Chapter 10 term: symbol

The bird at the end of the novel utters a line that confused me at first glance.  "Poo-tee-weet?"  I did not know why an author would end an award winning novel with a gibberish question asked by an animal.  Then I realized that Vonnegut did not want us to understand the bird.  The novel's finishing line is actually great because of the fact that the reader cannot understand the bird.  The misunderstanding of the bird is a symbol of the misunderstanding of war.  The question that is asked by the bird cannot be answered because one does not know how to answer a question that he does not understand.  War and destruction in today's world are things that are incomprehensible to people.  Why would people destroy one another over disputes?  The question cannot be answered just as the question from the bird because people cannot understand the war and violence today.

Chapter 10: So it goes

One of the major themes of the novel seems to be the repetitive use of the phrase "So it goes".  The phrase is used after every single death in the story no matter how tragic or ironic it may be.  The phrase does not discriminate between races, sexes, or brutality of the death.  Because the phrase does not change, it is used to display the equalization of dignity among all deaths in the novel.  No death is different from any other when the phrase is used afterwards.  All people are equal after death, and the phrase "So it goes" is the symbol that brings them all together throughout the novel.

Chapter nine term: Metaphor

When Billy is sunbathing in Dresden, he sees a couple who have survived the bombing.  The couple were German doctors, and they approached Billy to scold him for the condition of two horses that had been pulling the wagon that Billy was in.  The two scolded Billy because "...the horses' mouths were bleeding gashed by the bits, that the horses' hooves were broken, so that every step meant agony, that the horses were insane with thirst."  After being scolded by the two doctors, Billy wept for the first time during the war. This event stands as a metaphor between Billy and the horses.  Both the horses and Billy were victims of a cruel war that had taken their lives from them so that they were nothing.  The horses were forced to live on the moon-like ground and hurt after every step.  That was how Billy felt his entire time during the war.

Chapter Nine: Billy and his son

Throughout the novel so far, I have not learned much about Billy's son, Robert, other than the fact that he used to be troubled and then joined the Green Berets.  The lack of description of Billy's son may be because Billy does not have a very good relationship with his son.  Vonnegut described their relationship when he wrote, "Billy liked him (Robert), but didn't know him very well.  Billy couldn't help suspecting that there wasn't much to know about Robert."  That relationship does not sound like a very healthy father to son relationship to me.  The reason that these two are not very close may be due to Robert's profession.  Being in the Green Berets, Robert is a symbol of war and destruction to his father.  After being through the second world war, the last thing Billy wants is a reminder of the destruction he experienced during the war.  Even when Robert returns from the war in Vietnam to visit his father in the hospital, all Billy can do is close his eyes to block the image.  After all, Billy is just following the advice of the Tralfamadorians which says to not concentrate on the bad images of life, but to only look at happy images.

Chapter 8 term: simile

In chapter eight after the bombing of Dresden, the entire city is barren of anything that can burn.  The city has been reduced to nothing but mineral which is reinforced when Vonnegut uses this simile, "Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals."  Vonnegut also describes the group of Americans and their guards as contemporary space men as they navigated through the foreign face of this new planet created by the bombing.  Vonnegut describes the group in their dire circumstance, "if they were going to continue to survive, they were going to have to climb over curve after curve on the face of the moon."  The bombing of Dresden was so destructive, Vonnegut was forced to describe the city as a foreign object that most people have never seen.

Chapter 8: Bombing of Dresden

At Billy's anniversary years after the war had been over, a barbershop quartet was singing a tune. The song sounded suspiciously similar to the bombing of Dresden.  Many of the lines described the scene:
 "Prayin' for sunshine, 'cause it will rain
  Things gettin' worse, drivin' all insane;
  Built a nice bar, painted it brown;
  Lightning came along and burnt it down..."
The lyrics to this song describe the horror that was the Dresden bombing, but it is written in a jolly song for a barbershop quartet.  The "sunshine" never came for the people in Dresden, but they did get a lot of "rain".  The "rain" and "lightning" came down in bombs and "burnt" the entire city down.  It is no wonder that Billy was so torn up after hearing this song at his anniversary.  The memory of the bombing caused Billy to leave the party and have to go to his bedroom to sleep.  The bombing was estimated to kill up to 500,000 people, a number that is staggering even today.  Billy had the right to be upset at this memory.

