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.