Sunday, April 13, 2014
The Unstuck in Homework Blog Post...
Since we've read so much more than we've talked about in Slaughterhouse Five, pick something you find fascinating, intriguing, puzzling, confounding, hilarious or disturbing anywhere from chapters 2 through 5 and share your musings on that topic. If it is a topic that comes up in more than one chapter--awesome. If not, also awesome. Just share and muse, muse and share.
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Vonnegut coined the phrase, “so it goes,” but what is most interesting is the sentence the prefaces the iconic line. Vonnegut often makes death relatable. He talks about the war and says, “Now they were dying in the snow, feeling nothing, turning the snow to the color of raspberry sherbet. So it goes. ” He transforms blood soaked snow into a luxurious dessert. Vonnegut makes it so death is not the thing that is focused on, it scene. There is too much death to dwell on it, hence the “so it goes,” so he decides to stop the dramatization of the actual loss of life. Again when Vonnegut describes the scene Billy Pilgrim sees as he enters Germany as a prisoner of war. He says, “There was so much to see—dragon’s teeth, killing machines, corpses with bare feet that were blue and ivory. So it goes.” War is mystified. A dead body frosting into blue is not aging flesh; it is a smooth rare ivory. He turns war into a realm of its own with machine guns and dragons. Vonnegut’s preface to “so it goes” always makes us moving on from the horror much easier to swallow.
ReplyDelete"His name was Paul Lazzaro. He was tiny, and not only were his bones and teeth rotten, but his skin was disgusting. Lazzaro was polka-dotted all over with dime-sized scars. He had had many plagues of boils." This character is a shining beacon of a reference from the Bible! My main man Lazarus, in the Old Testament, was severely crippled by leprosy. When he died of the disease, his family placed him in a tomb and sealed it. Jesus was pals with Lazarus and his family, and a few days after his burial, Jesus went to the tomb, drew back the door (much to the family's initial dismay, given the fact that a body had been lying there rotting for a few days), and called out for Lazarus to stand and exit. He did so. Perhaps the reference here in Billy Pilgrim's narrative is a comment on what he believes about that story. Paul Lazarro returns a little later, leaning on two men for support. It could be that his story yields a miraculous ending, like that of Lazarus. In that case, Vonnegut would be painting the miraculous biblical scene into a more comprehensible version. But it could also be that Lazzaro's story spirals into deeper tragedy, like the majority of the lives we encounter in the book. In that case, Vonnegut may be almost ridiculing the Lazarus tale. Whichever is the case, I appreciate nods to classic writings and therefore was tickled by this ref.
ReplyDeleteWhat is free will and does it truly exist? Vonnegut plays around with this question throughout most of these first, initial chapters. Introducing the tralfamadorians, he develops a sense of time and purpose that would lead one to question free will. When the tralfamadorians see humans, they see the entirety of that humans life. They see everything they have been, everything they are, and everything they will be. So, if these aliens no what our future is before we do, there is an implication of predetermined destiny. The tralfamadorians even comment on the fact that Earth is the only planet foolish enough to have an idea of free will. The tralfamadorians understand the future is set in stone and do not act in any such way that could change the outcome. For example, in chapter 5, Billy asks his hosts if they know how the universe comes to an end. They answer yes, and explain that their (the tralfamadorians) desire for better spacecraft will bring about the end. Billy than asks why they don't stop making spacecraft, to which the tralfamadorians reply, “He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way.” The concept of free will does not exist for the aliens. Humans in general view themselves to be at the center of the universe. It is in human nature to over state the importance of humanity in the universe as a whole. It is possible that Vonnegut's commentary on free will is a larger commentary on the fact that humans are not always at the center of everything and that they do not always have complete control over everything.
ReplyDeleteI agree with a lot of what Channing said about Vonnegut's portrayal of death and war in the book. The phrase "So it goes" pushes war aside. With this, it appears Vonnegut wants to draw the reader's focus away from war as much as possible. Can he make war seem like no bid deal and make social commentary on it at the same time?
ReplyDeleteOne scene I found both intriguing and partly confusing was the scene in which the Germans take a picture of Billy's and Weary's feet and then set up a staged "captured" photo. First off, it seems kinda funny at first because we all know that while the German soldiers are attempting to humiliate the American army, they were in fact forced to swap shoes with the disheveled German soldiers. Second, i was curious as to why Vonnegut included this scene with the photo of the fake surrender. Was it to say that the war seems staged sometimes to the people that are living it? Is it surreal to them? Was the scene intended to poke fun at the Germans' obsession with order and image?
"All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance." I still can't get over how cool that perspective is. And when I picture the rocky mountains, I imagine being able to glide over to any far or near ridge on a high speed sliding ladder--like time is neatly organized into some endless bookshelf, everything is there, but you just have to look. And I think that this is the idea that Vonnegut tries to drive home. Even though an event in our lives or our lifetime has passed, it is forever a part of either us as individuals or humanity. It has shaped who we are, and it continues to shape what we will become. An obvious example is WWII, even though it formally ended in the 40's, we still feel its effects in the technology it left behind, the families it broke, or the way it changed international relations. It's like everything is connected. One event in time branches into another, and there is no beginning or end.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that Billy's change in perspective after learning the Tralfamadorian way of life and theories. Whereas before life and death would be a clean-cut, absolute moment or event, he realizes that they are actually abstract cycles and indescribable phases. This is probably the aftermath of Billy's disillusionment from the war; however, I like the changed way he takes into account some complicated subjects in life.
