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?
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ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I don't think that he would rewrite the book. The book is how he saw the war and how he remembered it. If the way he looked at the Englishmen, as a group of stylish people who made the war look fun and reasonable, was how he looked at them, then changing it wouldn't seem right. I believe him thinking that and deciding to write it the way he did was his way of showing how "nonchalant" the war was to the Englishmen. Now, as for the part relating back to Mary, I'm not sure on that.
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