Comments and Stuff for The Slaughter House 5
Matt Burt
Q: The Illusion of Time as Linear What are the implications of seeing all points of time at one time? This is discussed at the ending of Waking Life as the character realizes he's dead, and it's also how the main character of Rabbit Hole copes with the loss of her child. It's clearly a way to make tragedy easier to handle. Any other implications? How would you live your life differently if you took this perspective on time? (Try it for the rest of the day!)
A:
I think it has great benefits and great disadvantages. On the bright side, you always know what to expect, and therefore never really have to worry about anything. But on the negative end of it, you will never be able to be spontaneous or surprised, and life will be a boring repetition of events you already know the outcome of.
Q:
Breaking the Fourth Wall Or in books - metafiction. Vonnegut likes to talk about what he's writing as he writes. The entire first chapter is done this way, and from then he pops in from time to time to tell us what really happened to him. His isn't Billy Pilgrim, he's just using Billy to help him explain his story. What do you think of this technique? Is it effective in any way, or does it detract from the story being told? Can you think of films or TV shows that employ this in a way that works?
A:
I think it adds a cool outlook on the situations presented. You learn what the general opinion of a situation is, rather than just that of the main character, and you feel you are getting to know both the main character and the narrator through the narrator's description of the characters and setting. I also think he will bring this all together at the end; it seems like he is building up information to present a twist to finish off the story.
Q:
Earthlings are the great explainers... We need to know how things work and why things happen. We have an obsession with understanding things. Is that good or bad? When Billy finds the lumps in his pocket, he's happy even not knowing what they are, and it bothered me a bit that he didn't just look at them right away. Is it better to enjoy the moment without trying to understand or explain it?
A:
I think understanding is important. We need to make an effort to understand if we ever want to progress. If we just enjoy the moment we won't develop any meaning behind it, and it will be easily forgotten.
Q: Why you? Why anybody? We tend to foster an illusion of universal justice: we often believe that good things should happen to kind people who work hard. But it's just an illusion. Life isn't fair. Freud wrote a book about the importance of people getting rid of these kinds of illusions about life in order to life a more authentic existence. Are these illusory beliefs about life useful or detrimental?
A:
I think that these beliefs about life are useful. If everybody thought that there was no reward for acting properly, everybody would be living for only themselves. We would lose ethics and standards, thinking that it doesn't matter what we do.
Matt Burt
Q: The Illusion of Time as Linear What are the implications of seeing all points of time at one time? This is discussed at the ending of Waking Life as the character realizes he's dead, and it's also how the main character of Rabbit Hole copes with the loss of her child. It's clearly a way to make tragedy easier to handle. Any other implications? How would you live your life differently if you took this perspective on time? (Try it for the rest of the day!)
A:
I think it has great benefits and great disadvantages. On the bright side, you always know what to expect, and therefore never really have to worry about anything. But on the negative end of it, you will never be able to be spontaneous or surprised, and life will be a boring repetition of events you already know the outcome of.
Q:
Breaking the Fourth Wall Or in books - metafiction. Vonnegut likes to talk about what he's writing as he writes. The entire first chapter is done this way, and from then he pops in from time to time to tell us what really happened to him. His isn't Billy Pilgrim, he's just using Billy to help him explain his story. What do you think of this technique? Is it effective in any way, or does it detract from the story being told? Can you think of films or TV shows that employ this in a way that works?
A:
I think it adds a cool outlook on the situations presented. You learn what the general opinion of a situation is, rather than just that of the main character, and you feel you are getting to know both the main character and the narrator through the narrator's description of the characters and setting. I also think he will bring this all together at the end; it seems like he is building up information to present a twist to finish off the story.
Q:
Earthlings are the great explainers... We need to know how things work and why things happen. We have an obsession with understanding things. Is that good or bad? When Billy finds the lumps in his pocket, he's happy even not knowing what they are, and it bothered me a bit that he didn't just look at them right away. Is it better to enjoy the moment without trying to understand or explain it?
A:
I think understanding is important. We need to make an effort to understand if we ever want to progress. If we just enjoy the moment we won't develop any meaning behind it, and it will be easily forgotten.
Q: Why you? Why anybody? We tend to foster an illusion of universal justice: we often believe that good things should happen to kind people who work hard. But it's just an illusion. Life isn't fair. Freud wrote a book about the importance of people getting rid of these kinds of illusions about life in order to life a more authentic existence. Are these illusory beliefs about life useful or detrimental?
A:
I think that these beliefs about life are useful. If everybody thought that there was no reward for acting properly, everybody would be living for only themselves. We would lose ethics and standards, thinking that it doesn't matter what we do.
