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"The legs of those who stood were like fence posts driven into a warm, squirming, farting, sighing earth. The queer earth was a mosaic of sleepers who nestled like spoons."
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| | 0 | 9/5/2011 7:41 PM | The Full Title Did anyone else notice that Slaughterhouse-Five has a much more lengthy title to it? The full title is Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, A Fourth-Generation German-American Low Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod [and Smoking Too Much], Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire Bombing of Dresden, Germany, ‘The Florence of the Elbe,’ a Long Time Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale. This is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where the Flying Saucers Come From. Peace.
("Hors de combat" means out of the fight.) It seems that he thought rather well of himself, didn't he? Haha.
I find it interesting that he uses the word "telegraphic", because the obvious definition is 'concise', but "telegraphic speech" is the kind of speech that young children have before they've fully developed their language skills. Saying things like "milk give" instead of "Give me the milk" is a childish thing to do, which wraps around to Vonnegut's alternate title of The Children's Crusade. | | | | 6 | 8/26/2011 2:17 AM | Vonnegut's intentional use of non-chronology I happen to have already read this book, and it happens to be one of my favorites. I think a good topic to start discussing is Vonnegut's intentional use of non-chronology, referring to the fact that no two sections (that i know of) of text are in chronological order. So it goes.
So why is this and what purpose does it serve? is it nothing more than Vonnegut's quirkiness and the character development of the Tralfamadorians as a group, or does it serve a higher purpose? | | | | 2 | 8/25/2011 11:53 PM | Death
In Slaughterhouse Five dying is not portrayed as a tragic event nor is the death of anyone given more importance than another person. The theme of death plays a main role to which all the action in the novel ties together. The story is about Billy Pilgrim, a man who experiences death from every perspective, and a man who endures many life-altering experiences. Death is illustrated as insignificant and the action of death demonstrates the uselessness of free will. | | | | 2 | 8/24/2011 9:09 PM | Theme of Relfection. I noticed that throughout "Slaughterhouse-five," there is a theme of reflection on humanity. The backwards war movie shows us, the readers, our loss of innocence. Trout's story about the money tree shows us how easily we're lured to riches and luxury to only be killed and used as fertilizer. Don't we all just become fertilizer in the end? As a society, we spend thousands on how we become fertilizer. "Do I want to be in the ground as a whole or should I be burned to ash and thrown some where?" We're all fertilizer in the end. Can anyone think of other moments in the book that stood out to you or made you think of society from a different perspective? | | | | 1 | 8/24/2011 8:58 PM | Imagery
I noticed that Kurt Vonnegut use multiple color imagery and repetitive imagery to make the novel and situations comprehendible. Billy’s feet were describe as blue and ivory on multiple occasions the time he was waiting to be kidnapped by Tralfamadorians and when he was writing in the basement, also the feet of the hobo were describe as blue and ivory. The use of the words blue and ivory to describe the feet was a symbol that represented the thin line that separated life and death. He not only utilizes the pattern blue and ivory but he uses the phrase mustard gas and roses and the sequence black and orange. Mustard gas and roses is a sign to connect the past and the present together, he thinks he smells a drunks breath and he compares it to mustard gas and roses and he also compares that smell to the smell of rotting and decomposing bodies. Lastly the use of the colors black and orange; the rail cars that carried the prisoners of war were striped with the colors black and orange also the color black is use to describe the bread and the inside of the car to signify the domination that surrounds the prisoners. | | | | 0 | 8/24/2011 8:00 PM | Dark Humor
