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.

Entry #13: Hyperbole

"A moment went by, and then every cell in Billy's body shook him with ravenous gratitude and applause."
Needless to say, but I've never felt my cells shake from a spoonful of syrup. This is an example of a hyperbole. A hyperbole is a figure of speech that uses an incredible exaggeration or overstatement, for effect.


I see no shaking.

Vonnegut uses this simple overstatement to stress the severity of malnutrition that was evident in the slaughterhouse, yet another example of the cruelties of war. The bodies of the soldiers were lacking vitamins that were key to survival so much to the point that they could feel it in their cells that they were getting the vitamins that they needed. Now, if Pilgrim literaly felt his cells shake and say, "Thank you", I think Tralfamadorians aren't his biggest problem anymore.


Entry #12: Cinderella and the Anticipation of Fire-Bombing

"The boots fit perfectly. Billy Pilgrim was Cinderella, and Cinderella was Billy Pilgrim."
Ok Billy, I know that you travel through time and death is pretty irrelevant to you, and the fire-bombing of Dresden is inevitable, but some silver slippers to cover your "blue and ivory" feet should not be your first priority. Pilgrim seems somewhat oblivious to the fact that no one can see into time but him.
Aside from the fact that Dresden and slaughterhouse-five itself is introduced, and the reader develops sympathy for Derby and his impending death, I found this chapter to be a tad bit uninformative. The only abstract idea I can really squeeze out of this chapter is the sadness that befalls the reader knowing the fate of Dresden after it is introduced as war-free, undefended, and peaceful. Once again, I shall tie something in with the life of Billy Pilgrim. Dresden, in a way, is Pilgrim in the way that it was peaceful before being touched by war, or in Billy's case, war AND aliens. So now that from the reader's viewpoint Dresdon is soon to be destroyed, we too have nothing to do but bide the time by looking for silver boots to cover our ivory and blue feet.

Not you Pilgrim; you keep sweeping.

Entry #11: Foil Character

I present to you, the greatest example of foil characters of all time: Edgar Derby and Paul Lazzaro.
A foil character acts as a contrast to another character; often through personality, (a word that I can't see because the copier failed to do its job), or values. Edgar Derby and Paul Lazzaro contrast eachother like Yin and Yang, black and white, insert other lovely example here; you get the idea.
Edgar Derby is presented as the generally good guy; he is a forty-year old high school teacher with good moral fiber and just happens to get shot while in Dresden, according to Pilgrim. Paul Lazzaro on the other hand is somewhat like that of Roland Weary, except for the fact that unlike Weary, Lazzaro is not all words. He kind of kills Billy Pilgrim. So it goes. Lazzaro is cruel, saddistic, generally mean, and kills puppies. I don't really like him at all.

On their travels to Dresden, Edgar Derby is elected the head american. He gives a speech in which Vonnegut states, "He said that his primary responsibility now was to make damn well sure everyone got home safely." I'm terribly sorry, but this comes to mind:

Ladies and gentlemen, Edgar Derby.

To contrast this rather perfectly, Lazzaro says, "'Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut...Go take a flying fuck at the moon'"
Lazzaro, you are a mean man, and I'm growing more comtempt for you by the paragraph. It's a shame Edgar gets blown to bits instead of you.

Entry #10: Trippy Giraffes, What Else?

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
Reads the tombstone of the late Edgar Derby. So it goes.
To anyone who hadn't been abducted by Tralfamadorians, this line would be nothing more than an allusion to heaven; however, to Billy Pilgrim, it had a far deeper meaning. Pilgrim longs for nothing more than peace; peace of mind, peace of heart, peace that simply means to keep him in the same time and place. Billy Pilgrim is nothing more than a nostalgic man who longs for the simplicity and beauty of a childhood-like state, or something resembling Tralfamadore. In my oh so humble opinion, what Pilgrim is really longing for is sanity.
For a man who has been through so much in his life time(s), it seems to me that he comes pretty close to this unattainable peace while under a dose of morphine. In his hallucinogenic state, Pilgrim wanders of into an exclusive giraffe garden club, where he finds solace.

Pilgrim's new mindset: Disregard pacifistic ideals, make out with giraffes.

After this slight excursion, Pilgrim travels forward in time to 1948, where he is taking refuge in a veteran home three years after the war. He is waiting for his mother to return. He is seated next to a man by the name of Eliot Rosewater; a drunken former infantry captain who spends his spare time obsessing over science fiction novels. How ironic.
Later, Pilgrim's mother returns and begins to have a light chat with Rosewater, during which Vonnegut makes the statement:
"And on and on it went- that duet between the dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man who was so full of loving echoes" For whatever reason, this particular quote stood out to me. Once again, in my oh so humble opinion, I see it as a reflection of the lives of common, empty, plain people in contrast to those irrevocably damaged by war. Those who were so blissfully ignorant to the hostile war kept on with their empty prayers and hopes, while the bigger people were fighting and being made hollow by the cruel dishonor to humanity of war going on around them. For the bigger people, all that is left to them after the war are echoes, the loving echoes of the person they used to be before, when everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

Entry #9: Irony

"'We all know how the universe ends...'" A quote from a Tralfamadorian at the zoo where Billy Pilgrim is being displayed like a baboon.
At a Q&A session with Pilgrim, he goes on a tirade of how destructive Earth may seem in comparison with the loving and peace-keeping Tralfamadore, and describes the true horrors of war, and asks the aliens how he can save his race from destroying the universe. To this, the Tralfamadorians give Pilgrim their equivalent of a "Red Forman Look", meaning Pilgrim has said something stupid. After asking where he went wrong, the guide explains that it was/is/will be the fault of a test pilot experimenting with new fuels and pressing the start button that causes the universe to disappear. Oops.

