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.