After reading Slaughterhouse-Five I realized that it is filled with a ton of dark humor allowing the readers to have a laugh but to also comprehend the book and horrors of war. A few examples of dark humor include that Billy is able to time-travel, but he cannot control where or when he will travel to. The Tralfamdorians are described as two-foot tall toilet plungers with tiny little hands and advanced knowledge. Billy is drunk and is searching for the steering wheel of his car in the backseat of his car. Weary is a silly and pathetic figure who takes himself and the war very seriously. He is enthusiastic, everyone ditches him, and he always smells like bacon. When he is lying in the ditch in the snow, Billy has a hallucination that he is dancing in white sweat socks on a ballroom floor. The coat that the Germans give Billy is outrageous. It is made for a small midget, with a fur collar. The materials Billy finds to keep him warm leave him dressed in his goofy coat, silver Cinderella boots, and a red toga. Kilgore Trout is a hit at the party, where the pretentious and wealthy people talk to him enthusiastically because they think he is a famous writer. Billy makes a ridiculous figure in his toga, silver boots, and the silver sword he treasures, which is a relic of the Nazis. Yet he is content as a sleeping baby as he sits in the sun while his companions pillage Dresden. | | | | 0 | 8/24/2011 7:40 PM | Song on page 176 On page 176 there is a song that speaks of the hard times of a poor man. Some of us may not realize this but this man speaks the truth. It is hard to get food and times do not usually get better, they just gets worse. As my father always says, " the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." The rich are always trying to find a way to get more and more money and the unfortunate way to do it is to somehow take it from the poor, whether it is high prices for everyday items or taxes and pay cuts. Life continues to get more difficult for the poor and sometimes "the load's too heavy for our poor backs" as is said in the song. These people really do need financial assistance and the government programs to help them are very useful. It is nice to have a turn around story like Billy's from poor to rich but that does not always happen. | | | | 2 | 8/24/2011 6:57 PM | Tone Am I allowed to just post about how much I love the tone of this book? The irony and diction the author uses in his portrayal of Billy creates this character who you want to know more about. His detachment from the emotions that are usually related to war are what make this so interesting and powerful. He uses the phrase "so it goes" after speaking about the death of a person. The repetition of this phrase mask his built up emotions. What I also love is the sarcasm because, lets be honest, who doesn't love sarcasm? Especially in this book that has to do so much with war. Its kind of twisted the way the author write with this sarcasm, but its unlike anything I've ever read and it just makes me want to read more. | | | | 0 | 8/24/2011 1:48 PM | Kilgore Trout
When I was reading and I came across page 110 I was able to make a small comparison between Kilgore Trout and Adolf Hitler. My family and I were talking to my neighbor who was born in Germany and lived there for quite some time, around the time Hitler was in power. She was telling us stories about her life in Germany as a young adult and Hitler somehow came up in our conversation. She viewed him as a man with great ideas for the future of the country but he pushed his ideas to far and his actions were out of control. As I was reading Slaughterhouse-Five I noticed Kilgore Trout was described in the book as someone with frightful prose and only good ideas similar to the way my neighbor described Hitler. Kilgore Trout’s prose are similar to Hitler’s actions taken against the Jews and other minority groups and they both had good ideas, even though Hitler’s ideas were for ruling a country and Kilgore Trout’s were about science fiction topics. Lastly the attitudes and the way certain groups of people viewed Kilgore Trout and Hitler were parallel. Both of these men were bitter and unappreciated but both had strong influence over certain people, Hitler had strong leadership skills that appealed to the German citizens but in America we saw him as a monster, someone that needed to be taken down and restricted. Kilgore Trout did not appeal to as many people as Hitler but he did appeal to Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater, his science fiction books influenced them and allowed them to find a refuge through his books, but he was unappreciated having only one fan letter ever written to him. | | | | 1 | 8/24/2011 1:42 PM | chronology I've noticed that the only events that are in chronological order are the war years. I'm not exactly sure why this is, but I think it has something to do with the fact that peace and war are basically the same to Billy. He just sees them as events that