Chapter seven term: mood

The mood of this chapter is felt when the reader hears the war widow in the kitchen say, "All the real soldiers are dead."  This sets the mood because it is the truest statement in the chapter.  None of the boys in front of the woman are suited for war, from the poor old Edgar Derby, the young German soldier, or the horribly dressed Billy Pilgrim with his Cinderella boots.  The mood that is implied by the statement from the woman is a sense of hopelessness.  With no "real soldiers" left in the second world war, the hope for many of the nations in the war is gone and Vonnegut is explaining this to the reader by one simple line from a woman who will probably only make one appearance in the entire novel.

Chapter 7: Simple Pleasures

By this time in the war, all of the pleasures of the prisoners of war's lives have been taken from them.  All of the things that they had taken for granted before the war are nowhere close to them now.  When working in the slaughterhouse, they are to work in boxing syrup full of vitamins and minerals for consumption by pregnant women.  The American prisoners are not very tentative when it came to sneaking spoonfuls of the syrup to eat.  The first taste of this syrup for Billy Pilgrim came on his second day working in the factory.  He tasted it in front of poor old Edgar Derby who also craved a taste of the syrup.  When Derby tasted the syrup, "A moment passed, and then Edgar Derby burst into tears."  He burst into tears because he now realized how much had been taken from him.  The only pleasure now in his life is a vitamin filled syrup intended for use by pregnant women.

Chapter six: situational irony

Near the end of the chapter, the poor school teacher who is to be shot at Dresden, Edgar Derby, is reciting a letter to his family.  In this letter he states that, "It (Dresden) will never be bombed.  It is an open city."  This statement is in fact the exact opposite of what is to come.  Even the Englishmen tell the Americans not to worry because Dresden seems like the perfect place to be during the war.  Dresden, in fact, is the worst place to be during the time that the Americans are sent there.  The city of Dresden is described as a wonderfully constructed place with great architecture and sounds too great to be true.  Usually when it sounds too great to be true, it is.

Chapter six: Billy's death

In this chapter, Billy describes a time in which he traveled in time to see his own death.  The details of his death seem to be unreal.  He is supposedly to be shot and assassinated by a laser gun while Chicago is "hydrogen-bombed by angry Chinamen".  The scene is written to resemble that of a science fiction novel which leads the reader back to Billy's time in the mental ward.  The connection causes me to begins to think that many of his thoughts could be made up due to his infatuation with the science fiction novels.  This could be connected with Billy's crazed ideas about Tralfamadore.  The ideas in the mind of Billy cannot be deemed true or false until the conclusion of the novel because of the wild ideas being presented throughout the novel.

chapter five term: point of view

The point of view of the author Vonnegut is very hard to understand early in the novel.  The reader knows that he had experienced the war being explained, but the reader has no idea of his relationship to Billy or any of the other characters.  Early, I had thought that he was Billy and was explaining his life in a war prison.  I realized that he was not part when he described a situation where he was vomiting in the prison and told Billy, "'There they (his brains) go, there they go.'... That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book."  This is the first contact we have with Vonnegut identifying himself in the novel.  He has not played a pivotal role in the novel.  The point of view in this story is different from many other novels.  He writes as if he is Billy explaining the events, yet he refers to him in the third person.  He is actually a fellow prisoner of Billy and is writing about his life.  Being an omniscient narrator, Vonnegut has the ability to relay all thoughts to the readers to help understand Billy's life.

chapter five: deprivation of human dignity

The recurring theme throughout this chapter is the deprivation of human dignity.  It begins when Billy take the coat that is way to small to fit him correctly.  The coat tears and the guards make fun of his situation.  The Englishman explains that this is one of the ways "Jerry", the Germans, strip someone of their dignity.  The theme continues in the Tralfamadorian zoo where he is forced to parade around naked for the visitors to this zoo.  The humiliation begins to become less and less of a factor in Billy's life when he decides that he can do nothing to stop this.  This situation and Billy's coat are two prime examples of how a human's dignity can be stripped away very easily especially in tough times of war or entrapment in an extra terrestrial zoo.

