Entry #20: No, It Doesn't Go



Don't worry, Kurt. You've succeeded

The final chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five holds mixed feelings for me. In a way, it does bring together all the different parts of the book, even though Vonnegut's goal of the book was to write a story in the Tralfamadore fashion.

Vonnegut comes back into the light of the storyline for brief moments before he ends the novel; something I felt to be rather comforting. I like him more than Billy Pilgrim. He establishes his visit with O'Hare to Dresden; meanwhile Billy Pilgrim begins the excavation to find the victims of the fire bombing with all the other prisoners of war. The prisoners dug, bodies were found, Pilgrim's digging mate died, and Vonnegut even managed to stick in one more allusion to my favorite computer virus: Mustard gas and roses.

No Sam, Billy Pilgrim is broken forever.

"But then the bodies rotted and liquified, and the stink was like mustard gas and roses." Despite all of this literary masterpiece, I couldn't help but be the slightest bit paranoid that they were going to dig up Stanley Yelnats's treasure. But I digress. In my opinion, the contrast between Vonnegut's return to Dresden and Billy Pilgrim's return to search for the bodies of the innocent killed by war reflect how Vonnegut never truly left that war. Despite how much of a satirist and pacifist that man is, he is still haunted by the bodies of the innocent, just as Billy Pilgrim was.
Vonnegut meant for the theme of his novel to be to learn to deal with life like Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim learned how live life in a "So it goes" fashion, and through that, he found that life was nothing to be taken seriously or lightly, because anything that is, was, or will be will never change. It never has. He learned that any action taken will be/has always been the action taken, so there is no reason to dwell on the bad things in life. Simply ignore the bad, and live an eternity in the pleasant; such as a time when everything as beautiful, and nothing hurt.
In the last paragraph, when Billy had learned that the war was over in Europe, he wandered out into the shady street that was occupied by nothing but the deathly wagon that brought them there. He always knew how the war ended, how he was born, and how his life would end. In a similar way, Vonnegut trains the reader in that same fashion by telling them the beginning and end of the novel before it had even begun. The novel began with "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time." Throughout the novel, his anti-war ideals are introduced, and he tells the reader that even after a massacre, there is nothing left but for a bird to ask, "Poo-tee-weet?"
The novel ends with the war ending, after the massacre of millions. It ends just as Vonnegut told us it would:

"One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, 'Poo-tee-weet?'"

Entry #19: Dramatic Irony

So here's how this post is going to work. I know I already used irony, but I wanted to devote part of this post to my favorite character of the novel, Captain America Edgar Derby. The rest will be normal.

Dramatic Irony takes place when there is a discrepancy between the reader's understanding of a scene and a character's understanding of a scene, usually because the reader has knowledge the character does not. The inevitable fate of Edgar Derby is perhaps the second best example of dramatic irony of the book, surpassed only by the fire bombing of Dresden. The death of Derby is dramatic irony because the reader knows of his death because of Billy Pilgrim meddling with time, but Derby does not.

Goodbye, Captain America.

The reader is informed of his death in the first page, "One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his." The bottom of the second-to-last page reads, "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."
Kurt Vonnegut: The only man who can make me sad over a character's death even though I already know they're dead. Props to you, sir.

Entry #18: Jesus Christ, or UFO Tracking Hippie?

