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.

Chapter 7: Epithet

            Even from the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five the reader was aware of the fate of the innocent, handsome, old (for war), forty-four year old, high school teacher from Indianapolis. Vonnegut told us this high school teacher’s fate which was that he would be shot by a firing squad for pillaging a teapot from the ruins of Dresden. In chapter four, Vonnegut finally gives the audience a name to this description, Edgar Derby. However, in chapter seven Vonnegut seems to refer to Derby as “poor old Edgar Derby.” Throughout this chapter it seemed as if whenever Derby did something he was referred to as, “poor old Edgar Derby.” For example, “He and poor old Edgar Derby were pushing an empty two-wheeled cart down a dirt lane between empty pens for animals” (Vonnegut 157). Also, “The only other person who could see Billy and his spoon was poor old Edgar Derby, who was washing a window outside… So Billy made a lollipop for him [poor old Edgar Derby]. He [Billy Pilgrim] opened the window. He stuck the lollipop into poor old Derby’s gaping mouth” (Vonnegut 161). An epithet is an adjective or adjective phrase applied to a person or thing that is frequently used to emphasize a characteristic quality. I believe that “poor old Edgar Derby” is an epithet because it is describing Derby and how he is a strong, honorable man, who is doomed to die in the near future.

Chapter 6: The Knowledge of One’s Death

          I have always wondered when, where, and how I would take my last breath. However, after thinking it through and reading this chapter of Slaughterhouse Five, the strain and grief it would bring me would be more of a curse rather than a privilege or gift. Billy Pilgrim knows when, where, and how he is going to “die” or as he thinks of it, “… it is time for me to be dead for a little while- and then live again.” I feel as if it would be terrifying to know that your existence of soon going to end. However, I feel as if Vonnegut is trying to tell us that we should not fear death and that is just the start of life again. The passage right after Billy is shot “so it goes,” “So Billy experiences death for a while. It is simply violet light and a hum. There isn’t anybody else there. Not even Billy Pilgrim is there” (Vonnegut 143). I feel, we as humans are afraid of death, because we do not understand it and there is no possible way to. Many people fear what it may feel like, will it hurt? Am I going to feel it? However, there are others who fear more what happens to them after they are dead. Many people are still unsure how we are alive and living on this plant, so we certainly have no clue what it is like to crease to live. As humans we want to know and understand things, but there is only one problem with death, no one has ever lived to tell us about it.

Chapter 6: Dramatic Irony

          In chapter six of Slaughterhouse Five there is a weird kind of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the reader understands or knows something that a character or the characters do not. This type of irony what brought to my attention when an Englishmen was describing to the American prisoners where they will moving to next, “You needn’t worry about the bombs, by the way, Dresden is an open city. It is undefended, and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance.” It was stated in the beginning of the book that Dresden would be bombed, and Billy has made multiple references of knowing that in the future Dresden would be bombed. However, why I said it was a weird kind of dramatic irony is because to me I have always felt that reader was to know more than the main character and other character. Instead, it seems to me that no one would expect the reader and the main character to know what is going to happen to Dresden. The passage, “Billy, with his memories of the future, knew that the city [Dresden] would be smashed to smithereens and then burned-in about thirty days. He knew, too, that most of the people watching him would soon be dead. So it goes” (Vonnegut150). So in my eyes I feel as if this dramatic irony is interesting because no one else, not the Englishmen, the other American soldiers, or the citizens of Dresden knew about the bombing; just the reader and Billy Pilgrim.

Chapter 5: Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here

          So today was the first day I decided to look at my fellow classmate’s blogs and I found the one Jake Farnworth wrote about the song the Englishmen were singing quite intriguing. I was actually curious about this song and was thinking about blogging about it myself while reading the chapter. However, I felt as if I should give Jake the credit for tying it all together first. The lyric of the song that the Englishman sang while the American soldiers walked through the door was, “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here...” (Vonnegut 93). So I clicked on the article attached to Jake’s blog and read more about it. I feel the same way Jake feels about the passage, which is that the Englishmen were singing a song popular in America to make the American soldiers more comfortable and to make them feel like they are at home. This popular American song written in 1917 was use in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five as a coping mechanism for the American soldiers by the Englishmen.

Hail, hail, the gang's all here

What the heck do we care

What the heck do we care

Hail, hail, the gang's all here

What the heck do we care now

Chapter 5: Flashback

          Throughout the book and this chapter Billy has primarily traveled back and forth through the 1940’s (his yearly childhood), 50’s, and 60’s. In this chapter the reader sees Billy for the first time as a child, through a flashback. Somehow Vonnegut is still able to incorporate death on Billy’s family trip, which brings forth the “so it goes” once again. Throughout the other chapters Billy has traveled through time only when he blinks or closes his eyes; however, in this chapter the events change through the darkness of the caverns. On page 90 of this chapter is where this change of time came, “Billy went from total dark to total light, found himself back in the war.” Even though throughout this chapter the chronological nature of this book was not apparent to me the whole time, I still found it interesting that Billy traveled so far back to his childhood in chapter five of Slaughterhouse Five.