Chapter four: free will

In this chapter the reader is introduced to the Tralfamadorian idea of free will.  They do not know of such a concept; "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studies reports on one hundred more.  Only on Earth is there any talk of free will."  The fact that only Earthling have the idea of free will suggests that people have no control on their fate.  It is the reason that the aliens scoff at Billy's questions that ask why he was chosen by the aliens.  The fate of each person has been decided and the aliens are at peace with that.  The people on Earth are still under the illusion that they can change their lives for the better.  I think that Billy is beginning to realize that and has begun to give up on his life.  Earlier in the novel, Billy chose to sink rather than swim, and he had always wanted to give up in war.  Both of those lead me to believe that he has given up on himself and those around him.

Chapter four term: imagery

Midway through the forth chapter of the novel, Vonnegut uses an odd image to describe people as they unloaded the train.  The people were described as being a liquid that "...began to flow.  Gobs of it built up in the doorway, plopped to the ground."  He continued this use of the liquid flow when describing the dead hobo: "The hobo could not flow, could not plop.  He wasn't liquid anymore.  He was stone."  This description of the group of captured Americans really describes the lifelessness they felt after being captured in the war.

Chapter 3: The devastation of war

Throughout chapter three, we are introduced to Billy's life after the war.  Billy did not benefit from the war at all.  Surviving the war would sound like a blessing to me, but Billy sees his survival as a prolonged suffering.  He has trouble sleeping at night because of the war, but he sometimes dozes off while tending to a patient during work.  Only with the help of "Magic Fingers" vibrating blanket can Billy find any comfort or sleep at night.  He shows many signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.  Affected by the horrible trauma in war, Billy begins to weep for no reason almost every day.  The destructiveness of war in the story does not only affect those who die in the actual battles (So it goes.) but the trauma is felt long after the war.

Chapter 3 term: Irony

Vonnegut opens the third chapter of the novel with examples of irony.  The first of the two that I spotted come when he begins to describe the newly adopted war dog of the German soldiers.  The dog was taken from a farmer and was a female German shepherd.  The irony of the situation comes in the name of the canine: "She had never been to war before.... Her name was princess."  The dog is named princess which is not the first name that comes to mind when I think of a war dog.  The next example of irony is the description of Weary's Bible.  The holy book is created to be bulletproof.  Making the holy Bible bulletproof caused me to find a bit of humor in the story.  The holiest of all books should in no situation ever be shot at or in the presence of shooting.  The book that clearly states: "Thou shall not kill" should not be around the holocaust of World War II.

Chapter Two: Story structure

The structure in which Vonnegut begins this chapter seems like any other story that I had read.  When he begins to speak of alien abduction and becoming unstuck in time, I became a bit worried.  Vonnegut followed the claims of alien abduction from Billy Pilgrim with telling a story from his war days.  The story begins as just a regular flashback but takes a bit of a turn.  He tells of being unstuck in time and describes several situations within a single microsecond in real time.  Becoming unstuck in time is a difficult concept to describe to a reader.  Vonnegut uses the structure of the story Billy tells to portray the sense of confusion that Billy feels his entire life.  The stories had me looking back to try to remember how we even began to describe the situation I was reading.

Chapter Two Term: Flashback

The majority of chapter two is written in the form of a flashback.  The chapter begins as Billy Pilgrim is described as a older almost senile man.  He then begins to describe the first time he became "unstuck in time."  He describes first a close encounter to death as a violet light and then pre-birth which are antitheses.  He then describes his first swim at a Y.M.C.A., then a visit to his mother in a nursing home, his son's little league banquet, and finally him cheating on his wife.  Each of these are set in time periods years apart from each other sometimes jumping decades at a time.  Some of these stories are flashbacks, yet some go forward in time.  This style of writing is used to help the reader understand how Billy experiences his own life.  The lack of a set structure to each story helps the reader to sympathize with Billy and feel what he does.

Chapter One Lit. Term, Motif

By reading the first chapter, I have spotted a motif in the text.  The phrase "So it goes" has been used many times by Vonnegut.  The phrase is often used to describe a death of one of the characters described by Vonnegut.  I expect this phrase to be used many times later on during the novel and will be looking to see if it is used only when the death of a character is mentioned.

Chapter One, Cycle of Time

I realized after reading about "The Lumberjack Song" in chapter one that Vonnegut may use the structure of the song to model his novel.  The song begins as any other song but ends with the first line again.  This peculiar structure creates an ongoing song that will not stop.  The song is a cycle which may model the structure of the novel later.  Vonnegut cannot get a firm grip on every memory of Dresden and uses this structure to get the stories from his head into novel form.

The constant distraction of sleep and hunger has kept me from beginning the story but will be done eventually.