure that you respond to someone else.
“It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again” (19)
ReplyDeleteQ: Why integrate his war story with Billy’s?
This quote pretty explains the whole book. Slaughterhouse five is an anti-war book that is meant to reflect the effects of war. We read that war is just a bunch of kids fighting and I think this is true. Billy shows the defects of war in his life, demonstrating that war does not benefit anyone. The reason why Billy time –travels is to cope with his fears toward war and his fear during those moments. Billy never really talks to Valencia about war. The only time Billy feels fine talking about war is with Montana. However, we can infer (like what Leo was saying) that time-travel, tralfamadore, and Montana can be an illusion of escape for Billy. We see that Billy is a mirror image to Vonnegut. In addition Vonnegut says “There will always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers” (3) War is always going to happen but we learn from the tralfamadores to concentrate on the good
I agree with you and I think that throughout the entire book that is a message that Vonnegut wanted us to keep in mind. I think it is very important that when one reads Slaughterhouse Five, they do not forget that Vonnegut really is opposed to war and that his satirical tone is just that, a joke. He does not truly believe that death deserves to be approached with such a nonchalant attitude. I mean, I did not know the man but at least from what we discussed in class throughout our study of this book, I think that was his perspective.
Delete
Delete"We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like,according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present:how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep."(18)
After such a traumatizing event (war) Vonnegut just so happened to finally understand how the world works, it is all based off of false advertisement. He attempts at informing his readers and the public eye on how to maintain a humane perception of the world-essentially something we have lost.By really looking at the world around. He tries to show the reader how brainwashed society is,seeing the world at a glance and blindly being poisoned by greedy enterprises and forgetting the real purpose of things.Vonnegut has found the reason of life by self reflection. He has come to understand mankind's past errors, how they burden present situations and how this can then lead to potential future mistakes, I believe that this quote and essentially the entire novel work to illustrate the idea of humanity, and how to regain what the media, the industry and society has taken away from human beings.
I completely agree with you on how this line completely summarizes the whole book. I thought that this line is probably the only line, that tells the main idea of this story. It's shocking how one line tells you a lot. And it makes me think, if that is the case, why write the book in the first place?. But Vonnegut was wrong, obviously of a book with 215 pages there is a lot to say about a massacre.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIn Chapter 10, Vonnegut again uses satire as Mika mentioned. He lists the deaths of Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Vietnam corpses, and his own father. All of these deaths we know are profoundly important, and Vonnegut knows this too. What he is saying is that society as a whole choses to put death on a list rather than seeing each individual death with importance. Vonnegut argues the importance of life by saying the complete opposite.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete"there were hundreds of corpse mines operating by and by. They didn't smell bad at first, were wax museums. But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like roses and mustard gas. So it goes." (214)
ReplyDeleteQ: Why does Vonnegut integrate Billy's war story with his own?
This quote stood out to me in relation to this question because, to be perfectly honest, I thought it was the most completely vulgar quote in the entire book. That's just my opinion however, I do think there is something to be said about the last story Vonnegut leaves us off with. When I was reading the last 2 pages of the book, it struck me as quite odd that he would choose such a morbid scene as this one to end his book that he spent so long writing. But then I got the idea that maybe he wanted to give us a taste of one of the worst, most vivid memories he has from the war. Not to say Billy's war story wasn't gruesome as well, but I think a lot of the stories Vonnegut told about Billy were more lighthearted than this one in particular.
I was just as horrified by this moment as you were. It reminded me of a scene in the movie version of the novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, when a Lieutenant comments about the concentration camp to the mother and says, "They always smell worse when they burn." The mother was horrified in the fact that despite her being the wife of a commanding officer, had no idea of the reality of how the prisoners of the camps were being dealt with. This reminds me of the candles made of body fat of dead people, I talked about in my post how the sounds of birds give closure that your life has not ended, and I think you were right that Vonnegut wanted to give us a taste but I thought it was of the reality of war's toll on people and the damage that it does.
DeleteI agree, as I wrote I also said that this quote must be some sort of way of Vonnegut getting his opinions clearly out. I also think that honestly war is as Vonnegut said gruesome. Vonneguts push to make this an anti-war book was a success. Through his descriptive and vulgar scenes Vonnegut has showed us that war isn't all it's cut out to ge, the glory and honor doesn't always apply when you have your life on the line fighting an enemy that you don't know you can beat. And to answer your question I think that Vonnegut uses this scene towards the end of the book to get his final point across about war being cruel. Talking about all the bodies and the smell of all the bodies really unsettles my stomach I find that this is Vonneguts final momments in Dresden which makes sense since Billy is just a way of his trying to explain his thoughts and the memories of the things that went down in Dresden.
