And Finally, "So it goes." -Chapter 10

"So it goes."

Constantly throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut writes "so it goes." From the slaughter of the cows and sheep in the meat locker to the horrible deaths of a man squashed by a car to the optometrists in the plane and Valencia in her Cadillac, the ending phrase is always identical: "so it goes." I think that by saying it, Vonnegut attempts to make the deaths seem like just a small happening in the events of the world. Almost like a mother giving a bottle to her baby, he soothes and smooths over the deaths, as if the audience could somehow be comforted by the casual tone of "so it goes." I believe this soothing is similar to the way that modern society talks about casualties in present wars. If everyone truly understood how henious war is and always will be, I don't think it would still occur.

The phrase also ties in the Tramalfadorians' fourth-dimensional view of the universe. Someone died. "So it goes." It goes because it always has and always will happen and because the universe is supposedly "structured that way." Although the people died, they still exist in prior moments simply because they did. All the memories others have of them are still there, suspended in time as just like the course of our universe.

I also think that Vonnegut means to stress that all deaths are that of individuals, all of whom deserve recognition and dignity postmortem, but many of which are just shuffled through the funeral process into somewhere else besides life. He used "so it goes" after the death of one person, such as his father, but also after the deaths of the thousands at Dresden and hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the entire war. I realized that he was partly acknowledging respectfully each person's death and partly reminding humanity that people will die indefinitely and that everyone will have their time. I was struck by the quote:

"The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000. 'I suppose they will all want dignity,' I said. 'I suppose,' said O'Hare."

How blatantly, horribly, and completely true.  Vonnegut amazes me with his outlook! However, the statement is correct: the more people who enter into the world, the more who will die without dignity and live without peace. Kurt Vonnegut, and his fictional character in the frame story, Billy Pilgrim, witnessed a shockingly horrendous massacre. War is said to harden the soul against death and gore, but I think that Vonnegut's soul was reformed as a result of Dresden. Unfortunately, anti-war sentiments like his are often times associated with flower-children hippies and that one radical party member who's always vying for President when elections come around. I have to say that before this book, I was also neutral to war. I know it is utterly wrong, but I am just a sixteen-year-old girl who doesn't have a say in the violent conflicts which predate the times of Jesus and still kill thousands today.


 I think that Slaughterhouse-Five makes humanity think. Every time he wrote, "so it goes," I was shocked by about the casual mention of so many people's deaths. Living in a peaceful society in one of the most well-developed and wealthy countries, I am shielded from the brutality of death and of war. We tie yellow ribbons around our trees and send cards to the soldiers in Iraq at Christmas, but I don't know what war is. If so many young people like me don't understand it and the horrible, numerous deaths that have accompanied it, how can it continue? How can humans continue murdering each other over land and riches and power, saying that the people who die "could have been anybody," and don't matter because they aren't from their home country? Innumerable humans have lost their lives due to war. The wars might never cease, and they will never be wiped clean from the bloodied past of humanity. The only thing humans should not do is sit around in their Iraqi-fuel-powered cars and Afghan rugs while they watch it happen. "So it goes."

A Rhetorical Question: Chapter 10

"Poo-tee-weet?"

What else is left to be said after a massacre like Dresden? When all the people are buried in graves of rubble and ashes, what is left to speak volumes for the many, now deceased? Only the birds, asking rhetorically, "Poo-tee-weet?"

The question, intended for strong effect, is the last statement in the book; it is left unanswered. It leaves the audience of Slaughterhouse-Five to create their own reactions and responses to the strongly anti-war novel. Normal human words cannot do the disaster justice (even Vonnegut mentions how he had trouble writing the book), so animals who witnessed the whole thing were left to tweet in awe. "Poo-tee-weet?" means what happened? What do we do now? How... how could humans do this to other humans? The nonsense question represents the speechlessness and horror that people experience when seeing such mass destruction and death. Many times, the strongest of men become weak at the knees and damp in the eyes at the violence of war. Brilliantly, Vonnegut ends his thought-provoking novel with the rhetorical question and simple response of the creatures to the bloodshed of Dresden. That feeble statement of innocent birds represents exactly the thoughts all of Earth's creatures who freeze in shock upon learning of such a massacre.

