In Response to Brown's Slaughterhouse Five Analysis [EXTRA]

Here is what I find most interesting about this essay.

First off, since first being hit by Vonnegut’s Tralfamadore curveball, I, like Billy’s patronizing daughter Barbara, have been struggling to make sense of it all. My first impression was that Billy was suffereing from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); a double-effect of he surviving the plane crash after everyone else, including his wife, perished and also his wartime experience in Dresden years before. I was surprised at how willing to believe Billy and his extraterrestrial experience my classmates seemed to be. Briefly, it seemed important to me to find out whether or not Billy’s Tralfamadore experience ‘really happened’ or not. This quest was soon replaced by the somewhat apathetic thought that it really does not matter at all whether or not Billy Pilgrim was captured by aliens, all that is important is the way in which it affects him. Kevin Brown seems to agree somewhat with my philosophy, and explains the phenomena in the following way.

Billy does not become vocal about his Tralfamadore experience until after the war. It is also after the war that Billy admits himself to a psychiatric ward. Here, he meets the colorful Eliiot Rosewater. The two seem divinely appointed to have hospital beds next to each other due to the fact that they each share similar life views. Specifically, nihilistic views. It is Rosewater that introduces science fiction to Billy. I read through Billy and Rosewater’s encounter without thinking too much about the significance of the scenes. Things began to become more clear, however, after reading Brown’s critical essay. After returning from the warfront, Billy seems to have trouble making grasping the things that he witnessed and experienced. He sporadically weeps, an act which I have found to be the most heart-wrenching in all of the novel thus far. He has trouble sleeping at night but falls asleep during the day while he is at work. An endless drone of “why me? Why me why me?” seems to circulate through his head. Rosewater introduces Billy to the idea that “new lies” must now be created, because otherwise, the hardened wartime generation will no longer desire to go on living. According to Brown, Billy then “tries to develop new lies to live his life; but in his attempt, he creates the Tralfamadorians and their philosophy. (51)” Suddenly I begin to make correlations between the science fiction plots that Billy has read and his own story of his experience with the Tralfamadorians. Billy’s stories and the science fiction stories he reads all seem to blur together. Billy has created the Tralfamadorians as a coping mechanism to deal with his PTSD. Brown also points out that the mindset and philosophy of the Tralfamadorians often mimes that of the Germans. Neither party seem too put-off by death, no matter how gruesome. Billy creates a mindset in the tralfamadorians that is a bit more romantic than that of the way the Germans are gruesomely portrayed. This too seems symbolic, as if Billy is somehow trying to grant parodnto the Germans, as well as to his own country and Great Britain, who were responsible for bombing Dresden. Under the mindset of the Tralfamadorians, the city was always meant to be destroyed, and it always will be destroyed. Billy was always meant to live. That is just the way things are; so it goes. Billy has adopted the mindset of his ”made-up,” otherworldly captors, and has thus developed a “peace that comes through understanding.” It all seems very complex and intricate, and yet somehow, it works for Billy.

It seems to me that Billy travels in time to his stay in Tralfamadore in a flashback-type manner while he is at war. It could be that I am confusing his flashbacks to his old life in The States to his time in outer-space. If I am not confusing these times however, I am still left with one question, a question which I am not sure I know how to answer just yet.

If Billy created the story of the Tralfamadorians, a story which he obviously believes to be true and thus IS true for him, AFTER the war when he was in the psych ward, then why is it that he has “flashbacks” to his times in Tralfamadore DURING the war?

So much confusion.

Slaughterhouse5

So far I find myself really enjoying this novel, and somewhat surprised that I do. As a general rule of thumb I do not enjoy science fiction. I do not enjoy war novels. Slaughterhouse Five is a melange of these two styles, and yet I like it quite a lot. Perhaps the reason I am enjoying this scientific war novel is because it is unlike any novel of war or science fiction that I have read before.

For one, the author does not focus on one style or another. It is not completely a story of science fiction, nor is it completely a story of war. As far as war-novel protagonists go, Billy Pilgrim is also unique. He is not the typical hero. Billy Pilgrim is weak, loony, and bizarre. Even his name reflects immaturity and weakness. So far in my reading up to chapter seven, Billy has done nothing particularly exciting or extraordinary. Billy just seems to float through his POW status, escaping reality periodically to visit past memories.

You know when you are watching horror movies and you say to yourself, “that loser/idiot is going to be the first to die.” This theory of mine is played out several times in the novel. For example, the stubborn hobo starves to death. Annoying, loud, and pompous Weary dies off as well. The characters of intelligent mind and strong body are always the ones to live. People like Edgar Derby. Derby, however, ends up being shot at by a firing squad in Dresden. Why is it that Billy gets to live? Why him? “Why anybody?...So it goes.”

It is here that Vonnegut proves me wrong, showing that in war, there are no rules. The heroes die, the losers (bless them) die as well. No one is spared, no one is pardoned. No one, that is, except our goofy Billy Pilgrim.