happen that he has to deal with. These events are just straight forward and thats why they are the only events in chronological order. | | | | 3 | 8/23/2011 9:05 PM | search for happiness I believe that the entire novel is based on Billy's search for happiness. He is trying to find this, but realizes that he can only achieve it by forgetting the past and not fearing the future. Instead of explaining all the horrific events that happened in the war with a depressing tone, Vonnegut uses a more sarcastic, comedic tone. This helps Billy forget the past and move on. For the future, Billy uses the planet, Tralfamadore to escape from the reality and fear of the future. | | | | 0 | 8/23/2011 8:51 PM | Diamond and Dentures This is a bit of a stretch, and perhaps looking for symbolism too deeply, but on 152, Billy finds a partial denture and a two-carat diamond in his coat. The denture was "silver and pearl and tangerine". Now, if we take away some of Vonnegut's delicate word choice and let it be gray, white and orange, it could possibly represent smoke and burning, with the diamond representing the city of Dresden. Billy discovers these objects while a guard is asking if he finds war to be comical, because of his "costume". As Vonnegut describes the denture as an "obscene little artifact", so it is quite possible that the denture and diamond is meant to answer this, turning Dresden's destruction into two ridiculous objects. | | | | 4 | 8/23/2011 8:38 PM | Page 122 picture On page 122 there is a picture of a gravestone that says "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt." This quote is sometimes the reality for people when they die. They are going to Heaven and they don't have to deal with anymore of the pains from Earth. Most likely this quote would fit for a person that is very old or is living a very terrible life that he or she is bitter about. There is an angel on the top of the gravestone which symbolizes that this person is going to Heaven, making the quote make sense because the person will now be entering a paradise. It is sometimes a sad thing for a person to think this way when they die, but to him/her, there can now be peace. | | | | 2 | 8/23/2011 4:09 PM | author's opinion I have noticed that early in the novel, Vonnegut puts his own opinion into the book. When he is describing the war, he makes it clear that he feels it is a horrific thing. He also puts himself in the book as a character. For example,at the POW camp. These actions make the book more personable and show that Vonnegut has a strong opinion and connection to the events in the novel. | | | | 2 | 8/23/2011 12:12 PM | Tralfamadorians and Darwin On page 210 the tralfamadorians fascination with Darwin is explained. "...Charles Darwin-who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements." I think that the Tralfamadorians are so transfixed with this idea because they themselves don't have an explanation for death. Even though they use "it just is" as an explanation for everything, they also believe that there is some higher force (like fate or something) that is making these things happen for a reason. Darwin's theory provides that living things die in order to become better and more advanced.It could be the start of tralfamadorian's taking a lesson from Earthlings for the first time, and beginning to think like them too. | | | | 2 | 8/23/2011 11:42 AM | The Backward Movie On pages 74 and 75, Billy becomes unstuck in time and watches a war movie backward. This was one of the scenes of the book that really stuck out to me. I believe that it highlights how much better things would be if war was its opposite. It was likely one of the movies glorifying war that Mary O'Hare hated so much, but seeing it backward showed a much better story than was originally intended. All of the destruction that "began" the backward movie was repaired, all of the bombs were dismantled, and "Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed". "Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed". The extention of the movie by Billy perhaps suggests that, as time went on, humanity has grown worse in some ways. | | | | 0 | 8/22/2011 11:16 PM | Trout's book about a money-tree On page 167 Billy describes a book Kilgore Trout wrote in which money trees lured humans to them with money and diamonds and such and when they killed each other at the roots, their bodies made good fertilizer. I think this is a metaphor for war in a way, It is saying how greed makes people stupid and selfish. When someone steps back and looks at the story of the money tree they can easily say "wow, that's stupid, why would anyone do that if everyone just ends