Chapter 9: Animal Cops Dresden

"Billy opened his eyes. A middle-aged man and wife were crooning to the horses. They were noticing what the Americans had not noticed- that the horses' mouths were bleeding, gashed to the bits, that the horses' hooves were broken, so that every step meant agony, that the horses were insane with thirst. The Americans had treated their form of transportation as though it were no more senstitive than a six-cylinder Chevrolet" (Vonnegut 196).

This small and slightly irrelevant paragraph of Chapter 9 reminded me of a show on Animal Planet called Animal Cops: Miami. I only watch it when my other favorite reality TV shows aren't on, and usually I can only bear to look for a few minutes. Usually, the stories are nearly the same. Strong, harsh animal cops bust into homes, homeless peoples' shacks, and cars to free trapped, abused, or neglected animals from their owners. Always a lot of bleeped-out words, blacked-out faces, and those blurry squares on the owners. The most common factor between the owners is simple: they usually cannot take care of themselves or lack the means for basic hygiene or food, so the possibility of taking adequate care of the animals becomes out of the question. Animal Cops is unbelievably sorrowful; the passage in Slaughterhouse-Five is very similar. Billy and the other Americans are so desperate and deprived of their needs that they neglected the very horses which provided them transportation around "the surface of the moon." The animals bled and cut themselves and trekked on without catching the eyes of the miserable Americans in the coffin-carriage. It was only in the horrible state of themselves and of the town that the Americans allowed the horses to suffer greatly and overwork themselves. Vonnegut meant to demonstrate that the conditions of the P.O.W.'s and of the ruins of Dresden was so terrible that humans could barely function for themselves, yet alone take care of other animals.

Chapter 9: Just Anybody?- A Motif

“They were grainy things, soot and chalk. They could have been anybody" (Vonnegut 205, 208).


Vonnegut uses this simple, redundant motif (repeated phrase) in Chapter 9. Attributing it to both Montana Wildhack's X-rated photos and her mother's image on her Serenity Prayer locket, he throws out the phrase randomly throughout the chapter as if those things were just not a big deal. I think that the motif goes deeper than just some black and white images of his Tramalfadorian mate's life. Vonnegut wrote that the pictures of the past "could have been anybody." The occurrence of that phrase in the same chapter as the description of the thousands of corpses in Dresden, many of which were unrecognizable, is not a coincidence. Those corpses "could have been anybody:" the milkman, the florist, the local weatherman, a child in school, a preschool teacher, the old maid next door. The firebombs did not discriminate in murdering the citizens; almost all were obliterated, burned alive, or slowly cremated underneath tons of metal and never to be seen again. The "logs" the soldiers saw on the ground "could have been anybody." Under the "soot and chalk" the thousands became invisible, just bodies on top of bodies, no longer individuals. In conclusion, I think that Vonnegut was calling to mind (with the casual, repeated motif) that any person, from Montana Wildhack to the German schoolgirls, could die in any circumstance at any minute. The motif ties together the deaths of all people on Earth, since all people must die eventually; and specifically links the quickly-occurring deaths of thousands of Dresden people in a matter of hours. More personally for Vonnegut, all the mangled corpses he dug up in Dresden "could have been anybody" and remain in his mind as just "grainy things, soot and chalk." 

Chapter 8- Mr. Roboto.

"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).

What a strange, Vonnegut-like story. I have been wondering the significance of Kilgore Trout and coincidental sci-fi novels. This small story, of his book The Gutless Wonder symbolizes the acceptance of the evils of war by humanity. The robots, being robots, supposedly had no conscience and could not figure out that the dropping of gasoline of civilians would kill the people. On the contrary, humans dropped jellied gasoline in the form of bombs, all over Europe and Asia, and were fully aware of the mass casualties the bombs would cause. Planes flew over, dropped the bombs, and then the pilots were awarded medals for being patriotic and fighting for the noble cause of their country. I have nothing against America, or any other country. The men who give their lives or simply time to the military are extremely honorable, but I believe that war should never have existed at all. Without war, those men wouldn't need to leave their families to sit, wait, and tie a yellow ribbon around that oak tree. 


