So goes the cycle of war

Finishing Slaughterhouse Five left more unanswered question that answers. As I was approaching the end I expected to come up with a conclusion about the book, but as I passed the pages, the book proved itself more difficult. My main inquiry since the beginning was to know whether Billy Pilgrim and Kurt Vonnegut were the same person. In my previous Blog, “Behind a Crazy Man,” I mentioned some similarities between Kurt Vonnegut and Kilgore Trout, so now my inquiry was whether Billy, Vonnegut, and Trout were the same person.  Obviously the book didn´t state: “yes, they are the same people, “ or “no, they are completely different people,” but after reading specific parts of the book I concluded that they are not the same person, but Vonnegut built the two characters in reference to his own personality and past experiences. Kurt Vonnegut had a difficult life. His mother committed suicide when he was 22 years old, and he was recruited for the war at a very young age. These incidents may have made him a stronger person and to talk and describe death in a vague way, giving it no importance. The same happened to Billy, and in pg. 182 and 183 he described the death of his wife Veronica in event form and showed no feelings. Also the book is written in third person, but towards the end, in page 212 there´s a switch to first person: “No Billy and the rest were being marched into the ruins by their guards. I was there.” Vonnegut, as a writer described what Billy did after the Dresden bombing, but then he puts himself into the scene. Similarities between the three of them existed, but it will never be clear if Billy and Vonnegut were the same person.

There were parts of the book that I wanted to stop reading, but I had to, I wanted to know how it ended and what it taught. Since chapter one I knew how the book was going to end: “Poo-tee-weet,” but what did this bird´s song meant. In the class discussion we concluded that it meant that war left nothing. After wars and bombings all that is left is the cry of a bird, nothing about war is worth it and it will lead to nothing. But what did this war mean for Billy and Vonnegut. “His companions had insisted that he arm himself, since God only knew what sorts of killers might be in burrows in the face of the moon…soldiers who would never quit killing until they themselves were killed. “ War only leaves war. The winner will fade and be forgotten in a short period of time, but the feeling of revenge will never fade. “That was one of the things about the end of war: absolutely anybody who wanted a weapon could have one.” The weak will loose and the strong will win, but some one will always come in to take those places, war is a cycle that will never stop. And at the end of each cycle, before that start of a new one, all that is left in “Poo-tee-weet” (pg. 215) and “so it goes.”

Behind A Crazy Man

When Billy was in the veteran´s hospital he met Eliot Rosewater, the man who was assigned a bed next to Billy´s. Soon after Billy´s arrival Rosewater introduced Billy to science fiction books, by Kilgore Trout. Not much was said about Trout during Billy´s stay in the hospital, but some years after he encountered Trout in the streets of his home town, Ilium.

My first impression of Trout was that he was a crazy, mad, stubborn, rude, old man, because he was talking to a group of kids that worked for him, and he treated them very poorly. Also because he was the writer of many science fiction books with weird things in them. I didn´t like the character at all. Billy then talked with Trout and invited him to his 18^th anniversary celebration. During the diner party, Trout made fun of Maggie White: “All the great chefs in the world are there. It´s a beautiful ceremony. Just before the casket is closed, the mourners sprinkle parsley and paprika on the deceased.” (pg 171) Maggie had asked him what the most famous thing he had written was and he responded like this but everything was made up. They continue talking and Trout tells her the following: “I´m not the only one who´s listening. God is listening, too. And on Judgement Day he´s going to tell you all the things you said and did. If it turns out they´re bad things instead of good things, that’s too bad for you, because you´ll burn forever and ever. The burning never stops hurting.” (pg. 172) Again Trout is just making fun of Maggie and wanted to scare her.

The humor Trout showed, made me like him more. It reminded me of my grandfather, uncles and mother, all who have a sense of humor. They never hurt people, but they make fun of them or things, whenever they can.

Another thing that interested me about Trout was the topic of one of his books: “[Trout] had written a book about money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.” (pg 167) This portrays the society in which we live in today. People now-a-days think that money is everything, the need for power and wealth has become an obsession for many, that people will go to any expenses in order to achieve it. A clear example is the current situation in Colombia. The people´s obsession for money and power has made many corrupt, robbing the country’s money for their own benefit.  