ReplyDeleteI would actually disagree with both Leigh and Channing about the phrase, "So it goes." Perhaps it's because we were told beforehand that Slaughterhouse-Five was a criticism of the senseless violence of war and so forth, but to me, the phrase "So it goes" serves not to dismiss but to highlight each death. To me, the phrase is not a sign of indifference, rather it is a criticism of the indifference that we commonly have when we think about violence, war, death, etc. How often do we shrug off the death that occur in wars thinking along the lines of, "so it goes"? Whether it be the hobo who died in the train, or the soldier executed for cowardice, or the thousands of soldiers dead on the battlefield, we accept these deaths as something that occurs naturally, as part of life or as part of war, which is part of life. And it really isn't, is it? That we create organizations of thousands and thousands of people just to kill other thousands and thousands of people? This isn't how it should go. So to me, the phrase "so it goes" is juxtaposed with something that isn't how it should go, something that shouldn't be accepted with the phrase, "so it goes." To me, it makes it that much more difficult to accept each death and horror that occurs in the book, it actually makes me focus on something that I wouldn't have otherwise.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I am hearing about the great american (and not only) writers of the 20th century I hear the phrases like "he shot himself in the age of sixty", "he was a troubled soul", "alcoholic", "drug user" and etc. The phrase "so it goes" in this blog was already more complex and better than I am capable of, but if I am asked to write about the thing that really amused I just cannot pick anything else. For me the phrase "so it goes" summarizes the whole idea that was traveling between Hemingway, Remark, to Kerouac, Vonnegut and Hunter Thomson. I do not know why, may be all wars are the same or that the whole legacy of twentieth century is to make us completely oblivious to the sacredness of the human live and in the same time celebrate it as much as it only can be celebrated. And may be the children's crusade from the first part, the children's crusade that we see Billy getting involved in, is the crusade of Vonnegut and other writers to bring the true identity of the world as they saw it.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the cheery, singing Brits that Billy encounters at the German prison camp. Their inclusion, on the surface, seems absolutely out of nowhere. I mean, here we are, in one of the darkest, scariest, most depressing places you could imagine. Instead of drilling that into our heads with horrific imagery however, Vonnegut takes a total left turn and introduces us to some of the most out-of-place characters it's possible to have in a Nazi prison: cheery, well-nourished, dapper Englishmen. They're hospitable, they're polite, they are "exactly what the Germans thought Englishmen should be." At first, they only serve to lighten the mood, to raise the reader's spirits. Then, at least for me, they become something far more sinister. The Germans, are essentially, keeping the men here as their pets. I mean, it's what we do with our animals, isn't it? We feed them, keep them healthy, and let them play their silly animal games as long as they want, provided they're always there when we desire them. Is this commentary on how war diminishes our value for human life? How war dehumanizes its victims, or how we often create joy when there is truly none to be found? Regardless of what he meant by it, well played, Vonnegut. Well played.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that intrigued me was when the Tralfamadorians tried to describe the different sexes to Billy and how they reproduced. These identifying characteristics that help the Tralfamadorians discriminated between the multiple different sexes, which are necessary for reproduction, can only be seen in the fourth dimension. Which is even more peculiar is that the Tralfamadorians inform billy that their our 5 other aspects to reproducing for humans besides a man and woman. These other factors can only be seen in the fourth dimension. I feel like Vonnegut is implying that this fourth dimension is actually the factors of life that humans over look. Especially since mankind has lost touch with its roots and only focuses on the things that interest it rather than the things that matter.
ReplyDeleteThe perpetual element in the narrator's story is the lack of control for one's own life. For all that Billy's stories offers us ,we are certain that things just happen to him. He does not necessarily appear to be in control of anything. The time travel also throws things up in the air as the reader drifts with Billy about the nooks and crannies of his life. He always appears to find himself in situations and mostly watching or merely reacting. He seldom takes initiative or evokes a sentiment of intention. The most profound utterance from Billy after myriad events is the arid phrase ,"So it goes". It portrays a dramatic sense of resignation to life. Perhaps this notion really carries with it the sentiment of the whole novel. War compels people to do things and in the end leaves us helpless and used. It is no surprise then that most people after war ,including Billy,like Hemingway and T.S. Eliott go about life's motions in such lethargy and abandon sifting through old memories to see if anything can be salvaged. This realization that perhaps nothing about war can be positively reminiscent blurs Billy's perspective of the future. The whole concept of "Tralfamadorian time" is really Billy's conception of how he sees things. The war was a trap from which everything else danced around including his life,without much rope to let him leave.
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