Timeline
BATTLEGROUNDS:
A LITERARY ANALYSIS OF KURT VONNEGUTS’ THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5
War does not only destroy homes and countries; it also destroys minds. Kurt Vonnegut’s The Slaughter House Five describes the life of a fictional character, the dilemmas he must overcome during the Second World War, and his life after returning home. While on the battlegrounds of the Second World War, the main character of The Slaughterhouse 5, Billy Pilgrim, combats mental illness on the battleground of his mind. He faces hallucinations, fatigue, and oddities in his personality.
Billy Pilgrim has lost his grip on reality by developing a habit of hallucinating and creating a fabricated reality in which time is not linear. The most prominent and reoccurring hallucination he has is that he travels sideways through time. Billy first ‘travelled through time’ while resting in World War 2, and travelled back to when he was a child.[1] He had recently been in a traumatic experience, and currently enduring harsh conditions, leading him to also be fatigued, and contributing to a state of shock, making this event all the more likely to be a hallucination. He also believes he has been abducted by aliens. Coincidently, he had just finished a bottle of wine, and “saw the late movie backwards, then forwards.”[2] His hallucinations always seem to come in a state of debility, almost as if they are daydreams that he perceives to be real. While on this planet he believes he was taken to, he was held in a zoo with Montana Wildhack, who bore him children. Coincidently, he has seen pictures of this woman and finds her attractive, making her a common subject of a regular person’s daydream, and Billy’s hallucinations[3]. Billy’s daydreams seem to be linked to memories and stories that he has heard and experienced. He seems to live his life as if the outcome has already been decided.
Vonnegut illustrates Billy Pilgrim’s illness through fatigue and oddities in his personality. During the war, when his first signs of mental illness appeared, was the first time he failed to disguise his problems. After being set free, he and a group of other American POW survivors were raiding abandoned cities, and despite being surrounded by death for the past few years and being held in a slaughterhouse, the only time he cried was when the Americans overworked a pair of horses.[4] For a person who has survived the fire bombing of Dresden, seen himself die (he thinks) and experienced one of the fiercest battles of the Second World War, he is oddly reactive to pain and suffering. The Free Dictionary Medical Dictionary describes fatigue as a “physical and/or mental exhaustion that can be triggered by stress… mental and physical illness or disease.”[5] After returning home and experiencing the effects of mental illness for about 20 years he begins to have trouble keeping consciousness. “Billy had fallen asleep at work before. It was funny at first. Now Billy was starting to get worried about it, and about his mind in general.”[6] If you know you have a problem, you are not too far gone. Billy Pilgrim did manage to get help with his mental illness for a brief period of time, but after leaving the hospital did not maintain his sanity.
Vonnegut created deficiencies in Billy’s train of thought that effected his performance in the war. Because of his hallucinations he was slowing down Ronald Weary and the scouts, three soldiers who had the misfortune of being trapped behind enemy lines with Billy Pilgrim. Germans captured them all and Billy Pilgrim became the only survivor. Had he not lost his marbles, he could have handled himself and the other three may have survived the war. The scouts left Ronald and Billy behind[7], and were later shot as they tried to survive on their own.[8] This left Weary in an emotional turmoil; he had been stranded behind enemy lines and left by his allies. Once Billy had been captured, he stopped functioning properly. A person who “does not take care of appearance or cleanliness”[9] is showing signs of mental illness; Billy wore a coat ripped down the back and a pair of boots that had been painted silver. These left him with trouble walking and keeping warm. Most would try to rectify these at any given chance. While he was captured, and the Englishmen were entertaining the American POWs with their interpretation of Cinderella, Billy found it funny. The play may have been comical, but Billy had to be removed, tied down to a hospital bed, and given morphine before he would calm down. He was not even conscious of the play for most of the performance. Throughout the war he never reacted to any complications that would traumatize most, such as the fire bombing of Dresden, or the hanging of Edgar Derby. He spent the entire war basically living in a dream, which is chronicled in his many delirious travels through time that he later broadcasted on the radio. He could have saved lives, but instead he fell asleep.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s The Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim had to combat mental illness throughout both the war and his life. He faced fantasies almost daily, had trouble keeping himself awake, and lived with abnormal tendencies in his personality. He lost friends and family without expressing emotions, and despite being treated for his illness, it did not go away. Some scars are just too deep to fade, and Billy Pilgrim never made a complete recovery; he lived the rest of his life believing in Tralfamadore, and that he has travelled sideways through time.
Endnotes
[1] Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Random House, 1969. Print. 42
[2] Ibid. 73
[3] Ibid. 132
[4] Ibid. 197
[5] “Fatigue.” The Free Dictionary by Farlex. Farlex. <http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fatigue> (accessed May 29, 2012)
[6] Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five. 56
[7] Ibid. 49
[8] Ibid. 54
[9] “Signs of Mental Illness in Psychology.” Psychology @Suite 101. Suite 101.