Many new events unfold in chapter nine of Slaughterhouse-five, yet I, of course, am going to aim for the least popular sections. First of all, let's just skip the first ten pages of the chapter entirely. Valencia dies, Rumfoord is a snob, Lily is stupid, and Billy Pilgrim is just about to go on an ex-hippie-like rant on UFO's. That's about it. Who needs sparknotes now?
Now to dive into the bulk of this post. On page 194, Billy Pilgrim and some other Americans board a horse-hitched wagon and return to Dresden to claim some souvenirs. While the others are in the slaughterhouse claiming their major awards, Billy lives in what he claims to be his happiest moment; sunbathing in the wagon. I find this to be rather odd. Billy Pilgrim is finding calmness in a moment directly following the end of a war, and he is enjoying what he knows to be an empty victory.
Two German doctors standing by happen to notice the horrible state of the horses pulling the wagon. Upon notifying Billy of this, he begins to cry. As I explained in the last post, Pilgrim is upset because he has destroyed their well-being, and is resembling Jesus Christ in his innocence, and sadness for the mistreated innocent.
Later in the chapter, Vonnegut goes on to describe the plot of one of Kilgore Trout's novels in which a man goes back in time to see Jesus. In a particular passage, a Roman soldier asks twelve-year old Jesus and his father to build a cross. "Jesus and his father built it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouser was executed on it. So it goes." To me, I can't help but look at this and translate it into the irony of a man predetermining his fate. Jesus knew his fate, as did Billy Pilgrim; yet both of them followed the path leading up to it simply because that is how it is.

Now I shall jump to the last two pages of the book. As Billy Pilgrim and Montana Wildhack are being displayed in the Tralfamadorian zoo with their child, he notices the inscription on her necklace. It reads the same as the plaque on his wall when he is an optometrist in Ilium. "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." The reappearance of this prayer in the novel suggests to the reader its importance as it pertains to the alien philosophy. Like epigraph about Jesus, this too relates to the theme of the book: To accept the fact the everything is, was, and always will be, and to not dwell on each moment in accordance with another. Also, to ignore the bad things in life, and choose to rather spend an eternity in the pleasant things.

Finally, I will end with something completely different. I've been meaning to write about this for some time. Has anyone else made the weird connection between the fact that Billy Pilgrim can see into the fourth dimension, and he's an optometrist? Just a little something that I realized.

Entry #17: Epigraph

An epigraph is described as a quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme. I hate to take the easy street, but I chose the easy literary term. Sorry to the two people who read this.
Vonnegut sets the stage for the re-delivery of this epigraph by describing how Billy Pilgrim wept for the horses he was unknowinly tortoring. This is another famous testament to Pilgrim's innocence, as he has just destroyed the well being of the lives of two innocent horses. Vonnegut goes on to say that even later in his life, Billy would cry seldomly, privately, and quietly. He says, "Billy cried very little, though he often saw things worth crying about, and in that respect, at least, he resembled the Christ of the carol:

The cattle are lowing,

The baby awakes.

But the little Lord Jesus

No crying he makes."

In my opinion, this rhyme serves as the epigraph because it is suggestive of the theme; Billy Pilgrim, like that of Jesus Christ, is innocent and undeserving of the fate he has been given. Despite being handed this unfortunate destiny, neither characters object. The cattle of misfortune and negativity lowers, yet no crying does poor baby Pilgrim make.

Entry #16: Sassy Joker Applies to Everything

Hang on, boys and girls. I have a lot to go into on this one.

First of, we have another appearance of the epitome of a human being, Captain America Edgar Derby. As the Americans are getting a very cheap car insurance salesman-esque talk from a born-again American Nazi propagandist, Derby finds the flaws behind Campbell's, the American Nazi, philosophy that teaches white superiority. Then Derby does something very admirable, as Vonnegut describes it, "...what was probably the finest moment in his life." He was a character, and by character, I mean super-awesome-absolutely-fantastic hero. Edgar Derby calls this man a snake, a rat, a blood-filled tick, and then begins to lecture him on the real meaning behind American ideals, sadly to be interrupted by the sirens alerting the town of its fire drenched fate.

Well done, Captain.

