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.

This is my first blog

This is my first time blogging. Hopefully I did this right.