DeleteI completely agree. One thing that I find very interesting as well is how he compares the two smells of roses and mustard gas. He disguises this thought by putting such a vulgar sentence in front but roses are so sweet and mustard gas is so horrible. I view it as a change throughout life. Almost as if it is so sweet to be burned away because their life in the war was so horrible and Vonnegut knows that. He would not have said such contrasting things if he didn't mean to show that there were two sides.
DeleteRelating back to Lindsay's comment, I too was thinking about the rose and mustard gas comparison. I sort of viewed it as the two sides of war in his head- the side that he experienced: mustard gas, and the side that the public sees: roses. The bodies of the people are rotting, making a tragic end to their lives, yet it is already being covered up with fabrication by the media.
DeleteI completely agree, Mika this description was absolutely disturbing. In my opinion,
ReplyDeleteI believe Vonnegut leaves the reader with this horrendous image of war because he wants the reader to rethink the concept of war being a time of victory for the powerful side and a final act of defeat and withdrawal from the 'villainous' side.
He understands that society has shaped war to be depicted as a justified fight for what is right, but he wants the reader to see the realistic side of it all- the side that acknowledges the fact that hundreds of thousands of people die regardless of them being"bad/good." He leaves us with that image of so many deaths to ensure that we will never dismiss the numerous deaths that follow war and how this completely obstructs humanity
"If Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed." (211)
ReplyDeleteQuestion: Why integrate his war story with Billy's?
Why would Vonnegut, in trying to make sense of and write truthfully about his war experience, choose this story (aliens, Billy) as his way to write about war?
Answer: Throughout the whole book, I felt like Vonnegut somehow saw himself as Billy, because so many times I've asked myself why Vonnegut would tell his war experience through the Protagonist Billy. Going back to Chapter 1, I noticed that Vonnegut hides behind dark humor. And he simply does this because he doesn't want the world to know who he really is. And this is connected to how he always detaches himself from war, and basically emotions. So, I felt like his way of doing that was to tell his story from another character. In chapter 1 he says he changed the names of real people in the war, and I felt like he had changed his name to Billy, in order to avoid being attached. I also thought that maybe the Tralfamadorians was just simply a wise person, that advised Vonnegut, and Vonnegut had seen them as a big authority or unknown, so he decided to make him aliens in his book. I don't think this was just thinking out of the box, or just a fiction novel, I think all the characters ( Billy, Tralfamadorians, Rosewater..etc) are all connected to Vonnegut some how. The book is someway for Vonnegut to avoid and hide his war experience.
I agree with some of what you are saying Pamela, I believe though that rather than Vonnegut using dark humor to hide, I believe he uses it to expose and illustrate his emotions. I agree with what you are saying about how he needs to detach himself and his emotions from the war and I think he needs to do that because the war was such a big deal for him and when he wrote it, he didn't know how people were going to respond, in the first chapter someone tells him pretty much that he is crazy for writing an anti- war book, that why doesn't he just write an anti-glacier book because he an write about hating the war and how it damaged him and he can add his raw emotions but this person felt that all that anti-war books are are pretesting the war, ears are still going to happen. I believe the dark humor is a sense of his lack of confidence in himself in what this book could really do and how it did end up becoming a classic and changing people's mind about war. He uses his dark humor to expose his emotions without feeling vulnerable when rejection strikes.
DeleteWOW! you have such great ideas, that I agree with you on everything, and I want to thank you for that. And you gave a great reason to all your ideas, I was referring to the same idea when you talked about how he illustrates his emotions by the dark humor. So I really like the way you put it, it gave a whole new meaning to what I was trying to say.
Delete"And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death" (4).
ReplyDelete"...that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed" (201).
What is Vonnegut saying about war and death?