Chapter 4: Free Will

“All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is” (Vonnegut 86)



            Billy’s thought of “free will” seems to be challenged by the Tralfamadorians when the topic of “bugs in amber” becomes the center of their conversation. The logic behind the Tralfamodorian view of time seems to be completely different from the general way of which humans view time. The Tralfamadorian’s concept of time emphasizes the role of fate in shaping the existence and it also completely rejects free will. When Billy is kidnapped, he understands that all people and things are trapped in life’s collection of moments like “bugs trapped in amber.” Billy is locked into his fate; any resistance to this notion would be futile. As humans, we view time as a sort of sequence of events that occur in succession with events that have happened in the past, events going on in the present, and events yet to come in the future. However, Tralfamadorians do not share this theory due to their ability to see in four dimensions and piety the human for only seeing in the third dimension. When Billy ask the question, “Why me?” this reveals the limits of the humans outlook on time and fate. The Tralfamadorians would have never thought of asking such a question, since they already know that the structure of time is beyond anyone’s control.

            An example of Billy losing his ability of “free will” would be the swim or sink experience he had with his father. When Billy was younger, his father threw him in a pool trying to teach Billy how to swim. However, Billy chose the bottom of the pool and sinking over swimming, but against Billy’s free will, his father grabs him and throws him out of the pool. I feel that Vonnegut is questioning the reader with such things as: Does the past and the present really affect our future? Do our choices really even matter the outcome of our lives?

           

Chapter 4: Situational Irony

          Throughout chapter four the hobo on the train with Billy would often tell Billy things on the lines of, “I been hungrier than this… I been in worse places than this. This ain’t so bad” (Vonnegut 68). And so this confident hobo would continue to preach his words of wisdom to Billy in chapter four as he said, ‘“This ain’t bad. I can be comfortable anywhere”’ (Vonnegut 79). The hobo said this to Billy Pilgrim because none of the other soldier wanted to sleep near him. Through the hobo’s over confidence and willingness to admit that this is nothing what the Germans are doing to him, the reader is to believe that the hobo would survive the train ride and the poor German treatment. However, the opposite occurred in this chapter the very next day after his statement to Billy. The hobo died and this is a great example of situational irony, because what was expected to happen and what actually happen were two completely different expectations that the reader would have never thought would happen to the hobo in the future of the book. Through the hobo’s confidence the readers were under the impression that he would be a survivor, but instead he was just another “so it goes.”

Chapter 3: Cannot Change

           One thing throughout this chapter that made me stop and think for a long time was the idea of “so it goes” after every death. At first, this just irritated me. I thought that Billy was trying to conceal his pain and pretend he was not at all bothered by the deaths he witnessed. He seemed apathetic to everything, including his childhood home now being an empty space. However, I soon began to suspect there was a bigger reason behind this. It is soon explained in the novel that Billy Pilgrim has a prayer on his office wall which says, "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" (Vonnegut 60). I took this as an explanation for his apathy and saw it as something good. Billy Pilgrim was not trying to pretend he did not care; he was simply forcing himself not to care because there was nothing he could do about it. If there is nothing to do, one should just accept it and move on, instead of hovering on the situation and never letting go. On the other hand, if there is something one could do about it, one should have the strength to act and solve it. I found it inspirational and began to actually admire Billy Pilgrim. However, what followed in the story made me take back my admiration which goes also with the idea of him being an antihero. Billy believes there is nothing one can do about the past, the present or the future. He sees time as something circular, and believes that everything is happening at the same time, he thinks there is no way to make a change. Therefore, his life is meaningless and routine-like, with (in his opinion) no decisions being made and everything being planned out until the very end.

         I feel as if we have always been told that we have the power to make life the way we want it to be. This is actually motivational, allowing people to make the best of their lives and changing their minds about things many times. However, with this theory, Billy will not even try to change things because, I know this is going to sound weird but it is already the “future's past”, so it shouldn't be changed. Since everything is happening at the same time, there is no such thing as past, present, and future. This allows Billy to believe that there is nothing to do about neither of these, and everything should stay the way he already saw it in the future.

Chapter 3: Antihero

           Billy Pilgrim is not portrayed as a hero in Slaughterhouse Five like most main characters in novels. Throughout this chapter Vonnegut portrays Billy as an unfit soldier that has no business carrying firearms let alone fighting in the war. Most of the time the reader expects the main character to be strong physically and mentally, courageous, and willing to save one’s self or others; however, that is not how Billy is portrayed in this chapter at all. For example, the passage, “They threw Billy into shrubbery. When Billy came out of the shrubbery, his face wreathed in goofy good will, they menaced him with their machine pistols, as though they were capturing him then” (Vonnegut 58). I feel as if that is a clear example of an antihero, because to me at least it does not even seem as if Billy of trying to resist the German soldiers at all. I almost felt as if Billy had given up on his life.
            Also, I feel as if a stereotypical hero is one to not shed a tear or show any weakness to his enemies or his fellow men, but instead Billy has random outburst of sobbing throughout this chapter. For instance on page 62 the passage says, “…sleep would not come. Tears came instead. They seeped.” Billy showed signs of weaknesses and his flaws. He seems to lack in courage and grace which are thought of to be hero qualities. In chapter three it seems to me that Billy Pilgrim is an antihero through his actions and decision he has made so far.      
             

