Chapter 10: What Structure?

         I found this entire book interesting and mind-boggling. I have no regrets for reading Slaughterhouse Five this summer. I found it intriguing how Vonnegut was able to bring himself back into the novel in the final chapter saying that he was at the inn keeper’s stable where the American prisoners of war stayed after the bombing of Dresden. In many books I have read there has always been a chorological or a certain structure it must follow; however, in Slaughterhouse Five the whole book is jumbled up and there is no telling where or even when Billy will open his eyes next. He makes this book almost seem not logical just as he is trying to get across to us that war is not logical. All I think I can say about this book and the message Vonnegut is trying to get across to the audience is “Poo-tee-weet?”   

Chapter 10: Rhetorical Question: “Poo-tee-weet?”

          There is nothing that can be said about a massacre. That is why Vonnegut uses “Poo-tee-wee?” at the end of his book. There are no words that can describe the massacre of Dresden and there never will be. I feel as if this question, “Poo-tee-weet?” was use by Vonnegut to get a strong response from the reader. He meant to leave this unanswered in order to allow the audience of Slaughterhouse Five to create their own reactions and thoughts to his anti-war novel. All that rushed through my brain when I read that last question at the end of the book was, what happened? What is there to do now? How…? What is going on…?!? This left me speechless and I am pretty sure that was what Vonnegut was getting at. Vonnegut ends his thought of war with a rhetorical question and a simple response to the death and bloodshed of the bombing of Dresden. This “Poo-tee-weet” or chirping of innocent birds is what was needed to end a book that had no words that would have done it justice to begin with.

Chapter 9: Holier-than-Thou

          While reading this chapter I had mixed emotions about Rumfoord. Rumfoord was like an older sibling or someone who feels more intelligent than you or over confident about themselves. This becomes apparent to me when Rumfoord is reading these articles and Billy begins to speak and says, “I was there [Dresden]” (Vonnegut 191). Rumfoord seems to refuse to believe Billy and diagnosis him with echolalia, which is a disease where a mentally unstable person repeats (echoes) what others around them say. I feel like Rumfoord has this over confident and Holier-than-thou impression because of his life and his money. He feels as if he knows all and he does not want to be wrong about the fact that Billy would be better off dead. He uses the echolalia to ensure that he is not wrong about Billy and that he really is just repeating what others say. However, when he considers the fact that he was wrong about Billy he is willing listens to Billy’s knowledge of the bombing of Dresden and takes in the new knowledge with a sense of interest and pain and sorrow for all those who were there on that drastic day.

Chapter 9: Imagery

             I feel as if Vonnegut used imagery throughout this chapter; however, the one time it jumped out at me was when Billy’s wife, Valencia, learned that Billy had been in a plane crash. Valencia was hysterical because the doctors only told her that Billy might die, and if he does like he was going to be a vegetable. Due to the fact that Valencia was hysterical, she missed the correct turn-off. Valencia was already not thinking straight and just reacted by instinct and slammed on her breaks and the Mercedes that was following her slammed into her from behind. The imagery Vonnegut displays is the description that Valencia’s car is in, “The Mercedes lost only a headlight. But the rear end of the Cadillac was a body-and-fender man’s wet dream. The trunk and fenders were collapsed. The gaping trunk looked like the mouth of a village idiot who was explaining that he didn’t know anything about anything. The fenders shrugged. The bumper was at a high port arms…The back window was veined with cracks. The exhaust system rested on the pavement” (Vonnegut 183). If Vonnegut did not give me, the reader this imagery of the Cadillac, I would have never known how serious it would be if Valencia would drive that car. I would have just thought it was a fender-bender and no big worries would be been placed in my mind; however, it turned out to be very serious and the car was probably totaled. Through Vonnegut’s imagery I was able to depict the fact that the car should have never been driven again and that with the exhaust system lying on the pavement, there is extreme harm to come. Due to the exhaust system Valencia lost her life and was unable to reunite with Billy Pilgrim. “So it goes.”

Chapter 8: Human or Robot?