up dead ?" but this is exactly the same thing that people do in wars, and when you think about it in that way, it is obvious how ridiculously useless it is. | | | | 3 | 8/22/2011 10:01 PM | Looking Back In response to the phrase, "People aren't supposed to look back." :But if we don't look back, we don't remember our history. And if we don't look back, we don't learn from our mistakes! That's how future conflict is avoided. That's how history books are made, that's how legends are formed, that's how his book was written: by looking back. Reflecting on our history is, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of our survival. He was right in saying it's only human nature, and so for once, human nature was right. We were meant to look back. | | | | 3 | 8/22/2011 9:33 PM | Page 164 Quote On page 164 Vonnegut writes "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces." This clearly indicates how Vonnegut feels about war. As if it strips people of what makes them unique or human. The "enormous forces" could either refer to the war that makes them so sick, or it could be referring to how, according to the Tralfamadorians, humans have no free will or control over what happens to them. I think, perhaps, that experiencing something so horrific as a war could make people realize that they have no control over their lives and that results in a lethargic outlook towards it. The lack of characters portrays how when people become this way, they do nothing worth mentioning. | | | | 0 | 8/21/2011 10:42 PM | Unfitting punishments There are two instances of unfitting punishment (for lack of a better phrase) in the novel that I can think of. The first is Lazzaro trying to avenge Weary by killing Billy. Whether Billy had been there or not, Weary would have died. If Weary had stayed with the scouts and abandoned Billy, he would have been shot with them. Weary actually lived longer by staying with Billy, although he suffered more before his death. Another instance of this is the execution of Edgar Derby for taking a teapot. Despite most of the others stealing more valuable things, Derby was put to death for his comparably small theft. Even though any of the deaths in the book can be said to be pointless (from an in-universe perspective, not from a narrative one) in one way or another, these seemed to be the most pointless, possibly contributing to the Trafalmadorian view of death being meaningless. | | | | 3 | 8/21/2011 2:02 PM | The First 28 Pages (Forgive me, I haven't been around a computer in a while, and so I am just now posting all of my comments about the book.)
I find it interesting that Vonnegut begins the novel almost as a preface, describing how he went about writing it, but doesn't label it as such. To be honest, I am a bit confused! I am only a few pages in, and I'm wondering if the entire book will be written that way, and how the story will be able to develop if it's all written after the fact. Especially because it's not always in chronological order! | | | | 0 | 8/21/2011 1:54 PM | "So it goes" The phrase “So it goes” follows every mention of death, whether it is natural, accidental, or intentional. I was wondering why on page 195 “so it goes” does not follow the last sentence of the second paragraph. “His companions had insisted that he arm himself, since God only knew what sorts of killers might be in burrows on the face of the moon-wild dogs, packs of rats fattened on corpses, escaped maniacs and murders, soldiers who would never quit killing until they themselves were killed.” | | | | 7 | 8/21/2011 12:21 PM | Great book, and Great Irony. After reading this book once a while ago, then coming back again to it this summer just to refresh my mind, I couldn't believe the amount of irony this book portrays! Few examples:
- Billy Pilgrim actually survives behind enemy lines, then survives being a prisoner of war, and then is the only survivor of a plane crash despite being the least fit to survive any of theses in all cases!
- Billy Pilgrim greatly exercises free will in an effort to preach that there is NO such thing as free will!
- In the novel, the Tralfamadorians celebrate the fact that good memories last forever, and that bad ones only take up a small place in ones mine, and yet they fail to acknowledge that Billy has no control over them and that he is forced to relive his war experience over and over.
-Billy has sight (sight, as in a somewhat clear mind and normal persona) before he goes to war, then goes to war and goes insane, thus losing his own "true-sight." But then he ironically tries to correct the vision of others in his profession as an optometrist!
Just what I saw in the book...
