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.”