***

Other things I like about this novel is Vonnegut’s writing style. I enjoy the way he is able to create such vivid, developed characters in a short amount of time. I find myself able to clearly picture each of the characters, no matter how small. Though bizarre at times, they are characters that are believable, and people that I can identify with and relate to my own everyday encounters. It seems that Billy is the hardest character to understand. I haven’t quite been able to “figure him out” just yet. I doubt I will by the end of the novel. I would be alright with that though, because his complexities and bizarre idiosyncrasies enhance his merit as a character, rather than make him a weak character that is annoying to readers.

I also enjoy Vonnegut’s dry humor and satire (funny how those traits so often go hand in hand..) and his sensitiveness to the war that can go undetected at time. There is a quote on the back of my book by “Life” contributor Wilfrid Sheed that reads, “Splendid art…a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh; a sad book without tears.” I think that this captures the affect and tone of the book quite well. There are very humorous aspects to the book, but I think that most would have trouble actually laughing at them due to the rawness and truth in the scenes. Nearly everything is dark; nearly everything is shadowed by brutal pessimism. It’s hard for readers to laugh at the more humorous scenes (even though there are many of them) because we are constantly being reminded that this is the very true, very real life of a prisoner of war, and that topic just isn’t funny. Billy can appear so pathetic in his confusions between Tralfamadore and Earth that not even this seems laugh out loud funny. Similarly, even though so many aspects of the novel are heart wrenching and depressing, there is no true grief. The Tralfamadorians and Billy do not believe in grief. They take up the mantra of Whitman, saying “all goes outward and onward… and to die is different than anyone supposed, and luckier.” So it goes so it goes so it goes. Readers are not permitted to grieve and the novel is void of tears due to this everlasting acceptance of reality.

This combination is a unique one, but hey, uniqueness does seem, after all, to be the goal of modernist authors.

"Waiting for Elmo"

Top Ten Things Which Come To Mind While « Waiting »
1. Before reading it, when I only knew the title, I thought it was a war novel by Tim O’Brian. The title sorta gives that feel don’t you think? No? No one agrees? Sorta like other war book/film titles like “Saving Private Ryan” and “Going after Cacciato”
2. Not this crap again.
3. Honestly, who cares?
4. The characters are somewhat amusing in the way they interact with each other. Amusing in a Fred & George bickering /Mad Hatter talking in circles in Alice In Wonderland sort of way.
5. I wonder if Lucky has rabies. Or fleas.
6. Why is he named Lucky?
7. I could not sit through an hour and a half of this performed live.
8. There is a reason why this play is not on Broadway.
9. Was translating it from French to English really necessary?
10. Godot is most likely a total jerk. And also a loser.

Tonight I spent entirely too much time on YouTube.

I can't read Waiting For Godot without falling asleep. I tried and tried but I just kept dozing off. The saddest part is that even when I was able to concentrate on the text, it was so bizarre I wasn't entirely sure that I wasn't dreaming. I finally got through Act One and then decided to do some further research on the play. Sparknotes was absolutely no help, and so, on a whim, I tried YouTube. Jackpot. Well...sorta.
Anyone reading this is most likely part of the Millennial Generation, which means you can appreciate my fascination with both YouTube and Sesame Street. Tonight I was about to find a summary of Waiting For Godot in a segment of Sesame Street's Monsterpiece Theatre called "Waiting for Elmo." How cute. Before the clip started, Cookie Monster summed the play up nicely by saying " it is a play so modern and brilliant, it makes absolutely no sense to anybody." The big ball of dessert-eating blue fur has an excellent point, and I think that this analysis not only sums up this play by Beckett, but just about every other piece we've read this fall. Raise your hand if you have said some form of "What the hell?" when reading at least six of our seven authors this semester. Seriously, nothing makes sense! It's like modernist authors are somehow merited on how completely confusing and ridiculous they can make a piece. We have men turning into bugs, men being killed by gorillas, men pounding out nonsense that is supposed to be symbolic of just about everything ever written in the history of time, a rabid dog riding a cow through a hurricane, and; my personal favorite, the story of The Hillbilly Family and the Rotten Mother. Every story has a twist of the absurd, a splattering of unusual occurrences which unceasingly, annoyingly, point towards some form of symbolism and the human experience.
Waiting For Godot is no different. I'm not meaning to bash modernist authors; for the most part, I like them. But I feel like the pattern in our reading curriculum is causing my reaction blogs to blur together in a general hue of awkward phrases like "umm. that was...interesting." I can recognize the underlying message-- Vladimir and Estragon are two down-on-their-luck-men who are trying to find meaning and purpose to their life, waiting for that sudden change which can somehow help them to sort out their lives. This theme is typical to the era. Besides the theme, there are other things which keep the play from being a complete dud. I was hoping that maybe watching the play would be easier but no, I was wrong. I tried watching a film clip on YouTube and I lasted a total of 30 seconds.