         I read this chapter right after watching an episode of Futurama. I have always enjoyed the humor of the robot in the television show named, Bender. As soon as I came across the passage where Kilgore Trout is telling the boy who wanted to quit the paper route that he was a, “gutless wonder,” (Vonnegut 167) which also happen to be one of Trout’s book about a robot it immediately caught my attention because of Bender. The story, “Gutless Wonder… was about a robot who had had bad breath...But what made the story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings. It was dropped on them from airplanes...They had no conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground....And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race" (Vonnegut 168).

         After I read this passage about three or four times I had to stop reading and think about what Vonnegut was trying to get at through this. I wanted to know why Vonnegut included Kilgore Trout and his sci-fi novels, which all seemed to have something to do with time travel. I soon decided that the story of the “Gutless Wonder” symbolized the acceptance of evil and wrong doing of humans into the war. By calling humans robots I feel as if Vonnegut is saying that we have no conscience and no care of other human life. So the robot story to me was explaining the human race and our actions. The robot was outcast by others because of his “halitosis” or bad breath, which in our lives could symbol that fact that humans tend to outcast other due to foolish characteristics such as a handicap mentally or physically, maybe the color of someone’s hair, or even their race and ethnical background. The robot was casted off from society due to one foolish characteristic and I feel as if we, as humans tend to cast away others in our lives due to a few small flaws or different characteristics.

Chapter 8: Metaphor

          In this chapter of Slaughterhouse Five Vonnegut gives us an image and understanding of how hungry and sick the Americans were. Vonnegut uses the presence of Howard W. Campbell Jr. as the opportunity to show the terrible condition all the Americans were in. Campbell comes to recruit American prisons of war for “The Free American Corps,” which was supposed to fight only on the Russian front. Vonnegut describes the American prisons in many ways such as, “Campbell’s audience [Americans] was sleepy… It [the audience of American prisoners] was skinny and hollow-eye. Its skin were beginning to blossom with small sores. So were its mouths and throats and intestines” (Vonnegut 163). As a gift to the Americans Campbell offered the Americans food, which included steaks, mashed potatoes and gravy, and mince pie; however, the Americans would only receive this gift if and only if they would join “The Free American Corps.” Even though the American prisoners were hungry and sick, they did not say a word to Howard W. Campbell Jr. Eventually “poor old Edgar Derby’ stood up and Vonnegut describes this as, “His stance was that of a punch-drunk fighter” (Vonnegut 164). Poor old Edgar Derby stands up for the American prisoners in a time that Vonnegut describes as, “…probably the finest moment in his life” (Vonnegut 164). The metaphor that Vonnegut uses by describing Derby’s stance as he stands up show us, the readers how hungry, sick, and exhausted the American soldiers were and how terrible of conditions they had to live in were. Considering the fact that Edgar Derby was unable to stand up and be stable, I can conclude that the Americans still believe in their government and their country, because even though they are living in bad condition they are not willing to abandon their countrymen just for a steak and some mince pie.

Chapter 7: “He didn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so” (Vonnegut 154).

           This chapter of Slaughterhouse Five really irritated me for many reasons. Upon boarding a plane twenty-five years after the destruction of Dresden, Billy is giving an opportunity to change the future. Due to his spastic time travel, Billy is aware of the plane crash that will kill twenty-eight optometrists and the pilot on their way to a convention in Montreal. The only to survivors that would be spared are Billy and the co-pilot. Billy is aware of the exact moment the plane would crash, which gives an understanding that he has at least lived this moment in time once. What irritates me is that Billy had several chances to save many of his fellow men’s lives. He could have kept the plane from taking off, he could have warned the pilot that Surgarbrush Mountain would be in their line of travel, or he could have advised the pilot to take a different course of travel. However, Billy Pilgrim did none of this!!! He just sat there with his eyes closed at the moment before this disaster would happen. Billy’s excuse for not warning anyone was, “he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so” (Vonnegut 154).
            As it does irritate me that Billy did nothing to prevent this plane crash, I have to ask myself the question if I had the chance would I change anything about my past or even any kind of human history. They have always said that even the smallest faction of change in the past could alter the future all together. There is always that possibility that one of the twenty-eight people who died may have turned out to change the whole outcome of the war and the future. Overall I feel as if Billy Pilgrim did the right thing, but it just makes me wonder what I would do if I was in that kind of a situation.