Even though Trout is a made up character, I see Kurt Vonnegut reflected in him. Thanks to the reviews of the book, “our finest black-humorist…” (The Atlantic Monthly), and the constant humor used in Slaughterhouse Five, we can know that Vonnegut was a humorist. Also he was “known for his humanist beliefs,” (Wikipedia) which is represented in Trout´s book described above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut

Do We Need (tortured) Entertainment?

In his blog “Entertaining Differences,”Alberto Andrade talks about the time when Billy was displayed in the Tralfamadorian zoo, and compares it the colonization period, when the Europeans used to display Indians in their courts. I agree with what he is saying, and I wonder how the Indians use to feel. They were people with different customs and views, and they were ridiculed by the Europeans who felt they were inferior, just because they were more “civilized” but who were they to judge whether they were more “civilized” and more human than the rest of the population of the world?

Alberto also mentioned circuses, and as I was reading the description of the zoo: “He was forty-four years old, on display under a geodesic dome…he was naked. The Tralfamadorians were interested in his body-all of it.” (pg. 111) I started thinking about animals, and how they could feel in the zoo. Just like Billy, “in a simulated Earthling habitat,”(112) many animal live in cages that the zoo keepers try to make as similar to their habitat, but many times they don´t succeed. They are isolated from their community and their families. Even though humans are consider the most intelligent race, animals still feel. How would you feel if at a young age you were taken from your parents and put in display, 24/7? On the contrary, Billy never says that he feels isolated or sad, like I believe animals feel, in fact the way he describes everything makes it seems as if he were enjoying all of the attention because every time he moved, “the crowd [of Tralfamadorians] went wild.” (pg 112) As Alberto stated, “these things are a product of his [Billy´s] imagination,” and it makes sense because in the zoo, Billy is the center of attention, which could reflect that he feels lonely in “earth” and is crazy enough to invent a world of his one.

A Shooting Disorder

Once Billy, Lazzaro and Edgar Derby were talking Lazzaro started talking about revenge, and that it was the sweetest thing in life. (139) Lazzaro´s personality and the way he talked reminded me of the shooting that happened in Norway a few months ago, and the Virginia Tech Massacre that occurred 2 years ago. Both were deadly shooting, that took many by surprise. In that first one a man called Anders Behring Breink bombed a few government buildings in also and then headed for an island summer camp for young people, killing about 80 people.

In Virginia Tech, a man called Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people, and then committed suicide. The people he killed were university campus students. He first killed two people at around 7:45 in the morning, and two hours later he killed the rest.

These two massacres, like many others can occur for many reasons. People may have different views, and reasons to do so, but when cases like these happen, especially when one man does everything, mental problems have to be involved.

When Paul Lazzaro talks about getting revenge with the Blue Fairy Godmother he says the following: “I´m gonna have him shot…He´ll get home after the war. He´ll be a big hero. The dames´ll be climbing all over him…a couple of years´ll go by. And then one day there´ll be a knock on his door. He´ll answer the door, and there´ll be a stranger out there. The stranger´ll ask him if he´s so-and-so. When he says he is, the stranger´ll will say, “Paul Lazzaro sent me.” And he´ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger´ll let him think a couple of seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life´s gonna be without a pecker. Then he´ll shoot him once in the gut and walk away.” (pg. 140) Before that he also tells Billy about a time when he killed a dog by making him eat a steak with knives inside, because the dog bit him.

 

Lazzaro´s case is different than Cho´s or Breink´s, because war can have a lot of effects of people, but still there has to be something wrong inside all of their heads. It is not normal to kill 80 young people, or 32 university students, not matter what your reasons or beliefs are. And it´s not normal to have revenge on a dog because he bit you. 

Why the FLASHBACKS?

Constantly during the book Billy Pilgrim goes back in time to different moments of his life. During his travel to Tralfamadoria “…Billy was flung back into his childhood. He was twelve years old…at the rim of Grand Canyon.” (88-89) Moment later “[he] made a peewee jump of only ten days…still touring the west with his family.” (89) All the flashbacks Billy has reminded me of a movie a just saw, called "Source Code," and made me wonder what was the purpose of Billy´s constant flash backs Basically the movie is based around the same scene, and the protagonist goes back to it constantly, trying to figure out the responsible of the bombing of a train, who will later put a nuclear bomb in another place of the city. Like Billy who knows what happens in the future: “…the high school teacher who would be shot to death in Dresden.” (Pg. 99), Colter Stevens also becomes aware of what is going to happen next, and he acts accordingly. The movie takes place like in a four dimension world, because Stevens, who is a dead soldier, takes the body of a civilian on board of the bombed train, but when he goes back the bomb had already occur. So like Billy, he goes back in time but only for eight minutes: also known as the source code. (An experiment that is based on the theory that after people die the brain is still alive for eight minute.) The goal Colter has is to find out who the criminal was, to be able to stop him form activating the nuclear bomb authorities know he will activate.