I think that Vonnegut finds comfort in the thought that at one point everyone dies, everyone has a life span and that will end someday when they die. Vonnegut, in the first chapter writes about how anti-war books are like glaciers, they will always happen even if you try to stop them. He goes on to talk about how even if wars didn't exist, people would still die, because that is a part of life. Continuing with Vonnegut's ideas in chapter 10, Vonnegut discusses how the Tralfamadorians believe that no one really ever dies, that people continue to live on even if they are "dead." In the book, he writes that this concept doesn't make him happy. I believe that the concept of everyone always being alive, scares Vonnegut. Although he is a humanist I think he finds a comfort in knowing that everyone, dies and goes to rest and that the people who are living have to learn to move on after they die. As a humanist, he wants to preserve human life to a point as to not have them in pain. They say when a dog gets sick or is hurting the best thing to do may not be getting it surgery or medicine, rather to put the dog down. I believe Vonnegut follows this logic in the sense that he wants to preserve human life, but at a point they need to be put to rest. I think the one of the reasons he doesn't like war so much is because it pushes people who are sick, hurting with injuries and even mental problems like PTSD, to continue fighting for their country. At some point Vonnegut believes that these people need to rest and war distracts them from having that resting period, "death" or war brings it on to early and people don't get to experience some crucial things. Although Vonnegut knows that war will always occur, I think he thinks that without war people will have a chance to lead a path with the right ending.
I totally agree with everything you said, Maggz. Going off of what you stated, Kurt Vonnegut implies that it is one with nature to disagree, or to oppress a viewpoint. Humans everyday fight a war that seems to have no end to it due to the fact of it being so surreal. Death, in a sense, is the only way to exit the consequences war brings upon life. He is also implying that life should be enjoyed as best as it can be, but when your time comes to be put to rest forever, you will have a history that will be commended.
DeleteI kind of disagree with you honestly. I think that Vonnegut fears death rather then wants it. He is jealous of the Tralfamadorians who find utter peace by being able to go to their favorite moments upon will. What Vonnegut seeks is peace before he dies, he seeks away to be happy whatever the cost may be. By making death such a casual thing in the story he sort of numbs himself for the fear of what may come next. Of course Vonnegut has a serious case of survivors guilt, however he doesn't make him think he should die. Rather he feels like he must find his reason for life before it ends for him.
Delete"Everything is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
ReplyDeleteAnd what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like 'Poo-tee-weet?' " (19).
"Birds were talking.
One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, 'Poo-tee-weet?' " (215).
I thought it was very interesting how Vonnegut chose to begin and end the book with this "Poo-tee-weet" quote of birds. It brought a very intriguing question that I had without an answer, What is there to say after death?
In all honesty, I never know. In cases of death, it always comes to mind to say "How are you?" "If you ever need anything, ask me," "I'm so sorry" "It's a horrible thing to happen to so many people," but in the end, what good does any of that do? It doesn't undo what has been done. I thought that Vonnegut wanted to convey this generality actually being so general by showing it being involved in both his life and Billy. He does this with other concepts throughout the book once in a while reminding us of his presence as the narrator. Saying things like "These are the reasons I write this book." When reading the birds' "words," I get the sense that they have something more meaningful to say with their chirps. It acts as a hug, or a kiss, or a blanket, that doesn't remind you of what has happened like a "I'm so sorry" or "how horrible," but says that "It is going to be ok." When something bad happens to make someone sad or angry, kids sleep, I know I do or I used to. In the morning, you wake up and for the slightest second, you believe that this bad thing hasn't happened, but then after about a minute, you realize that this is not true, and that this unfortunate event is reality. The quiet sounds of birds adds a reminder that life still goes on, and as an addition, gives closure to the fact that one's life hasn't ended. I think that with that idea in mind, Vonnegut comments on the idea of death and existence (which he writes throughout the book as being simultaneously occurring) very poetically.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI agree with you. I feel like Vonnegut is trying to say "what can we really do?" I feel that he wants us to say "what we can do is that, we can stop war". That is the reaction I got at the end of the novel. Wow, we are like twins because I also believed that Vonnegut wanted to give off the idea that life goes on. Although now that I think about it, I feel it is something deeper. I think he is trying to say, although life goes on, when someone dies it is harder for the people who are still living to move one. Kind of like, "It will never be the same" or "things look the same, but a lot has changed". I feel that he chose to write the book this way and he chose to have Billy as the protagonist because that is the only way he could show how the war changed him.
DeleteAn important passage from chapter ten that tied Vonnegut’s ideas together is:
ReplyDelete“They were having nice times, too. East Germany was down below, and the lights were on. I imagined dropping bombs on those lights, those villages and cities and towns”. (270)
Throughout Slaughterhouse Five the idea of the randomness of war occurred often. We see Vonnegut clearly saying that death and war are nonsense. Here Vonnegut is asking us what is the difference between the bombing in Dresden, and the situation he is in where he is imagining bombing Germany. He is saying that there is not a difference. The people who bombed Dresden were living “nice times” when they decided to nonsensically destroy an entire city. They could have been in a plane, having a nice meal just as Vonnegut is doing. It is just as random. The “lights” represent the people living out their normal lives, innocently going about their day. On page 273 Vonnegut says, “They were sitting on benches” when referring to the corpses after the bombing. Normal people, living a day no different from any other, were killed in the random and without reason bombing of Dresden. War is ignorant enough to have been “imagined”. Vonnegut’s main argument is that there is no reason or justification of war and there never will be.