The robot story is a satire of the human race. We outcast people with "halitosis" (bad breath) or similar, foolish characteristics such as mental handicaps, skin diseases, or even different racial backgrounds. The robot in the novel who was cast off by society for his foul breath odor was welcomed back in to the high heights of humanity's cliques, even though he had mercilessly and unknowingly killed thousands of other humans. Real humans knowingly bomb towns and people. Selfless, moral, and peaceful humans live in the marginalized portion of society, stuck in hospitals to wither away or cast in the bitter streets of urban wasteland. Think about that. 

Giants Walk- Ch. 8, Personification

"He was down in the meat locker on the night that Dresden was destroyed. There were sounds like giant footsteps above. Those were sticks of high-explosive bombs. The giants walked and walked. The meat locker was a very safe shelter....Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn" (Vonnegut 177-178).

Personification/anthropomorphism, a common literary technique, is defined as giving human characteristics or actions to a non-human. It can speak volumes in children's poetry, teaching fables with talking trees and dancing penguins. It can add interest, be used as art (think of the dogs-playing-poker painting), and describe the beautiful complexity of nature. However, in The Slaughterhouse-Five, the personification that described the fire-bombs of Dresden as footsteps of' giants" and an eating flame is a potent and dark example of the literary technique. 

Vonnegut wrote, "the giants walked and walked" (177). To the Americans in the shelter, the "high-explosive bombs" were so loud and shockingly destructive that they could only be compared to something human, but not so perfectly human: giants. Giants could be blamed for the destruction. It was just giants walking...right? It wasn't their own country dropping the incendiary bombs which would wipe out the entire surrounding community of civilians, leaving the beautiful city crushed as if it were stomped on by enormous, brutal fantasy creatures? The personification gives a vivid description of the constant sounds, shaking, and unbelievable destruction.

The second example of personification of the fire-storm says "the one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn." This also describes the scene as if a flame were just a giant monstrous human, eating everything that was alive: people, animals, trees, structures. The flame consumed and consumed more of the city, until Dresden was completely gone.

Prejudice Against Poles?- Chapter 7

"'Me and Mike, ve vork in a mine./Holy s**t ve have a good time./Vunce a veek ve get our pay./Holy s**t, no vork next day.' .... Speaking of people from Poland: Billy Pilgrim accidentally saw a Pole hanged in public, about three days after Billy got to Dresden...The Pole was a farm laborer was being hanged for having sexual intercourse with a German woman. So it goes" (Vonnegut 155-156).

German execution of 51 Polish hostages during WWII.

With these beginning passages of Chapter 7, I was informed of the harsh prejudices of Germans against the Polish minorities of the country. According to Wikipedia, the Polish people first migrated to Germany to provide mass labor in the coal mines during the late 1800s. Although they currently are the second largest minority group in Germany, the prejudice continues, and the group is still denied formal minority status in Germany (which was established as part of the Nazi regime.) Also, Poles are subjected to harsh and sometimes ridiculous stereotypes. Common German thoughts toward the group stereotypes them as thieves, especially of cars, gypsies, black market dealers, unemployed or working for hardly any wages, cheaters and liars, and foolishly, bad soccer players.

The prejudice went beyond silly name calling during WWII. The Nazis, under the aspirations of Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf, put to death "...about 2.9 million Polish Jews (mostly killed in Operation Reinhard), [and] about 2.8 million non-Jewish Polish citizens during the course of World War II" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_ethnic_Poles). Polish people in Germany were prohibited to have relations with Germans, and Hitler ordered a merciless cultural genocide of all Polish on August 22, 1939. Polish women and even girls were raped by soldiers before being put before German firing squads. In attempt to wipe out the Polish race, German soldiers were permitted to round up Poles from the streets and execute them publicly in any town at any time of day. Pscyhiatric Polish patients in hospitals were mass murdered by refusal of food, poison gas, or forced inhalation of carbon monoxide fumes from German vehicles.