The next order of business is Kilgore Trout's groundbreaking classic The Gutless Wonder. This spectacular piece of literature was about robots with bad breathe absent-mindedly dumping jellied gasoline onto the helpless civilians below. If you apply sarcasm, the gif works rather well for this scenario, too.  Once again, I shall tie something in to the war. Concerning Trout's story, Vonnegut goes on to say, "And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable." After reading this passage, I cannot help but relate it to the way the German surgeon reacted to Billy when he first arrived in Dresden. Upon his arrival, Pilgrim was clad in a beard, a pink curtain toga, a muff, and silver boots; the surgeon saw this aesthetic oddity as a mockery of those who fight in war, and immediately saw him as a joke. Just as the people dismissed the leading alien for something minuscule like bad breathe in comparison to the genocide he had committed, the surgeon judged Pilgrim by his accidental costume, rather than the fact that he could have easily been the murderer of hundreds since he fought in war. All in all, this whole metaphor is a larger representation of the human race's blatant disregard for large-scale catastrophes so that they can rather focus on something irrelevant and excusable like bad breathe or silly clothes. The human being subconsciously does this because they want to be able to judge something only they can control. Since "big picture" things such as war, hunger, or persecution of masses are out of the normal individuals control, one seeks something on a smaller scale to place their worries on in an effort to compensate for the greater, out of reach problems.

Then, of course, there is the main attraction of the chapter (which, of course, I'm bound to go less in detail about). This is the inevitable fire bombing of Dresden, decreasing it to a desolate, moon-like arena of hopelessness. And also, Billy Pilgrim's mental breakdown as his mind makes the connection between the four men in his barber-quartet and the four German guards standing on the new desert that was Dresden- formerly. The fact that Pilgrim is just now making this connection suggests the idea that his mind does not have the capacity to store a fourth dimension, hence his not being a Tralfamadorian.
Valencia says to Billy, "'You looked as though you'd seen a ghost.'" as he is suffering from his mental breakdown. Oh Valencia, he had seen FOUR ghosts.



Entry #15: Motif

"So it goes" would be an excellent, yet generic motif to write this entry about, so I'm going to be a little different. The sentence "Somewhere a dog barked." is used multiple times throughout the book, most recently in chapter eight. A motif is described as a recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout a work, unifying the current situation to previous ones, or new ideas to a theme."Somewhere a dog barked" makes its appearance in the novel for the third or fourth time in chapter eight, and each of the times this sentence is used, it is during an event in which a character faces a hardship or difficult situation. In this particular instance, Kilgore Trout is found faced with the dilemma of delivering newspapers. Not only that, but the sentence "Somewhere a dog barked" is used right after Trout admits to a fear of dogs.
The way I see it, the motif can be interpreted one of two ways. One can either see it as the assurance of impending negativity to come because of the dog barking as a response to a newly discovered challenge, or as the idea that despite hardships, somewhere out there dogs are barking, symbolizing the fact that life goes on. Either way, Vonnegut is using the symbol of a dog barking to signify that life does have its hardships, whether it's delivering newspapers or being abducted by aliens; but the common factor between the two is that life always goes on.

Entry #14: Oops.

For once, I think Vonnegut might have written something in this book that can't be translated into something concerning the impurities of war or the life of poor old Billy Pilgrim. Dare I say, good old Kurt is having a simple-minded sense of humor, and I think he wants us to take a moment to have one too.
"Werner Gluck, who had never seen a naked woman before, closed the door. Billy had never seen one, either. It was nothing new to Derby."
Three guys, minding their own business, accidentally bust into a girls' locker room. Sure, this could be seen as a testament to Pilgrim's innocence. I really do think Vonnegut just means to take a step back from the heavy reality of war, life, and death; and just take a moment to laugh. Kurt Vonnegut, in his ever relatable pacifistic mindset that I will forever be in agreement with, strikes me as the kind of man who was so damaged by the things that he has seen and done, that he too just needs to take a moment to laugh. Vonnegut suggests this to the reader as well. I believe the Tralfamadorians put it as "There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments- like today at the zoo."
In my oh so humble opinion, I believe that Vonnegut strived to be like the Tralfamadorians; ignoring the bad, spending an eternity in the pleasant.