So it goes..?



Right here we have a prime example of irony.  Irony is defined as a discrepancy between appearances and reality. To Billy Pilgrim, it appeared that Earth, in its heartlessness, cruelty, and hostility, would be the world to end all other worlds. In reality, Tralfamadore is the world to end the universe in all of its serenity, peacefullness, and benevolence.
That's irony on a universal level.

Entry #8: Mustard Gas and Roses: A Computer Virus

 "Billy answered. There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath—mustard gas and roses. It was a wrong number. Billy hung up."
Mustard gas and roses; two items that I can't help but feel to be quite opposite in terms of deeper meanings. Mustard gas symbolizes the war and its trauma, and roses are often used as a symbol for love. The idea that Billy Pilgrim would combine the two together is somewhat of a testament to how damaged by war he really is. The fact that aliens incessantly copy and paste him into different times in his life probably doesn't help much either.
Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time. Billy Pilgrim is a computer file. Tralfamadorians are getting a kick out of copying and pasting him in different times. Yet this does not mitigate the situation that Pilgrim finds himself in. He is forever a bug trapped in amber, and stuck between the lives of a war-damaged optometrist who mixes the smells of romance and chemical weapons over a drunken phone call, and of an alien abducted guinea pig forced bounce around his timeline only to be reassured by the knowledge that everything is his life has already been decided and be comforted by cheap knock-off furniture from Sears aboard an alien spaceship. The war damaged version of Pilgrim sounds alright now, except for the haunting smell of mustard gas and roses that seems to be the virus of Billy Pilgrim, the computer file. There's only one man who could have that breathe and be drunk calling people that late at night, and I think he's on the line from chapter one.

Entry #7: Metaphor

"'Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.'"
Says the omniscient alien Tralfamadorian who can see through the fourth dimension. Yet, what he says has a grain of truth. To explain the reality of the situation to Billy Pilgrim, the alien uses a metaphor. A metaphor is described as a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of specific comparison words. In this particular metaphor, the bug is used to symbolize the life of an innocent human being, and the amber is used as a symbol for the path of fate that he is predisposed to follow.


A rather sticky situtation if I do say so myself.

The Tralfamadorians once again show their vast superiority to Earthlings by explaining their knowledge to "...see all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains." And also their wisdom by answering Pilgrim's question of "Why?" by simply and matter-of-factly stating that there is no why. On the other hand, in the seemingly unending omniscience that is the Tralfamadorian race, they seem to have little to no grasp of abstract concepts such as love, compassion, or free will. All that, you know, important stuff. "Only on Earth is there talk of free will."

Entry #6: Kurt's Play on Words

Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time once again to find himself in 1968, in the office and driving through the ghetto at the age of 44. "He asked himself this: 'Where have all the years gone?'"
While driving through the ghetto, Billy notes, "The people who lived here hated it so much that they had burned down a lot of it a month before. It was all they had, and they'd wrecked it." Here, I think he is alluding to the war. In the war, people hated the lands around them so much, they burned it, and it too was all they had.
"It looked like Dresden after it was fire-bombed - like the surface of the moon."
As Billy is having these war flashbacks, he begins to realize how his life now is no different than his life at war. Places are set on fire, homes are forgotten, whole neighborhoods are left desolate, and people wreck all they have just because of a burning hatred.
Billy Pilgrim makes yet another testament to his anti-war philosophy after he discusses the city's plans for remodeling by the simple statement, "This was all right with Billy Pilgrim." He uses 'all right', rather than 'alright', because 'alright' has the connotation of something simply sitting well with Billy, whereas 'all right' means that he saw it as right, in accordance with his philosophy.

Entry #5: Anecdote

An anecdote is described as a brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something, often to characterize the individual.
"An anecdote: One time a recruit was watching him bone and wax those golden boots, and he held one up to the recruit and said, 'If you look in there deeply enough, you'll see Adam and Eve'"
Later in the paragraph, "...They we naked, They were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently. Billy Pilgrim loved them"
In my opinion, the anecdote illustrates the deeper goodness to every man, and how if you look deeply enough inside of someone, they too are innocent, vulnerable, and eager to behave decently. The golden boots are the people, and Adam and Eve are the goodness within them. "Billy Pilgrim loved them", as if to say he longs to see that goodness in everybody. He loves that he can see deeply into people and love them, even as they steal the very clothes and belongings from him.