Additionally, at least 20,000 children were kidnapped and tested for good genes, called "racially valuable traits," and shipped to homes to be Germanized if the children were desirable. At least 1.5 Polish people were sent to labor camps between 1939-1944, and their clothes were sewn with purple "P"'s to mark their racial inferiority. Lastly, over 150,000 Polish civilians were murdered in the German capture of Warsaw, Poland, the bustling and peaceful capital of the country before the German takeover. While barbershop quartets of the time and Germans of Dresden insulted and prodded fun at the Poles, the death toll and persecution of the Poles in Germany is anything but silly.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_ethnic_Poles

Chapter 7: A Poor Old Epithet

Even in the beginning of the novel, the audience was aware that an innocent American soldier would be shot by a firing squad for pillaging a teapot from the ruins of Dresden. In Chapter 4, Vonnegut further explains this character: Edgar Derby, a handsome, strong, forty-four year old man and father, a high school teacher in Indianapolis of "Contemporary Problems in Western Civilization."

An innocent (or ominous?) teapot.

In Chapter 7, he is referred to each time as "poor old Edgar Derby." This "poor old Edgar Derby" assisted to Billy Pilgrim after his shrieking bout in the prisoner of war camp. The "poor old Edgar Derby" pushed a cart to help prepare a communal meal for the Americans. He washed windows outside the syrup building. The "poor old Edgar Derby" cried when Billy handed him a spoonful of the sweet syrupy substance. The stock phrase describing Derby, called an epithet, reinforces his character: a strong, old but honorable man, humble, innocent, and doomed to die for a minuscule crime in the near future.

A Rainbow Connection- Chapter 6

Mrs. Sander reminded us on her blog to think of colors, especially red. Unfortunately I forgot about the colors, but I thought back again and found a lot of connections...

Red: Roses are red...Vonnegut mentions the motif of "mustard gas and roses" several times, the first time being to describe the rancid smell of his breath as an aging man. The phrase is mentioned again later, this time as the smell emitted by the thousands of decaying human corpses in the piles of Dresden after the firebombing. The phrase is interesting, as mustard gas was a toxic but not deadly gas used in warfare starting WWI. It was the first form of gas which weakened but did not kill the soldiers of the other side. (source: Mrs. Helbing's World Civ. class). So insofar as mustard gas is unpleasant, red roses are a lovely symbol of love and prosperity. The phrase "mustard gad and roses" therefore shows the ruin of beautiful objects such as red roses by negative war objects such as mustard gas. 

In Chapter 4, red comes up again as the stains of the comical yet gruesome civilian fur coat which Billy Pilgrim salvaged from the P.O.W. pile. These stains, gummy and the color of "crankcase drainings or strawberry jam" were accompanied by bullet holes and were therefore the blood of a shot civilian. Here, the red symbolizes bloodshed of civilians and all other humans killed in war.

Red is mentioned once again in Chapter 3 as "raspberry sherbet". I wrote of this in an earlier post. The scouts were shot dead by Germans, and they died in the snow quietly as the virgin snowfall seeped to the color of red raspberry sherbet. Again, red is a vivid reminder of blood shed for the futile purpose of war.

Blue- I believe blue symbolizes comfort in the novel. The Blue Fairy Godmother, who was part of the cheery British prisoners of war, knocked out Paul Lazarro but came to comfort him in the hospital. And of course, the Fairy Godmother in the true story of Cinderella provided all the comfort the little princess could need. 

The azure curtains of the stage in the camp also provided comfort to the nearly-insane Billy Pilgrim. He made a nest of them to sleep in when he returned to an already-full bunk. Upon leaving for Dresden, he madly made a toga out of the blue curtains, swaddling himself as a mother would  her child. Because he had reverted to this innocent, clueless state, the softness and richness of the azure curtains comforted him on the way to labor camp.