<http://suite101.com/article/signs-of-mental-illness-a32128>
A LITERARY ANALYSIS OF KURT VONNEGUTS’ THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5
War does not only destroy homes and countries; it also destroys minds. Kurt Vonnegut’s The Slaughter House Five describes the life of a fictional character, the dilemmas he must overcome during the Second World War, and his life after returning home. While on the battlegrounds of the Second World War, the main character of The Slaughterhouse 5, Billy Pilgrim, combats mental illness on the battleground of his mind. He faces hallucinations, fatigue, and oddities in his personality.
Billy Pilgrim has lost his grip on reality by developing a habit of hallucinating and creating a fabricated reality in which time is not linear. The most prominent and reoccurring hallucination he has is that he travels sideways through time. Billy first ‘travelled through time’ while resting in World War 2, and travelled back to when he was a child.[1] He had recently been in a traumatic experience, and currently enduring harsh conditions, leading him to also be fatigued, and contributing to a state of shock, making this event all the more likely to be a hallucination. He also believes he has been abducted by aliens. Coincidently, he had just finished a bottle of wine, and “saw the late movie backwards, then forwards.”[2] His hallucinations always seem to come in a state of debility, almost as if they are daydreams that he perceives to be real. While on this planet he believes he was taken to, he was held in a zoo with Montana Wildhack, who bore him children. Coincidently, he has seen pictures of this woman and finds her attractive, making her a common subject of a regular person’s daydream, and Billy’s hallucinations[3]. Billy’s daydreams seem to be linked to memories and stories that he has heard and experienced. He seems to live his life as if the outcome has already been decided.
Vonnegut illustrates Billy Pilgrim’s illness through fatigue and oddities in his personality. During the war, when his first signs of mental illness appeared, was the first time he failed to disguise his problems. After being set free, he and a group of other American POW survivors were raiding abandoned cities, and despite being surrounded by death for the past few years and being held in a slaughterhouse, the only time he cried was when the Americans overworked a pair of horses.[4] For a person who has survived the fire bombing of Dresden, seen himself die (he thinks) and experienced one of the fiercest battles of the Second World War, he is oddly reactive to pain and suffering. The Free Dictionary Medical Dictionary describes fatigue as a “physical and/or mental exhaustion that can be triggered by stress… mental and physical illness or disease.”[5] After returning home and experiencing the effects of mental illness for about 20 years he begins to have trouble keeping consciousness. “Billy had fallen asleep at work before. It was funny at first. Now Billy was starting to get worried about it, and about his mind in general.”[6] If you know you have a problem, you are not too far gone. Billy Pilgrim did manage to get help with his mental illness for a brief period of time, but after leaving the hospital did not maintain his sanity.
Vonnegut created deficiencies in Billy’s train of thought that effected his performance in the war. Because of his hallucinations he was slowing down Ronald Weary and the scouts, three soldiers who had the misfortune of being trapped behind enemy lines with Billy Pilgrim. Germans captured them all and Billy Pilgrim became the only survivor. Had he not lost his marbles, he could have handled himself and the other three may have survived the war. The scouts left Ronald and Billy behind[7], and were later shot as they tried to survive on their own.[8] This left Weary in an emotional turmoil; he had been stranded behind enemy lines and left by his allies. Once Billy had been captured, he stopped functioning properly. A person who “does not take care of appearance or cleanliness”[9] is showing signs of mental illness; Billy wore a coat ripped down the back and a pair of boots that had been painted silver. These left him with trouble walking and keeping warm. Most would try to rectify these at any given chance. While he was captured, and the Englishmen were entertaining the American POWs with their interpretation of Cinderella, Billy found it funny. The play may have been comical, but Billy had to be removed, tied down to a hospital bed, and given morphine before he would calm down. He was not even conscious of the play for most of the performance. Throughout the war he never reacted to any complications that would traumatize most, such as the fire bombing of Dresden, or the hanging of Edgar Derby. He spent the entire war basically living in a dream, which is chronicled in his many delirious travels through time that he later broadcasted on the radio. He could have saved lives, but instead he fell asleep.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s The Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim had to combat mental illness throughout both the war and his life. He faced fantasies almost daily, had trouble keeping himself awake, and lived with abnormal tendencies in his personality. He lost friends and family without expressing emotions, and despite being treated for his illness, it did not go away. Some scars are just too deep to fade, and Billy Pilgrim never made a complete recovery; he lived the rest of his life believing in Tralfamadore, and that he has travelled sideways through time.
Endnotes
[1] Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Random House, 1969. Print. 42
[2] Ibid. 73
[3] Ibid. 132
[4] Ibid. 197
[5] “Fatigue.” The Free Dictionary by Farlex. Farlex. <http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fatigue> (accessed May 29, 2012)
[6] Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five. 56
[7] Ibid. 49
[8] Ibid. 54
[9] “Signs of Mental Illness in Psychology.” Psychology @Suite 101. Suite 101.
<http://suite101.com/article/signs-of-mental-illness-a32128>