 

The fact that Colter has a goal got me thinking if the flashbacks Billy has have a purpose. Every time Billy goes back in time random information appears. Once he went back and “woke up with his head under a blanket in a ward for nonviolent patients in a veterans hospital…” (Pg. 99) Later I learned that Billy himself went to that hospital because he was going crazy.  Also during the description of Billy´s stay at that hospital, it is said that Billy had a fiancée called Valencia Merble. As I mentioned before, every time Billy travels in time, random information is given. With this observation I can say that the purpose of this time travels, until know, is to inform. Billy describe his experiences in the war, and with his time travel we are able to know information about his past, and therefore make connections with his future experiences that are to come. 

IS IGNORANCE STRENGTH?

When the Tralfamadorians take Billy, he asks them why him and their answer is a very simple one: “well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.” (Pg. 77) With this simple conversation I noticed that in other words, the most prominent characteristic of a human being: curiosity.  We are always trying to figure out things, whether it’s the simplest game or the most important theory. Personally I relate my self with this, because I also try to figure things out, and constantly I wonder the `why` of things. One time I was at my aunt’s house and they had two metal things perfectly embedded two each other, and the goal was to separate them. After trying for about 20 minutes I couldn’t, and I didn´t let my cousin rest until he showed me how to do it. Even though the game had no meaning, I HAD to know how to solve it, not knowing is a concept that human being in general can´t handle, and it strives them to investigate and investigate until coming with an answer. Tralfamdorians are the exact opposite: “All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simple is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I´ve said before, bugs in amber.” (Pg. 86) They don´t try to explain everything, they simple let things be, “only on earth is there any talk of free will.” (Pg. 86) This doesn´t mean they are stupid or lazy to find the `why` of things, they just don´t fell the necessity to do so, they can live with not knowing. Free will and curiosity is what dominates human beings, “earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is…” (Pg. 85) but does it always lead to good things? With the exception of few, as I said before, human are moved by curiosity, and even though great discoveries and explanations have been made by humans, does this makes us more wise or strong, or is it better to live by “ignorance is strength”? (Orwell, 1984). 

So goes death...

Before Billy gets high jacked by the Tralfamadores, he goes back to the time when some German soldiers kidnapped him. He tells that at the moment he and Weary were caught they were having an argument, and that the German soldiers took everything from them. After that, they had to walk barefoot, until they reached a cottage, where they stayed for a few days and after they had to walk again. They reached a train station, where the many prisoners where sorted into military range and country of origin. During the description of his journey, Billy constantly mentions dead men, or death in general.

I couldn´t help noticing that there was a pattern in the use of “so it goes.” After Billy mentions death, it is always followed by “so it goes.”

•    “They were irregulars, armed and clothed fragmentarily with junk taken from real soldiers who were newly dead. So it goes.” (pg. 52)
•       “His bandy legs were thrust into golden cavalry boots which he had taken from a dead Hungarian colonel on the Russian front. So it goes.” (pg. 53)
•       “Now they were dying in the snow, feeling nothing, turning the snow to the color of raspberry sherbet. So it goes.” (pg 54)
•       “There was a battle there. People were dying there. So it goes.” (pg. 65)
•       “The Germans carried the corpse out. The corpse was Wild Bob. "So it goes." (pg. 69)

I know that Billy Pilgrim is Kurt Vonnegut: the author did go to the Second World War, but are all the events that occur in the book true? Is the use of “so it goes,” unique to Vonnegut himself, or Billy Pilgrim the character, and why does this happen? Maybe Billy or Vonnegut was affected by the many deaths present and that he had to presence in the world war. The use of “so it goes” may be a sign of respect towards the dead, or it could also show that Billy feels nothing towards death: it happens, and “so it goes.” 

How Many "Legs" Does War Have?

What is it about war that it has so many different effects on people? In slaughterhouse five there are many effects present. For example, the main character, Billy Pilgrim, starts recalling incidents that occurred to him during the Second World War, but as he is telling his story, he goes back and forth in time. This got me thinking about the effects Billy suffered. There are the physical effects that almost all soldiers suffer, but the ones that worry me the most are the mental ones. Some soldiers have the fortune of suffering none, but most end war with mental distortions. What are these? Are they specific to cases? Do they happen during or after war?