Another motif, "blue and ivory," appears many times in the novel. After being unstuck in time while typing an account of Tramalfadore, the old man version of Billy Pilgrim failed to notice his broken heater in his house. His daughter Barbara discovered him, nearly frozen and typing madly in his basement, and his feet were blue and ivory. In this case, Barbara was the comforter because she found him, but Billy was also comforted by typing his story of Tramalfadore. The motif also appears when Billy is riding on the P.O.W. train, "crucifying" himself on the crossbeam. Here, the opposite of comfort is presented, as his feet turn "blue and ivory" and he nears total breakdown.

Lastly, blue is presented again as a "navy blue curtain" which covered Billy and Montana's dome on Tramalfadore. Since the planet had no night, the controllers of the dome provided some hours of privacy and artificial darkness by dropping the navy curtain over the huge dome habitat. Under this curtain, Billy and Montana found comfort in producing a child and having private talks with each other each night.

Gold and silver: Gold and silver metallic colors symbolize insanity in Slaughterhouse-Five. Billy, freezing and vulnerable in the forest, looked into the shining, enviable boots of his German captor and saw Adam and Eve. He was so deranged and wishful for death that they became a beacon of hope during his insanity.


 In another moment of craziness, Billy dons silver boots, which were Cinderella's silver slippers in the British men's silly play, on his way to Dresden because he lacked shoes during his second onset of out-of-body insanity. Lastly, still in this stupor, he finds the u-shaped partial denture in the bloody civilian coat. At first, he believes it is a horseshoe, but later, it turns out to be a silver mouthpiece of a wealthy civilian, now dead. "So it goes."

No Need to Worry: Situational Irony, Chapter 6

"'You needn't to worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden is an open city. It is undefended, and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance'" (Vonnegut 146).

Dresden on February 15, 1945

When the British prisoners of war attempted to comfort Billy Pilgrim and the other pitiful young Americans about to be shipped to Dresden, this example of situational irony struck a chord for me. The people of Dresden were refugees and innocent civilians, working in factories and going to zoos and museums as if war wasn't raging in their continent. No one expected an air raid. The citizens would take to their shallow bomb shelters as if playing pretend, as they had never been threatened. So, for the Americans going to work in Dresden, the city appeared to be a peaceful, culture-rich, and a beautiful safe haven full of pleasant potato-eating people. Situational irony became prominent as the citizens go on living and the Americans go on working, not knowing of their coming deaths. Vonnegut holds the audience in dread of the firebombing, of which they have known about since Chapter 1, and sets up the gorgeous city during the anticipating course of Chapter 6.

Children's Crusade: Chapter 5

"'We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly-shaved faces, it was a shock. 'My God, My God,' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade" (Vonnegut 106).

Finally I really know why this book is called "The Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death." (such a strange, long title) Long story short, the Children's Crusade was a so-called holy war which consisted of thousands of children being sent to fight for the Holy Roman Empire's re-possession of the Holy Land, Jerusalem. The armies of the time sent children because they thought kids were too innocent to be killed and would be saved immediately upon death in the war (source: Mrs. Helbing's World Civ. class). That idea sounds absurd now. Children, in the war?! Now we send our precious kids to the Goddard School at three, buy them shoes that rival the cost of our own, and devote ourselves to their soccer, football, or ballerina schedules as we keep feeding gas money in the city-crossing, crumb-filled Toyota minivan.

While the children sent to die in the Children's Crusade were around 8-12 years old, I think that Vonnegut was genius in referring to WWII as another Children's Crusade. Many soldiers in the war were 18-22, just out of high school. They were babies too. How can humans continue to subject their offspring to violence? How can mothers rest at night while their young men witness massacres, become scarred for life? War was wrong in the Crusades. War is just as wrong now.

Just a Flatcar on a Track- Ch. 5 Extended Metaphor

"But among them was this poor Earthling, and his head was encased in a steel sphere which he could never take off... he was also strapped to a steel lattice which was bolted to a flatcar on rails, and there was no way he could turn his head or touch the pipe. The far end of the pipe rested on a bi-pod which was also bolted to the flatcar. All Billy could see was the little dot at the end of the pipe. He didn't know he was on a flatcar, didn't even know there was anything peculiar about his situation...Whatever poor Billy saw through the pipe, he had no choice but to say to himself, 'That's life.'" (Vonnegut 115).