Chapter 2: Me Rambling About Time

           Although I found this chapter confusing, I most definitely enjoyed it immensely. From a young age I have always had a theory in a way of time. This book in a way captures my idea of time. As Billy Pilgrim travels forwards and backwards through his life, he develops a strange perception of time and he does not believe that death is the termination of life, instead he believes that every event in the past is as vivid and lifelike as the present and the future. I have always believed that everyone one of us is living in a different time frame. For instance, I may be born but in my parents’ lives they may be teenagers just like I am right now. I have always thought a lot about the saying, “Time flies when you are having fun.” I believe that is true, so then I think of it as saying that if someone is in a state of boredom and time feels like it is at a standstill, well then imagine that a person standing next to him is having the time of their life and time is just flying by. I feel as if the person in the state of boredom is still in that moment for quite a long time compared to the person who is having the time of his life and wish it would never end.

            Also, I think about the fact that in the future there is an older me and I’m out of college and know what I want to do with my life. If I were to have a family, my children are already born somewhere and have started their life’s and maybe somewhere they are writing or whatever they will use to communicate with in the future about the same thing I am speaking about right now.
Everything is happening at the same time…   

Chapter 2: Indirect Characterization

          Chapter Two was kind of confusing for me, but by the end of the chapter I finally was able to make sense of it. While reading the second chapter of Slaughterhouse Five, I was able to pick up on many example of Indirect Characterization. The first example was one that  the narrator gave that was a description of Billy, “ He was a funny-looking child who became a funny-looking youth—tall and weak, and shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola” (Vonnegut 23). This was one of the first times when I was starting to become confused. This seemed to me as if the narrator was just giving the reader a basic description of Billy; however, what Vonnegut was getting at here was to show that Billy was not physically gifted in any way and seemed to be unfit or incapable of fighting in a war. 

          Billy’s experience after his involvement in the airplane crash was another example of Indirect Characterization that I came across while reading chapter two of Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut describes Billy, after the crash, by saying, “When Billy finally got home to Illium after the airplane crash, he was quiet for a while… He didn’t resume practice” (Vonnegut 25). This description of Billy shows us that that crash had some damaging and long lasting scars that deeply affected his mind and his personality. Personally, I feel in a way this may have something to do with the time traveling and endless loops throughout time. This explains that after the crash, Billy would not be the same mentally or emotionally ever again

Chapter 1: Babies

          "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs" (Vonnegut 14).

            While reading the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five, Brendan O’Hare’s wife, Mary O’Hare presents the reader with her extremely strong and out spoken opinion on war in general. Brendan O’Hare was one of Vonnegut’s old war buddies during his service. As soon as Mary opened the door to welcome Vonnegut into her house he could tell that she was obviously angry about his presence in her home. After many death looks and evil eyes she gave Vonnegut she finally spoke. She angrily declared that the “men” were just “babies” in the war, and that all they did was pretend that they were men. She then accused Vonnegut by saying that he will glorify and promote war in his book. Vonnegut quickly answers her back to ensure her that he has no intention to do  so, and he also gives her more satisfaction by including that when he is finished he will call it “The Children’s Crusade.” I believe that Vonnegut included this conversation with Mary to show that extreme actions that were taken in war and most of the actions were in the hands of children or in other cases so called “men” who were just at the end of their childhood if that. By including that he will name the book “The Children’s Crusade” Vonnegut reveals that he believes war is unjust. He compares the Children’s Crusade of the thirteenth-century to World War II, because it has the same basis of allowing young men or “babies” to serve in war and make decisions that most middle age, experienced men would struggle to make themselves.  

Chapter 1: Foreshadowing

          The way Vonnegut writes the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five it almost seems to be more like a preface to the novel than part of the novel itself. In this chapter Vonnegut discusses his plans for the novel to us, the readers. One thing I found most intriguing was his statement, “It begins like this: Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet?” This statement gives me the idea that this chapter may have been written after the rest of the novel. Also, I enjoyed how Vonnegut describes the process he took in writing Slaughterhouse Five and the events that surrounded its conception.

         Throughout reading more of the book I picked up on the continuing cycle of time and how it seemed as if Billy Pilgrim is in an endless loop. I read chapter one again after reading the first five chapters just to get a consensus of some of the foreshadowing that took place in this chapter. I found the song on page 3 which went, “My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumbermill there. The people I meet when I walk down the street, they say, ‘“What’s your name?”’ And I say, ‘“My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin…”’  This song is a great example of the endless loop that Billy Pilgrim takes throughout the book.