Billy suffers delusions and hallucinations during war. As he is walking with “the three musketeers” commanded by Roland Weary, he recalls past memories but  also foreshadows the future: was the description of his future true, or where they hopes? By reading his descriptions, I was able to infer that Billy was a very calm guy, who was at war because he had to and had no intention of wasting any energy. He took on the war with as little interest as possible, and had no intent on really fighting.

Then there´s Roland Weary, who as I said before, thought he was the commander of “the three musketeers” and Billy. He is the complete opposite of Billy: always motivated, giving orders and eager to fight. Has war made him this ways? Has the cruel conditions he has had to overtake shaped him into showing that he was a strong personality?

War may be defined as a simple thing, “a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary),

but it’s the complete opposite of simple. 

Hatred Reborn

As I was reading the beginning of “Slaughterhouse Five” I could only think about WAR. Off Corse, the book was taking about war, about Germans, about the Second World War. At that same moment my mother said “Turn on the TV, at this time, ten years ago, the twin towers fell.” Not only the twin towers, the pentagon was also struck, and an attack was planned for the white house, that never reached it´s destiny. I turned the TV on and on CNN the vice president of the United States was giving a very inspiring speech at the Pentagon.  He mentioned the attacks, the lives lost, and the heroes that 9/11 made. He mentioned a particular fact: “After the attacks of 9/11, 2 million people joined the military forces to respond the declaration of war that happened that day.” He continued talking about the people that were affected that day that will never be forgotten.  This got me thinking about the dystopias and utopias we talked about in class. Ten years ago, the United States was a dystopia like no other, the complete opposite of what one wishes to be the perfect day, “and so it goes.” After that day the world changed forever. Differences were marked, hatred was reborn, and a war started that will be very difficult to end. 

"The Children´s Crusade"

Over the years, children have been affected by wars all over the world. Some have been part of the wars as soldiers, and others as prisoners; “You were just babies in the war-like the ones up stairs.” (Vonnegut 14) Said Mary O’Hare, wife of Bernard B O’Hare. Even though the word babies doesn´t really apply, I got her point. She was frustrated, heart broken by the fact that her own babies in a few years had to waste they 20´s to fight a war that wasn´t even theirs.  This reminded me of the recruitment of soldiers the United Sates does. Most young adults, after graduation from school have to leave everything behind, to go millions of miles away from home, daily risking their lives for a war that many think unnecessary. It also reminded me of the book, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” that is a perfect example of how war affects the lives of many children. In this case the boys are much younger and one is a prisoner a war, a Jewish in a concentration camp, and the other is the son of a Nazi soldiers, who runs concentration camps. The book is ironic because the children that come from very different backgrounds end up being best friends, and the Nazi soldier ends up killing his own son: “what comes around, goes around.” Unfortunately this lesson should have taught the Nazi soldier something, but no, since that day he still continued segregating Jewish and even though his “hate” towards them ended up killing his own son he didn´t stop.  Why should children pay for the mistakes of their parents? Why should young adults be deprived of a young man´s life and education, to got fight a war that isn’t theirs and they might no even believe in it. 

"The Perfect Life"

As I was reading “The Perfect Life” I felt disappointed, sad, and I even started thinking that maybe the title was ironic: he isn´t describing his perfect life, but he was describing his life, ironically giving it the title of the perfect life, even though it was the complete opposite.  Then I started to make connections with the people around me, and I couldn´t think of one that followed a similar life. I thought about my grandfather´s brother, who is constantly seeking for new goals, and I also thought about my grandfather, who is a very sedentary, calm person. At that moment I got scared that my grandfather followed this kind of life, where a person just lets life pass as though it means nothing, that everything is indifferent, and nothing makes them happy or disappointments. But this couldn´t be true: my grandfather does have aspirations, many things makes him happy and sad, he is not waiting for the moment to die, and be forgotten forever. NO. Nobody could follow the life described in “The Perfect Life.” Maybe there are people that have great aspirations and potential, but are too lazy or never get the opportunity to accomplish them, but even those people feel, they get disappointed, and they care. The perfect life described in the poem could not possibly be either the perfect of the imperfect life, it´s simply not life.