"That's life."

This extended metaphor, which describes a poor Earthling's life compared to the all-seeing Tramalfadorians', reminds me of one of my favorite things: roller coasters. When one thinks about it, roller coasters are actually pretty pointless. Little humans strap themselves onto small metal cars, and fully aware of the coming terrors, are zoomed up and down, up and down. Vonnegut uses this metaphor of a flatcar zooming on a track while the human, blind and ignorant, is thrashed through the up and down moments of life. Humans are conscious of only one moment at a time. Therefore, however great or horrible that moment is, the moment dictates a person's thoughts, feelings, and actions, upon which humans are given the free will to decide the outcome of the next moment.


Thus, the Tramalfadorians used the metaphor of being strapped on a flatcar (and being blind to the structured moments of the universe) to represent humans' uncontrollable lives. As Earthlings, we can only see that one "little dot" of our life at a time. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of only looking at the positive moments and completely ignoring the negative times. That's called denial. And with denial of the past, humans can only lead themselves into more downhill moments, such as ignoring the massacre of Dresden while the rest of the Allies rejoiced in victory and continue to do so today. 

Free Will? Chapter 4.

Intangible.

Indescribable.

 It’s free will.

"'If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,’ said the Tramalfadorian, ‘I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will.’ I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will’” (Vonnegut 86).

Free will is certainly very difficult to describe. I believe that it can’t really be defined… and according to the Tramalfadorian, it doesn’t even exist; it is only a figment of humans’ imagination. I think that free will is simply the choice to do what we want. God gives us rules, our souls, and a limited amount of knowledge, and it is up to us as humans to freely do as we will. So why is free will important in Slaughterhouse Five? Well, free will could be used for the good. Free will allows us to love who we wish, assist those in need, and hold spiritual, conscientious lives.

In regards to Vonnegut’s novel, free will is mentioned because it further stresses the evils and pointless goals of war. Humans have had the free will to start war. Humans willed to be violent, to kill, to pillage and destroy the lives of other humans, many of which never wronged them directly. Slaughterhouse Five is an exploration of free will, as it contrasts Billy Pilgrim being “unstuck in time,” (a violation of his free will) with the positive and negative free actions of the other people who played roles in his life. Through this, Vonnegut reminds his readers that they, philosophically, have unlimited free will and must rethink what they do with it. 

Roland Weary's Hubris: Chapter 4

Roland Weary desperately wished to emerge out of the German territory and into waves of commendation, flanked by his Musketeers and charity-case tagalong, Billy Pilgrim. After a life of harassment, being “ditched” constantly, and alienation, his “valiant” actions as a trusty leader would perhaps redeem his worthless existence. Insecure at heart, Roland Weary’s hubris, or tragic flaw, is his hotheadedness and stubborn, somewhat foolish pride in a hopeless situation.

The first event in his downfall was being ditched by the two scouts, who were the components of his imagined Three Musketeers. Taking out his virile anger and inner disappointment, Weary beat and screamed at Billy, attracting the group of Germans. Weary’s obvious pride in all his acquired possessions, which he had piled on his back, prompted the Germans to take everything from him and scoff at him for his dirty picture. Spiting Weary, they forced him to wear the rags and uncomfortable wooden clogs of the angelic German boy in exchange for Weary’s several socks and military issue boots. Forced to a prisoner-of-war shack and then to a camp, Weary’s feet bled profusely and caused him immense pain, but due to his stubborn pride, he said nothing and sought no help for the bleeding. As Billy Pilgrim learned weeks later as the prisoners-of-war were unloaded off densely-packed cars, Weary had passed away, a victim of gangrene in his bleeding feet and a victim of his own tragic hubris. So it goes.

Chapter 3: Adam, Eve, and the Forbidden Fruits

“But, lying on the black ice there, Billy stared into the patina of the corporal’s boots, saw Adam and Eve in the golden depths. They were naked. They were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently. Billy Pilgrim loved them” (Vonnegut 53).

