In chapter 9, Billy and his friends return to Dresden to get some  souvenirs. Billy stays in the wagon as his friends go looking around. As he's laying there, two Germans come up to his wagon and begin to scold him on how awfully his horses seem to have been treated. The horses were thirsty and their hooves were cracked. Walking on the  destroyed ground of Dresden pained them. "When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn't cried about anything else in the war" (197).

I think that the reason the horse's pain made Billy cry was because it reminded Billy of the pain and suffering he saw in the war. Do you think Billy and the horses are the same at all in the way the destruction of Dresden affected them both?

Fourth Dimension and Sight

First off- Sorry this is short, extremely tired.

Billy, is an optometrist. The job of an optometrist is to make people see better. In this story, many lessons are taught in a fourth dimension setting, something we humans can't see. One major example is the metaphor the tralfalmadorian guide told the audience to imagine:

"The guide invited the crowd to imagine that they were looking across a desert at a mountain range on a day that was twinkling bright and clear. They could look at a peak or a bird or a cloud, at a stone right in front of them, or even down into a canyon behind them. But among them was this poor Earthling, and his head was encased in a steel sphere which he could never take off. There was only one eyehole through which he could look, and welded to that eyehole were six feet of pipe. 

This was only the beginning of Billy's miseries in the metaphor. He was also strapped to a steel lattice which was bolted to a flatcar on rails, and there was no way he could turn his head or touch the pipe. The far end of the pipe rested on a bi-pod which was also bolted to the flatcar. All Billy could could see was the little dot at the end of the pipe. He didn't know he was on a flatcar, didn't even know there was anything peculiar about his situation" (115).

To me, this quote is simply incredible. It is also evidence of how sight plays a role in this novel. This quote is very accurate in saying that those who can't see the fourth dimension are stuck viewing life as it goes; unable to move, unable to change it, unable to do anything. In other words, according to this fourth dimensional mindset, we Earthlings can't see what's going to happen, change what is going to happen, or ever escape the third dimension. Vonnegut, through Billy, time travel, and the Tralfalmadorians is communicating just how severe our tunnel-vision world is to us, and the fact that no one tends to think of this as a 'peculiar' situation. This truly is something interesting to have in the book, but it is true that humans have tunnel vision when thinking about a fourth dimension, and that is impossible to change; therefor I wonder why Vonnegut put so much emphasis on this.

Billy Pilgrim knew that he was going to be kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians on the night of his daughters wedding. Billy could not sleep that night so he went downstairs to watch a movie and wait for the flying saucer. The movie that came on was about American bombers in World War 2, but Billy didn't see the movie forwards, he saw the whole movie backwards. Billy describes all of the events in the movie happening in reverse. I thought this was interesting for a veteran to experience because it is kind of like imagining a war being undone, while I would think that a veteran would watch a war movie and just connect with it on a totally different level than other people.

This is how Billy described the movie, "The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes" (Vonnegut 74). This quote talks about the reverse action of Germans shooting Allies and Allied planes. This could show that Billy does not believe that war brings peace, and that without war there would be true peace. Later in the book Billy asks the Tralfamadors how they live in absolute peace, and their answer was that they just look past any time with bad events. This again relates to the Tralfamadorians concept of time and how there is no order to things, so in theory they can just look at the happy moments in life.

Do you think that this quote could have a different meaning? Do you also think that Billy believes in true peace?

In chapter five Billy Pilgrim arrives at the work camp with all of the other American prisoners of war (POW's). The camp was divided in half, one half Russians, and one half Americans/British. The American/British half only had fifty British prisoners, who had been there for about four years, which was almost the whole war at that point. These men had barely seen war, and definitely had not seen how big it became, they were blind to the true tragedies of war.

When Billy started to talk about the Englishmen he said, "They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun"(Vonnegut 94). This quote shows how these men had been protected from the outside world, and treated well, and don't understand how bad war really is.

The word "reasonable" can be related back to the first chapter when Mary O' Hare scolded Billy about how she thought he would write his book. Mary thought that Billy would pretend he wasn't as young and he was, and he would make himself a hero and make war sound good. Up until this point, Billy has not written his book as Mary thought he would. Once Billy saw these Englishmen he wrote about what they were really like, which sounded like the kind of story Mary thought Billy would write.

Do you think Kurt Vonnegut added the part about Mary O' Hare knowing it would relate to this moment? Do you think Kurt Vonnegut will change how he writes his book after he has seen that war for everyone is not as it was for him?

Right from the beginning we can tell that the book Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is all disorganized. On one page he could be in the war and on the next he could be in his seat in college. A lot of the stories Billy goes around is related to the Tralfamadorians and there way of life, and understanding of time travel.

I believe that Billy is struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and is just making these stories up to cope with what he went through in Dresden.  

So it goes

Following every death in the novel is the phrase "so it goes," which does multiple things in the story. Firstly, it functions as a transition from the death in which it follows. Secondly, this 'labeling' of death throughout the novel makes it much more emphasized on just how many people died, and how frequently it occurred.

Lastly, it serves as a 'life goes on' type of reaction. As the Tralfamadorians put it, "... The dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments" (Pg 27). These other moments can be accessed via time travel, used in this novel frequently, making those who die able to live within their past. Through time travel, Vonnegut seems to be attempting to make the statement that life is eternal, is he not? Perhaps just the opposite; death is an inevitable event that will occur, period. Perhaps this is Vonnegut's method of coping with the idea of death through the optimism found within the Tralfamadorians.

As far as connecting to something within the text, it isn't that simple. Death occurs endlessly, constantly, and inevitably throughout the book, therefor 'so it goes' occurs endlessly, constantly, and inevitably. The largest connection I can make to the rest of the text is the fact that Vonnegut does a great job of using repetition to emphasize important details.

In chapter one we see how war impacts a whole family. Bernard O'Hare, is one of Billy's friends from the war, and while the two were talking about old memories Bernard's wife accuses Billy of how she thinks he will write his story. She said to Billy, " 'You'll pretend you were men instead of babies... And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more' "(Vonnegut 14).

This shows how a wife, or any other family member could change their opinion on war, or worsen their opinion on war after a family member returns after years of service. Also, Mary Bernard is a mother of very young children, and is very protective of them. When Mary accused Billy of writing the story in an encouraging way, it was her way of trying to prevent the promotion of war, and her way of protecting her babies and every other baby. Clearly the effects of war extend beyond the person who fought in that war.