"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed" (211).
ReplyDeleteWhat passages stand out to you from Chapter 10? Why integrate his [Vonnegut's] war story with Billy's?
In chapter 10, this passage stood out to me the most. This is where we finally get Vonnegut's opinion/emotion towards Billy's ideas, more specifically, his Tralfamadorian teachings and time traveling which I constantly questioned the influence and purpose of throughout the entire book. I wondered why these ideas were included in the book, and if Vonnegut used them as some sort of a coping mechanism for Billy. After reading this passage, however, my ideas on Tralfamadorian theories and time traveling changed completely. I began to see them as a way of describing our memory, making the situation of time travel more relatable for the reader/me. For example, Billy has no control over when and where he time travels, as we have no control over our memories (such as what or who we can remember). Like Billy's time travel, not all memories are pleasant ones that we would like to experience again. I think that Vonnegut says that he is "not overjoyed" if what Billy learned from the Tralfamadorians (that all moments are eternal) is true, because of the fact that not all memories are good ones. While Vonnegut's plane ride to Dresden filled with salami and white wine with O'Hare may last forever, somewhere else, the firebombing of Dresden is occurring as well. As happy moments would last forever, so would bad ones. I think that Vonnegut first describes his blissful plane ride with his friend just before describing Billy digging for bodies to emphasize this.
I completely agree with you, I think that Vonnegut is not overjoyed by the Tralfamadorians ability to live in all times, because all of the evils will still be alive and continue to be created over time. It doesn’t put an end to suffering; it allows one to go in and out of it. In my opinion Vonnegut is using the Tralfamadorians in order to demonstrate how no matter what ability one is capable of having, they can never escape the horrors of war. If the Tralfamadorians can’t end war then maybe they’re not so advanced after all?
Delete"He was looking up the population of Dresden, which wasn't in the notebook, when
ReplyDeletehe came across this, which he gave me to read:
On an average, 324,000 new babies are born into the world every day. During that
same day, 10,000 persons, in an average, will have starved to death or died from
malnutrition. So it goes. In addition, 123,000 persons will die for other reasons. So it
goes. This leaves a net gain of about 191,000 each day in the world. The Population
Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000. 'I suppose they will all want dignity,' I said. 'I suppose,' said O’Hare" (212).
In this novel, we seem to return to this idea of dignity. I feel that this quote is Vonnegut's way of getting us to think. He says that there is a "net gain of about 191,000" which shows that we make more humans than we lose. In the end, it is still not okay. I feel that the message here is that death is not something we can compromise with... its not something that we should brush off. Then, Vonnegut says "I suppose they will all want dignity". I believe he means that they might all be looking for a death that would be meaningful. Billy's caring fiance died, not from a car crash, but monoxide poisoning. Roland Weary, a strong soldier, dies from gangrene. Poor old Edgar Derby, the best character of the novel, gets shot for stealing a teapot. Do these deaths, justify the actions of these people while they were living? Everyone wants to die is a way that has dignity, but is there enough dignity for everyone? Throughout the novel, Edgar Derby's death is seen as something comical because he is the epitome of a great man, but he dies for something so meaningless. In chapter 10, Vonnegut does not make a big deal of Derby's death. He sums it up in about 3 sentences. “He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot. So it goes" (214). I think that this shows that everyone wants to die an important death but one cannot choose their death and in the end, it does not even matter. Directly before this, he had been talking about how they were digging up corpses. There were so many corpses that someone just had to go and cremate them all. And that really stayed with me because the fact that he says that Edgar Derby was probably just another one of those corpses, is just mind boggling. The way you die does not matter the fact that you died does. After you die, you are nothing but a memory. Most importantly, IT DOES NOT EVEN MATTER BECAUSE THE WORLD MOVES ON WITHOUT YOU. Crazy right?
Dignity does seem to be a recurring motif/theme of this book. Despite how they "deserved" to die (not that they did deserve to die), many characters of this book died seemingly unfair deaths. Instead of dying while fighting in war, which is what he was willing to do, Edgar Derby died because he stole a teapot. By saying that there are expected to be 7 billion people on earth by the year 2000, Vonnegut shows us that not all of these people will die the deaths they deserve- ones with dignity. Although some of these people will live a life filled with dignity (as Edgar Derby did), not all of them will die with it.