| | | | 1 | 8/20/2011 11:14 PM | Barbara Pilgrim Barbara is an exceedingly stubborn person in Billy's life. She doesn't understand why her father is the way he is and, as a person unfamiliar with the trials of war, how it has affected his mind. She becomes overwhelmed by her sudden responsibility; first becoming a wife, and then having to take care of her "crazy" father after her mother's death. She complains about his goals and tries to force him back to sanity, becoming more of a "bitchy flibbertigibbet." She tries to hold him back from humiliation as he gives his best efforts to tell the world about what he's discovered from living on Tralfamador. | | | | 3 | 8/20/2011 10:52 PM | Roland Weary It's ironic in the story that Roland Weary, being a well-equipped soldier, seems interested in torture and types of torture, and then was forced by the Germans to trade his boots for wooden clogs that gave him gangrene in his feet leading to his death, so he was in turn tortured to death by the pain the clogs caused him. He is also a selfish character, saving Billy for his own sake and glory and creating delusions in his head about The Three Musketeers and how much honor and respect they'll earn for taking care of Billy and making it through the war. Little does he know that the two scouts are annoyed with him and Billy, and they abandon them as soon as they can, for which Weary blames Billy and threatens to shoot him, though it is in part Roland's own violent nature and basically a jerk. He also blames Billy for them then being captured, even though Billy kept wanted Roland to leave him behind. But, for his heroic story, Roland thought it necessary to save poor, unprepared Billy anyways, ending in them both becoming prisoners of war. His own mindset on being a heroic soldier led to his eventual capture and death. | | | | 1 | 8/20/2011 8:03 PM | Underneath the surface Billy seems to lead a pretty comfortable postwar life. He is an optometrist, has two children, and lives in a nice house. This is only the surface though,beneath it, he is trying to achieve happiness but has a difficult time, because in order to do that, he has to forget his past and not fear his future. He also has a very complex imagination which drags him away from reality. He seems to lead a fine life, but it is much more complicated than it seems. | | | | 0 | 8/20/2011 3:34 PM | Narration Vonnegut's narration and occasional use of first person in the novel give the story more credibility. The majority of the book centers completely around Billy Pillgrim, and development of other characters is usually very minimal. However, by adding those few, "I was there," personal accounts, focus is drawn from Billy's abstract and complex experiences to a much more stable and factual view of the sometimes unbelievable plot. | | | | 2 | 8/20/2011 2:37 PM | free will Vonnegut uses the Tralfamadorians and their fourth dimension to show the illusion of free will. The Tralfamadorians all accept their fate, because they believe that all moments have happened before,it's just a cycle. Throughout the book, Billy has had many experiences that have been against his free will,for example, being rescued from the bottom of the pool, and many other experiences where he was saved from death,especially by Weary. | | | | 1 | 8/20/2011 1:14 PM | Blue and Ivory I've noticed that the colors blue and ivory have come up a lot in this novel. Billy's cold feet are described as being blue and ivory, him home in New York,his hand on his way to POW, and the feet of the dead homeless man. I think these colors represent destruction and coldness of the war and what it has done to the world. | | | | 1 | 8/20/2011 10:38 AM | connection between the horses and Billy When Billy goes to the POW camp to pick up his things, the horses that are the pulling the carriage he is in, have a very similar struggle to him. Both the horses and Billy are just walking through Dresden unaware of all the violence and destruction around them. They just do what they are told and undergo great suffering. They do not know why this is happening to them, but they just let it go on. | | | | 2 | 8/20/2011 9:44 AM | The Hobo I find the hobo (first mentioned on 68, then again on 71 and 79) to be an interesting character, and I have been trying to figure out his role in the story. One of my theories is that he is meant to offer a human perspective similar to the Tralfamadorian one, as the hobo says things such as "You think this is bad? This ain't bad" even at the moment before his death. While this seems somewhat opposite to the Tralfamadorian perspective of focusing on good and forgetting the bad, with the hobo remembering the bad and comparing it to the present, he does not see death as being a bad thing, so it goes. Another theory I had was that the hobo himself had been to Tralfamadore, but that seems unlikely, as the Tralfamadorians were very eager to see Billy at the zoo, and they might not have been had it been common practice to take humans. However, the hobo being unstuck in time would also explain why his lines were so few: if he switched between homelessness and the train, it would explain why the only thing he could say was how much better the train was than living on the streets. I am not particularly sure of either of these theories, so I am curious to hear what others think. | | | | 0 | 8/19/2011 8:03 PM | The significance of Billy's name Forgive me for the perhaps poor phrasing of this, but the thought just came to me, and I am trying to type it out while it is still in my mind.