The root of all human innocence and existence, Adam and Eve are the first: the first to falter, to sin, to blatantly disregard the wishes of God. They are certainly not the last. At the moment of his capture, Billy Pilgrim appears delusional and has almost reverted to a childlike, helpless state in the frigid forest as he dances with death. Outside of reality, he sees Adam and Eve in the repugnant corporal’s enviable golden boots, and Billy “loved them.” Adam and Eve represent Billy himself, who was “so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently,” as well as representing all of the young American soldiers, many still children with the innocence of Adam of Eve, who thrust themselves in the horrific depths of war. God gave Adam and Eve the Garden of Eden, with one restriction: do not take from the Tree of Knowledge. God gave humans the Earth, with one restriction: the commandment to love Him and to therefore not kill. Well, we all know how well humans have managed to follow that. Vonnegut hints that war is the product of humans falling subject to the forbidden fruit's temptations of hatred and violence. 

Raspberry Sherbet: Imagery, Chapter 3

“The two scouts who had ditched Billy and Weary had just been shot…They had been discovered and shot from behind. Now they were dying in the snow, feeling nothing, turning the snow into the color of raspberry sherbet. So it goes” (Vonnegut 54).

The strong language describing the death of the two American scouts provides a solid example of Vonnegut’s intriguing imagery. Blood on snow, conspicuous in the freshly-blanketed German forest, seeped around the quiet, numb and dying soldiers who were “feeling nothing.” Vonnegut could have just mentioned their deaths, but he chose to write in vivid and gruesome imagery by saying the snow around them turned “the color of raspberry sherbet.” Evoking naïve and pleasant childhood memories of a cold delicacy of summertime, he contrasts the harsh brutality of war with the soft, frosty delight of a more peaceful time. Perhaps reinforcing the aimlessness of violence in WWII, he reminds his audience that bloodshed not only stains nature’s pure white innocence with the scarlet color of a child’s treat, but also stains the innocence of the human race which has been corrupted by war. 

Chapter 2- U.S. Soldiers circa WWII

"He [Roland Weary] has every piece of equipment he had ever been issued...bulletproof Bible, a pamphlet entitled "Know Your Enemy," another pamphlet entitled "Why We Fight," and another pamphlet of German phrases in English phonetics...." (Vonnegut 40).

American G.I.s (part of the thousands of young men who enlisted in WWII for the U.S.)

In Chapter Two, Roland Weary is depicted as a young, striving, and slightly pitiful U.S. soldier trapped behind German lines as a result of loss at Battle of the Bulge. He carried every single piece of equipment he has been issued, including blunt pamphlets about Germany and the cause of fighting. Interesting? Yes. The purpose of a soldier is to fight for the United States in all her glory, to put down the enemy in the name of freedom. So, if young men were to enlist, shouldn't they know their purpose for fighting before they left their homes and joined a long line of cadets? Shouldn't they be already educated about the Germans before being sent out to the country itself? These ideas were usually nonexistent during WWII. The average American soldier was male, 26 years old, U.S.-born, and read at a middle-school level. A sizable percent of them were completely illiterate as a result of a deemphasis on education during the Great Depression. Christianity was a prominent factor in the lives of some, such as Billy Pilgrim, who served as a chaplain's assistant, and he "had a meek faith in Jesus which most soldiers found putrid" (Vonnegut 31). While many men did not know much about the deep entanglements of the war or the country they were about to enter, they volunteered by the masses for the sake of U.S. freedom and victory. Many men were just out of boyhood and wished to make a name for themselves by honorably fighting and laying their lives down for the U.S.A. While the army was not as technologically advanced and the average soldier was not as educated or prepared as today, the millions of men who valiantly gave their lives and time for the U.S's sake did not do so in vain.

source: www.wikipedia.com

Chapter 2- Foil Characters (Roland Weary and Billy Pilgrim)

Think of a stereotypical, middle-school bully. Does a chubby, fumbling, power-hungry fool come to mind? A boy, calling himself a man, who has been put down so frequently in his own experiences that he has nursed an addiction to putting down others? Otherwise known as, Roland Weary.