DeleteTo respond to what you said about how briefly Vonnegut describes Edgar Derby's death, (I thought about that a lot as well), although you would expect Vonnegut to create an ironic tragedy out of this death, he simply says "so it goes" to emphasize that there is no fairness or justice in death. However, I disagree with your last few sentences on death and how we don't matter after it. I wrote about this in my post, and I think that Vonnegut including time travel and the beliefs of the Tralfamadorian on the eternity of moments shows that time does not erase these memories. Vonnegut said that if what Billy learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, then he is not overjoyed. This is because if our happiest moments live on forever, as do our unhappiest. I don't think Vonnegut was trying to say that you are completely forgotten and you do not matter.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"Robert Kennedy , whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. / Martin Luther King was shot about a month ago. He died, too. So it goes./ And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes." (210)
ReplyDeleteWhy would Vonnegut, in trying to make sense of and write truthfully about his war experience, choose this story (aliens, Billy) as his way to write about war?
When you read something important during the course of this book, it's bound to be followed up by "So it goes." Whenever reading this book, I always cringed at the site of something important, because I could feel that Kurt Vonnegut was probably very reluctant to elaborate on it. In my eyes, this book is essentially an autobiography where the characters are Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut's friends, his family, etc. It's almost like he did not want you to feel for himself, like he did not want the readers to feel sympathetic towards himself, but rather incorporate Billy Pilgrim and further cast so readers perceived it like it did not actually happen in real life. I believe he chooses the very beginning chapter and the very last chapter as time to explain non-fictional life (a.k.a. Vonnegut's personal life) because the people won't believe that it is true, thus making the reader(s) want to re-read it just to make sure. When you read the last part on Page 22 where Kurt Vonnegut quite literally spoils the book, you think to yourself "this can't be real, is this guy f**kin' delusional?!?" It is a very genius tactic by the man, and I commend him for creating such a fine piece of literature. I'm buying my own copy of this book and I'm adding this to my personal library for sure.
I completely agree. Every time there is a very important part or something is said with deep meaning that Vonnegut should go further with and talk more about, he makes it less than it is, he simplifies it, with "so it goes." It makes me feel like Vonnegut doesn't think it's a big deal because he seems to shrug it off, but after some thought I think Vonnegut actually includes these short but deep sentences that end with "so it goes" because they are the most important parts of the book and Vonnegut is also saying there is not much more you can say or explain about these topics that are all about senseless and vicious violence, war that occurs in our world.
Delete"There were hundreds of corpse mines operating by and by. They didn't smell bad at first, we're wax museums. But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like roses and mustard gas."(214)
ReplyDeleteKurt Vonnegut connects his life and experiences to those of Billy's in many ways "roses and mustard gas" is one of the early ways. Although Vonnegut uses this to connect his life and experiences between those of Billy's he also uses this to show the horrifying events that went down in the last momments of Dresdens fire bombings. I found myself clenching to the book till the end, although once I got to the end I was sort of disappointed, because this quote is really quite disgusting I just can't imagine why these things happen, I guess I never will either since I find war completely pointless. Vonnegut uses this very descriptive quote to connect himself to Billy, earlier in the novel Billy mentions how his breath would always smell that of "roses and mustard gas" which was in my opinion a very intresting way to put it. I wonder if Vonnegut is really trying to connect to Billy or if he just includes this parts unintentionally but what I do know is that from Vonneguts descriptions is that war is a very ugly and horrible thing that'll change the way you think and see as well as scar you for life.
Also, Jose, I think Vonnegut uses the phrase, "mustard gas and roses" to show that death follows him everywhere. In chapter one, Vonnegut writes, "He [Sandy, Vonnegut's dog] doesn't mind the smell of mustard gas and roses"(7). The stink of war, the stink of the rotting corpses- the memory- has stuck onto Vonnegut's being and has plagued him throughout his life. To Vonnegut, death smells like "mustard gas and roses"- this is how he remembers death. The odor is strong enough to drive anyone away and Vonnegut had to smell it for days and days as it started to cling to his soul. Now, only his dog, the most loyal and unprejudiced creature, can stand it. The smell is metaphorical to the memories of death that continue to weigh so heavily on Vonnegut's mind. Vonnegut wants to show us that war not only affects those who were directly affected (soldiers, victims, POWs), but also affects people indirectly like the people who the victims and soldiers interact with. They can still smell the mustard gas and roses.