I cannot remember the page, as this idea just came to me now, after finishing the book, but the book says that Billy uses that name because of advice from his father. His father said that there aren't many grown men named Billy, so it would make him seem more friendly. A significance of this, though, is that he keeps the same version of his name his entire life. There is no point in his life where he stops being "Billy" and starts being "Robert", for example. This would be more logical to a Tralfamadorian, since to them, a different name based on passage of time would be the same as a person having a different name after they were a certain distance from their house, for example. Since Billy experiences time much like a Tralfamadorian, this allows him to experience his life without points where he becomes someone else, so to speak. | | | | 3 | 8/19/2011 7:06 PM | The Tralfamadorian way The Tralfamadorians are much dirrefent from humans especially when it comes to things that cannot be changed. When things are supposed to be a certain way, the Tralfamadorians just accept it the way that it is. On page 117, Billy starts to talk about wars with the Tralfamadorians and they said that, "There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them." The Tralfamadorians like to look at the positive things and good moments rather than looking at things like wars that they cannot change. Most people do not like wars and want them to stop but we cannot really do much about them. We just kind of have to accept these wars and hope that they do not get too ugly. | | | | 0 | 8/19/2011 3:47 PM | sight I believe that the fact that Billy is an optometrist is a symbol of how he views the real world. He has more insight than most people,because he has seen a different planet with a different way of life. He uses this knowledge to help others see world differently, more purely. Although, this does not always help because some of Billy's "sight" is due to his overactive imagination and makes himself very unstable. | | | | 1 | 8/16/2011 5:36 PM | Vonnegut's Style Throughout the whole novel, I have noticed that Vonnegut uses a few phrases a lot. After he writes about death or when a person dies, he writes "so it goes" just as the Tralfamadorians would say. There are a couple of strategies that Vonnegut uses that I do not understand. A few times in the book, Vonnegut uses the two colors blue and ivory, such as on pages 73 and 80. I am not sure if they are supposed to mean something or be some type of a symbol, but they do seem important. The other strategy that I do not understand is when Vonnegut writes a sentence like a long list with "and" in it a lot and then writes "And so on" after the sentence. I do not know if it is supposed to be important or not but he seems to use it many times, so there must be some reasoning behind it. Vonnegut has a unique style that is sometimes confusing, so if anybody knows why he does some of these things, please reply. | | | | 4 | 8/16/2011 5:19 PM | War fought by babies On page 106 the author starts to talk about ages of the people in the war. What Billy realizes is that they all had "forgotten that wars were fought by babies." The "they all" refers to billy and the two other older men in the conversation. This quote really made me think about how wars are fought primarily by very young people. It is sad to know that so many youngsters are being killed in a war that they are fighting for people much older than them. These people have a lot of their lives left ahead of them, but they are dying young in wars. I do not think that most people really think about this: wars are being fought by kids who are under 25. This whole thought just makes the concept of war even worse and I think that more people need to start realizing this. | | | | 1 | 8/16/2011 5:08 PM | "so it goes on" I've noticed that Billy uses the phrase "so it goes on" frequently throughout the novel,especially after momentous events. I believe this reflects Billy's inability to look back at his painful past and his obsession with focusing on the future. I feel that this particular phrase helps Billy block out the actions he was forced to do in his past because they are too harmful to his present state of mind. Unfortunately his inability to move on and realistically deal with his past actions are the basis of the problems explored in the book. | | | | 2 | 8/16/2011 1:25 PM | Tralfamadore I think the obvious explanation for the planet is that Billy uses it to escape from present and past horrors.However, I believe Vonnegut uses the planet, the characters on the planet, and their relationships to express Billy's view on the war and the various participants. | | | | 0 | 8/15/2011 10:28 PM | Sight Actually, I just realized the sight theme ironically corresponds with Billy becoming "unstuck in time" at the beginning of chapter two. (In chapter one, Vonnegut seems to focus more on sound, such as the repetition of the Yon Yonson song and the "poo-tee-weet" bird calls.) Therefore, with the knowledge of true sight comes the inability to communicate such enlightenment, due to Billy's apparent insanity upon returning home from the war. | | | | 0 | 8/15/2011 10:16 PM | Sight