Who is the bully's victim? The scrawny boy...the boy who lacks both the desire and physical strength to "save himself" or simply get out of the bully's path of insult. The weak, awkward boy, a.k.a. Billy Pilgrim.

While Weary and Pilgrim's relationship behind the newly-constructed German lines is more complex than a elementary bully and his victim, the two form a hearty example of foil characters in The Slaughterhouse Five. Roland Weary,  "was at the end of an unhappy childhood" and "had been unpopular because he was stupid and fat and mean, and smelled like bacon no matter how much he washed" (Vonnegut 35). He has been "ditched" numerous times in his life and he responds to the despicable feeling of abandonment by "finding somebody who was even more unpopular than himself...and then he would find some pretext for beating the shit out of him" (Vonnegut 35). In stark contrast, Billy Pilgrim is a weak, funny-looking boy of 21 years, who has been caught as an American chaplain's assistant behind German lines. His civilian shoes full of snow and body freezing under his lack of a real military uniform, he gave up his desire to live. He was a "Joe College," an optometry student in a small town and anything but a soldier or a valiant survivor. The only reason, ironically, that he survived the forests was the shoving and abuse from Weary to get him to continue walking. Weary is aggressive and wishes to be a colonel, so much so that he keeps a hidden whistle and attempts to give orders to his pitiful regiment of four men. Pilgrim is lonely and fragile, and has no desire to even continue with his life, which makes him easily submissive to the constant verbal and physical abuse of Weary. While Weary was determined to reach camp, make up for his unimportant life, and receive glory with the "Three Musketeers" and for saving Pilgrim, Billy Pilgrim put no effort in for his own survival and at times wished to be left behind as he entered into the insanity of being "unstuck in time" and feeling the onset of near death. Being foil characters, the two conflict and consequently leave noisy and conspicuous trails, easy for German soldiers to find.

"Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni..." ?- Chapter 1

"That must have been in 1964 or so- whatever the last year was for the New York's World's Fair.

  Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni" (Vonnegut 11).

As I was reading Chapter 1 of The Slaughterhouse-Five, I stumbled across the phrase "eheu, fugaces labuntur anni." At first, I dismissed it as one of Vonnegut's many eccentric phrases in the novel. I googled the phrase after reading about how he took his daughter and her friend Allison, who were both outfitted in the best of their white party dresses, to the last World's Fair and to see his war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare. The phrase means, in Latin: "Alas! How the fleeting years glide away." The sentence was taken from Horace's Odes, or his collection of four books of lyric poems, which date from 23-13 BC. He modeled them after the shorter Greek lyric poems of Pindar, Sappho, and Alcaeus.

With this allusion, Vonnegut was reflecting on how his youth and his years with his daughter have passed. Also, he looks back at the time of World Fairs, which now depict a simpler, more innocent past. He tells the audience with this allusion that he too is feeling the effects of aging on his memories. The last time he visited O'Hare, his daughter was only a girl in a pristine party dress, and looking back as he writes his Dresden book, he realizes his "fleeting years have glided away".

Direct Characterization- Chapter 1

"I have become an old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls, with his sons full grown" (Vonnegut 2).

With this humorous, pensive quote, Vonnegut establishes a strong example of direct characterization. Speaking from his own point of view and about himself, he reveals that his life has seen many years and many notable memories. He calls himself an "old fart," which humorously and lightly excuses himself from the flawless, chronological book one would expect from a younger writer. Also, by alluding to his Pall Malls, he tells the audience that he is a chronic cigarette smoker, maybe an addict, and is fully aware of how his life has progressed. In mentioning the growth of his sons, Vonnegut also characterizes himself as a proud father of the young adults he has raised. Perhaps longing for his youth, Vonnegut directly says that he has become old and is only left with "his memories and his Pall Malls," while his grown sons have left to live their own lives. Vonnegut is therefore left to conjure up the most important memories for his ongoing "Dresden book," The Slaughterhouse-Five.

The Beginning.

Starting my AP Lang blog now...