Delete"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice." (page 211)
ReplyDeleteHere we see one of the few glimpses of true emotion from Vonnegut in the book. Usually any soft/emotional moment is quickly ended by a harsh counter argument in order to show there is nothing good about warfare. Here, Vonnegut writes in a happy and warm way. He reveals to us that war is bad, of course, but the message of the Tralfamadorians is included in the book to make the readers examine that way of thinking and realize that it is true in a way. When someone dies there are good memories left behind that people they knew remember them by. These moments are how the deceased live on, they live in these happy times that occurred while they were alive. Vonnegut says he is happy so many of these times are good, and he includes these personal things to make us realize there are happy times that we should always try to remember and hold on to, especially in hard times like war in Vonnegut's case.
I also found this passage to be special because you see kindness from Vonnegut. Not that he came across as mean, but you see him not trying to explain war, but trying to get past it. He wants to move on even though he knows he can't. Then, even though he knows he can't he just tries to be grateful for what he has gained through writing the novel and through war. Vonnegut is now moving past his experiences and this novel helped him do that so instead of seeing development in Billy(Which I talked about in my writing) we see developments in Vonnegut.
Delete"My father died many years ago now-of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust," (pg.210).
ReplyDeleteWhy integrate his (Vonnegut) story with Billy's?
Perhaps the reason Vonnegut intertwines his own personal experience with Billy's is so the reader can find the character more relate able. In the first chapter, Vonnegut brings up his encounter with Mary O' Hare and how he wants his book to be an antiwar novel. Thus, he strays from the stereotypical war hero, and creates a character that is so normal and pitiful, a reader starts to wonder if there is some truth to it . Through Vonnegut's voice and dark humor, a reader experiences a different type of plot for a book on war, since it isn't a book about glamorizing war. In fact, the time travel that Billy encounters makes it seem confusing and delirious at times, some scenes seem impossible to even think that it has to do with war. But maybe that's the whole point. To see the deeper message the Tralfamadorians leave behind, and recognize the effects on Billy. In times of distress, Billy time travels and this is no coincidence. Vonnegut tries to point the effects of war even after its over, its ghostly imprint left behind on those involved. Is it ever really over for them? I think Vonnegut tries to offer a third person perspective because making it only about what he saw wouldn't be credible or to reader make it seem like "oh, that's how it was for him only". This almost plain, ditsy character of Bill just shows how literally anyone can be thrown into war and survive due to chance the probability of survival. After all, Vonnegut took a long time to write a novel on war because to him it is pure nonsense. In this quote, he says he leaves the guns of his father's to rust, because he has had enough war and violence. Perhaps, the reason he intervenes with his memories into Bill's because it is Billy who he had created to show his thoughts and points. The truth always seems to be stronger than the made-up lies for this incredibly on point reflection on the meaning of what destruction really means to humanity.
How do think Vonnegut's outlook on death reflects reality? Maybe he's trying to say war affects our view of the world if we actually experience it. It changes us to a stage that controls our mind set on others, and he's using billy to show us that as a character.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Deleteagree with what you said how anyone can survive war. I think that survival in war is based on skill, it's based on luck. I think that Vonnegut might be saying that with the death of Edgar Derby, who is someone described as the perfect soldier. I also think that Vonnegut included the Tralfamadorian philosophy to show how some people cope with war. An idea to focus and remember only the good moments is a tempting idea to a person who has experienced war and has since a lot of horrible stuff during his time in battle.
DeleteRobert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther king was shot a month ago. He died too. So it goes. And every day my government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.
ReplyDeleteThis was the opening section of the last chaper and it just stuck out to me. It seems that Vonnegut is trying to say he's seen so much death from the war that death is common to him. He took important icons from history and used them in his example of death. The key word he used over and over at the end of each section was, "so it goes". What does that mean? Is he trying to say life continues to go on even with death? Whatever happens happens? Re-reading back to chapter 1, now that I finished the book, it made me realize it set the tone for the whole entire story. Hidden messages that we would have never picked up without reading the entire book. Vonnegut used his emotions on society and what it has become today from his experiences in ww2.
I like what you put here. I think that when you write why does he say "so it goes" I agree with you. Like his trying say that life is going to still go on regardless of death or what happens to people. Yeah people going to be sad or mad when other people die but you got to learn to except it and kept moving on. I think thats what he means by so it goes.
Delete
ReplyDelete"...Edgar Derby, was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot. So it goes"(214)
Why kill someone for something so trivial where there is already so much death? What is Vonnegut saying about death and war?