One of the most prevalent themes of the novel seems to be sight. Billy is always preoccupied with correcting peoples's vision, both in a literal sense, as he runs a successful optometric practice, and also a much more abstract one as he attempts to prescribe "corrective lenses for Earthling souls" and provide insight about the illusion that is time, courtesy of the Tralfamadorians. | | | | 2 | 8/15/2011 5:29 PM | Cinderella pg. 185 There's a quote on pg. 185, where Billy is taking the silver boots that end up fitting him perfectly, and it says, "Billy Pilgrim was Cinderella, and Cinderella was Billy Pilgrim." Billy had a rather rags to riches story. He was the lanky guy that everyone bullied and disliked, the crazy guy that talked about aliens. The men that ridiculed him, made fun of him, and kicked him around were like his evil stepfamily. Eventually, he meets Valencia, his "Prince Charming" of sorts. And while she may not have been the girl of his dreams, through her family he was able to make a success of himself. He goes from being a joke to being an extremely successful and wealthy optometrist. | | | | 0 | 8/15/2011 5:04 PM | Religious Allusions There have been several religious allusions mentioned in this book, such as Adam and Eve, praying, and interpretations of Jesus Christ. It seems like Vonnegut incorporates religion into the story to point out, in his opinion, how foolish it is. In his eyes, praying won't change what will happen in the future. And to solidify his view, he mentions the way of life the Tralfamadorians live by- how basically nothing can be stopped. No one can change what will happen, so for the purpose of this story, practicing religion will not change anything. | | | | 1 | 8/14/2011 10:34 PM | page 21 quote When speaking of another book about a french soldier from WW1, Vonnegut brings up some intriguing quotes such as "No art is possible without a dance with death" or "the truth is death." The man who wrote these quotes is the french soldier from the book and he seems a bit disturbed. His qoutes seem very negative but are also partially true. Many arts are very risky and dangerous from the people who blow fire out of their mouths to the people who perform surgeries. Some arts require people to play with death a bit and come very close to it in a" dance". This quote to me is only partially true because I do not think that one is putting themselves at great dangers while writing a book or making a painting. The other quote about truth being death seems, well, true. Death will always be a fact and one of the truths of life. At the end of every life is death and that is just a part of the natural way of things. Death is just a very hard truth of life. | | | | 4 | 8/14/2011 10:24 PM | Massacre Machinery quote p.19 On page 19 Vonnegut starts to speak about massacres and he says something to his sons that I find very interesting. He wrote that he told them " to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that." He is referring to massacre machinery, which is indirectly speaking about war. This man must really hate war a lot to basically disregard people who are in agreement with war. Sometimes war is something that is necessary and cannot be avoided. It would be great if everyone could just get along with no fighting, but that is not how it is and it can be almost impossible to avoid war at times. Don't get me wrong, I am not such a big fan of war either, but without it we would not have our country and we would not have been able to stop people like Hitler and Stalin. | | | | 1 | 8/12/2011 2:08 PM | Being well connected On page 109, talk starts about being connected and its advantages. The quote that goes along with this is, "Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected." What is funny about this quote is that this week has been mob week on AMC and being connected is what it is all about. If somebody gets killed and he is connected, then the person who killed him will be killed right back. In the criminal world with the mafia and gansters this quote make so much sense because if somebody well conected is killed, the person and the organization that did the killing is going to have a huge problem. The question that pops up later on the page is that if it is wrong to kill someone who is well connected, then it's right to kill someone not connected? This question really stirred up some thoughts in my brain because it brings up a great point. If you kill someone not well connected then you probably do not have to worry about people coming back to kill you, but that still does not make murdering a person okay. | | | | 0 | 8/8/2011 2:31 PM | Being Poor in America Being poor is not usually a good thing, but America is probably the worst place to be poor as is described on page 129. America is all about getting rich quick and with money comes power, which is what everybody wants.Without that you become nothing. As is said by Howard W. Cambell Jr. on page 129, " Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold" but "the American poor... mock themselves and glorify their betters." In America, there is no tradition and we are nobody without money. The only traditional, respectable, or honorable people in this country have ancestors from other countries and even these people are losing their tradition. When people are poor in America, they are bums and lose everything within themselves: respect, dignity, honor, etc. In other countries one can be poor but still have respect, honor, dignity, etc., and that is what we need in this country to have more happy Americans. Money is just an object and people in America really need to start realizing that or else this country is doomed forever. | | | | 0 | 8/4/2011 6:14 PM | Cynicism When I saw that this novel was about the bombing of Dresden, I had an idea in my head as to what this novel was going to be about and how it was going to read. I assumed it would be dark, grim, and focused solely on the imagery and terror of the bombing itself. I was completely shocked when I began reading, and the book was more of a humorous and cynical take on the war. Vonnegut's use of cynicism and disjointed writing style actually lends itself to the terror that the bombing of Dresden caused. Phrases like, "and so it goes" are used many many times in this book, in random places where it wouldn't normally seem to fit. The idea of this event being concrete and unchangeable makes it more horrific, and the ironic tone with which Vonnegut describes this leaves you wondering if he writes with pure light-heartedness, or if he actually has gone mildly insane due to this event. | | | | 0 | 8/2/2011 10:37 AM | Page 60 Quote On page 60 there is a prayer quote that is on Billy's wall in his office. This quote, to me, is very impotant and necessary to life. The quote goes like this: "GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE, COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN, AND WISDOM ALWAYS TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE." In the book the people say that this quote keeps them going, but I also think that it saves a lot of time and it can really change a person. Many times people waste hours, days, even weeks being sad or depressed about something that has already happened and cannot be changed. We must not do that because there is no point in it at all and that is what the quote is asking for: to give us the serenity to not do that. For the things that we can change, we must have the strength to accept our faults and be willing to work on them. And last but not least, we definitely need the wisdom to know the difference between things that we can and cannot change because if one acts stubborn and thinks that he/she cannot change his/her flaw, then that person will most likely lose friends.Even worse, if we think we can change something irreversable then we will be wasting a great deal of time and energy or even much of our lives. We must follow this quote throughout life so that we do not waste time trying to fix things that are unchangable and instead use that time to be continously improving ourselves as people. | | | | 0 | 8/1/2011 6:36 PM | Connection to the Outsiders On page 53 talk starts about a man and his golden boots. These golden boots were very precious to him and he claimed that in them one could see Adam and Eve. When Billy stared into them he saw Adam and Eve and described them as "so innocent, so vunerable, so eager to behave decently." This quote reminded me of the theme of innocence in the book, "The Outsiders." The famous quotes where Ponyboy was told to stay gold, meaning innocent. Everything good is gold and that is how we all start out just like Adam and Eve did. But eventually, somewhere down the road we lose that innocence, that goldness, and it is a terrible, terrible thing. Gold and innocence are precious the same and when that innocence is lost , it changes a person forever with no return, which is why Johnny was so persistent to keep ponyboy golden. | | | | 0 | 8/1/2011 12:30 PM | Connection to Hamlet On page 38 Roland Weary says to the college boy, Billy Pilgrim, that "There is more to life than what you read in books." And if I remember correctly, Hamlet said almost the same thing to Horatio when he told him that "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Once I read the quote from Weary, I instantly thought Hamlet and then I thought of how true it is. Sometimes things happen that just cannot be explained. One has to know more about life than what they read in books. Books cannot tell us everything about life, only experience and good advice (from experience) can help guide you through life. My father always says that there are book smarts and street smarts, and you must have both. With only one, you will have troubles but with both, you can have a good career from book smarts and know how to handle yourself around people in certain situations from the street smarts. The real world is tough and completely different from what is read in books and Weary was just trying to get that message across to Billy. | |
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