To answer the first question, I can think of no logical reason. Perhaps the authority in the area wanted to keep order as they saw fit? They looked at all the death and destruction around them and realized they were powerless. Maybe they punished “poor old Edgar Derby” to try to reconcile with their fates. What they did not understand is that punishing Derby would not make right such a terrible wrong. The saying, “Two wrongs does not make a right” applies here: taking the life of one more man does not replace the many lives lost in the bombing. Vonnegut purposefully mentions this heartbreaking reality in a way that makes us question the morality of Derby’s punishment and its insanity: why kill when there is so much death. This is exactly the question we should ask about war. And the truth of the matter is that there is no good answer; there is no correct answer. People like Rumfoord can try and try again to reconstruct war to justify it and many people might believe them. But in the end, they fail because war is unjustifiable. Spreading death and destruction cannot be made to look like the right thing to do. Vonnegut wants us to understand that we cannot answer this question because its subject matter is illogical and insane. He wants the reader to understand that there are things we can change and things we cannot. War can be changed.
ReplyDelete"...how dead we may sometimes seem to be...Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice."
I think that in this quote Vonnegut is implying that even when you are someone who has gone through war and seen things that scar you for ever its good memories that can help you get through it. I think his saying that the good memories outweigh the bad ones and that at least he still got good memories to think about for the rest of his life rather then being left with bad memories from the war.
"I think of how useless the Dresden part of my memory has been, and yet how tempting Dresden has been to write about, and I am reminded o the famous limerick..." (2)
ReplyDeleteWhat is Vonnegut's goal in writing this novel?
This statement is very interesting. Vonnegut is trying so hard to write about Dresden, however Dresden is "a useless memory...". I think Vonnegut is trying to convey that war is pointless yet inevitable. However, the people who go through war let it immerse there lives and take control of them. But if one was to live "forever" and be capable of going to the good parts of his life then war wouldn't even cross their mind. In chapter 10 Vonnegut says, "Still- If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice" (211). Overall, Vonnegut's life was mostly good. Although he was unlucky to be part of such a tragic experience, in the end he survived it. Why should he survive yet be in pain? Writing this novel wasn't for the reader rather it was for himself. He took all his feeling and through them on the pages in an attempt to relieve himself of his guilt and sadness. Hopefully he was successful.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther king was shot a month ago. He died too. So it goes. And every day my government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes” (210).
ReplyDeleteWhat does this passage say about human nature? Is Vonnegut trying to say something on how human beings way some people’s lives more than others?
This passage stood out to me because I think that it is related to Vonnegut’s humanist ideals. As a humanist, Vonnegut thinks that every life has an equal value no matter what. I think what Vonnegut might be trying to say with this passage is that a death of a dignified person such as Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King is something that would be on the front page of the paper, and people all over the country would be moved and aware of such a tragedy. However, across the world, thousands of people are dying in the Vietnam War. Vonnegut is saying how people value lives is horrible, and it doesn’t matter whether you are a famous man such as Martin Luther King, or you’re a private in the war, everyone’s life is of the same value. I think that Vonnegut is also saying that since this war is happening on the other side of the world, people are able to distance themselves from it, and even forget that it is happening. While, a famous person getting shot in their own country, is something that they can’t get away from, which is why they start feeling remorse towards events like the death of Martin Luther King.
"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorian's was true, that we will all live forever, no mater how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not over joyed. Still- if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, i'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.(211)"
ReplyDeleteWhy does Vonnegut go back to himself? why does he choose the relate his story with Billy?
It is almost comforting for Vonnegut to create this character to live through to describe his story. He likes the idea of knowing that he is alive but knows this is not correct. In the quote he is almost saying, i could chose to belliev my own ideas, which is interesting because he created it. It is very significant for Vonnegut to start and end this book the same way because he is showing a narrative perspective. Even though this boy, Billy, is not him he went through the same experiences and wanted to remind the readers constantly that this is his life.
Even later on in the chapter he refers to a plane ride that he took and describes very similar surroundings to the one that Billy took. In chapter 1, Vonnegut described how hard it was to write this book and what he ended up doing was writing a book that was his experiences through someone similar to show his story and it is very well done.
I agree, and I also think that in text, a character lives forever. All that is written is going to last forever, and that is shown by the fact that we are still reading this book today and still retelling Billy's story, years after Vonnegut has died. I think that Vonnegut is almost saying that the Tralfamadorians' view of time isn't completely real because, face it, people do actually die. It is a thing that happens. And then they are no more. I think that bringing it back to reality in the last chapter makes us step out of the fairytale that is Billy Pilgrim's life. In no way is his life good, or nice, or happy, although some moments in time are. Nevertheless, his life isn't real. And Vonnegut kind of brings the reader back to Earth in this last chapter.
Delete"Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot. So it goes." (214).
ReplyDeleteIt was mentioned several times throughout the book that Edgar Derby was going to die like this. It definitely shouldn't have been a surprise to me, but in a way it was. I half-expected there to be some way out of his sad fate. Like a movie. Often when I'm watching a movie I find myself getting really caught up in it, and concerned for the fate of some character in danger. I always sort of wake myself up from that, make myself realize that it always turns out okay. That's the way movies are always made, right? I think Vonnegut's point in ending with the passage about Edgar Derby's death is that war isn't like a movie- the tragic deaths remain tragic deaths. There is no miracle that saves the day. I also want to relate this to why Vonnegut incorporates his war story with Billy's. I think he does this to illustrate how Billy's story is an accurate representation of war, and that it's the kind of story the public should base their ideas about war on- not a movie. I really think this is the central purpose of the entire book, and it is a quite successful anti-war book.
"On an average, 324,000 new babies are born into the world every day. During that same day, 10,000 persons, on an average, will have starved to death or died from malnutrition. So it goes. In addition, 123,000 persons will die for other reasons. So it goes. This leaves a net gain of about 191,000 each day in the world. The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000.
ReplyDelete'I suppose they will all want dignity,' I said.
'I suppose,' said O'Hare" (212).
I think that Vonnegut uses this passage to make us realize how much dignity is taken away by war. When he says that he supposes they will all want dignity, it seems obvious that all people want dignity. That is a basic human right, or at least should be. But he tries to cement how horrible war is and how through all the horrible wars and all the malnutrition and people dying in the world every day, everybody has one shared wish. And that is to have dignity. War takes that away from people.
I think Vonnegut went back to his life because throughout the book, we have gotten tied up in Billy's story and his tale of time travel and aliens and it all seemed slightly whimsical, however disturbing parts of it were. This last chapter brings us back to reality and makes us realize that this book was written by a real survivor of the war, and it is not just a story. The entire novel may not have been "true" and may not have been "real", but war is and the effects it has on people are real and true.
“Billy and the rest wandered out onto the shady street. The trees were leafing out. There was nothing going on out there, no traffic of any kind. There was only one vehicle, an abandoned wagon drawn by two horses. The wagon was green and coffin shaped. Birds were talking. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-tee-weet?” (215)
ReplyDeleteWhat is the significance of the bird and why did Vonnegut make the bird sound, with a question mark? What is the bird asking?
In chapter 1 of the book Vonnegut tells the reader he will end the book with this phrase, “Poo-tee-weet?” which he does. Although I found it interesting how it came from a bird speaking to Billy right after such a traumatic experience took place. Why is this bird asking a human a question, and what is it? I think that Vonnegut uses this phrase, in order to demonstrate, how “…there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre…” how humans are unable to have words to express the greatest horrors. But what exactly is the question that the bird is asking? On one hand it reads as if it’s just an innocent bird that survives man destruction but on the other hand I believe that since it’s in the form of a question, that there ironically is intelligence behind the question, and the question is, “what have you done?”
So a new technique was derived. Bodies weren't brought up any more they were cremated by soldiers with flamethrowers right where they were. The soldiers stood outside the shelters, simply sent the fire in." (214).
ReplyDeleteBilly continues to keep his calmness through the very end of the novel. There is never any change in the way Billy acts. Does this add to Billy's character development or does this mean Bill hasn't developed at all?
I don't see much development throughout the novel. Billy is the least changed character I've ever seen in a novel. He goes through so much adversity and seems to come through it all unscathed in his body and in his mind. Now does this make the novel boring, no, but it makes it less fulfilling. This is because we watch Billy skip across time hoping for some climatic ending where we find out that he is clinically insane, or that he is telling the truth about his skips. Although this is what we want, it is not what we get because that would be a fake war story. There are no climatic endings in a real war story where everything cumulates towards one moment and blows up like a ticking time bomb. A real war story is that no war story is a good story; It all has to revolve back to negativity and no one should say, "Wow, that's a great story tell it again," because if someone said that they would have gotten the wrong meaning of war and Vonnegut would've failed in his task of writing an non-awe inspiring war story, but he didn't. He succeeded to the highest level of portraying war to a realistic measure where no one will ever wan't to find themselves in. He showed the terror of how a person can deteriorate even after finding themselves "Alive" after there experience in war. Maybe Vonnegut was showing that you aren't fighting people in war, but that you are fighting war itself, and to win this battle against war you must die(so it goes).