Hey everyone,
So the first chapter of the novel is really interesting to me because it goes over a lot of biographical stuff and it really is Vonnegut writing to us directly. It’s more of a Preface in that sense. one thing that came out as interesting, which we have briefly discussed in class, has to do with Vonnegut’s practicality in writing some of these novels.
The quote goes something like this:
Harrison Starr, “Is the novel and anti-war book”
Vonnegut: “Yes, I guess so”
HS: “You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing an anti-war book?”
Vonnegut: “No, what so you say Harrison Starr?”
HS: “I say “Why don’t you write and anti-glacier book instead?””
“What he meant, of course. was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too” (page 3)
This comes back to our discussion about the motives of leftist or any -ists for that matter. Why do people write anti-war books if they know that they are inevitable?
Where do I begin ?
We touched on so many excellent topics, ideas, and thoughts today in class. That my mind is still trying to envelop the information.
I think an important point that should probably be revisited is in relation to the novel as whole, and more focused in the first 3 chapters.
Here are the three questions I prepared for class, that we did touch on, but thought I’d post them to act as a backdrop for my additional comments:
1) In chapter 1, the ambiguous narrator jumps b/w Billy Pilgrim’s adventures and the narrator’s thoughts. How/why did Vonnegut add the narration as a seperate thought process than Billy’s? WHat effect does it have?
2) Billy is “unstuck in time”, and so very early on, we understand that he doesn’t carry a clear personal narrative of his own life. (In the sense of a sequential series of events and memories) Vonnegut employes this to further press the Tralfalmadorian view of time; namely that it random and that human life never ends. How can we interprete/understand “so it goes…”
3) Why Pilgrim ?
I had an extra thougt to add to the point about question #3. The sense that we get from the word is someone on a journey, and that the journey ultimately leads to some form of end. ALthought this end is an ambiguous place, whether it consist of a place, location, religious relic, blessing, or enlightnement. Billy, however, is an eternal pilgrim of the universe. He knows where he has been, and never knows where he jump to next, but still continues the journey without any choice in the matter. But, Billy’s journey speaks to a universality amongst people who go on journeys “to find themselves”…does anybody know what that actually means? or does anyone set off on a journey of self discovery knowing where they are going to end up at the end, and if there will an end to the journey at all? I don’t think so, yet we still go on the journey…this maybe ties into the “so it goes..”
You brought up a lot of interesting questions that I think would be great to look into. In response to your comment about about Billy as a “pilgrim”, in the universal sense, I think it’s interesting to note Billy’s lack of control in this matter. I think it comes back to the conception of Billy’s name. If Billy is actually a name forced on him rather than him choosing it, as was the case because of the commercial needs that the name meets, then that could say something about his universal pilgrimage. It could also just speak to Billy’s lack of control with everything that goes on, as well as anything that goes on for that matter…remember…if accident will
To say that wars are inevitable is very cynical, but to say that all of them can be prevented is very naive. However, that doesn’t mean that writing an anti-war book is pointless. There have to be both sides of the spectrum to invoke debate on the subject no matter how cynical or naive one side of the debate may be. Vonnegut’s thoughts are that war is pointless, but I bet if you asked some radical Islamist or Marxist they would say that war is the only way (to achieve their goals that is). Vonnegut probably thinks that all wars can be prevented, while a political realist would probably think that they are inevitable. Neither one is necessarily right or wrong, simply being on one extreme of the spectrum is grounds for debate no matter your opinion.
I agree in the sense that war is extremely hard to prevent, but is it really inevitable? It is without a doubt that it is human nature to have conflict of some sort but at what point do we draw the line between settling our differences rationally, or with weapons?
Would it also be accurate to say that war brings us down to the level of the animals? Because what separates us from being wild savages or animals can be debated and perhaps our ability to reason (which puts us above the animals in my opinion) is thrown out the window when war is commenced.
As we continue reading in chapter 5, when billy is in the zoo on Tralfalmadore,they ask him what the most valuable thing he learned was and he replies with, “how the inhabitants of a whole planet can live in peace.” He then continues to talk to the Tralfamadorians and they say that they too engage in violent wars but there isnt anything they can do about them so they choose to look at the good parts of life. When answering why we even write anti-war books I think that war really is something that is inevitable. Just like Nawel was saying that when it comes to war we have to take out the human characteristics of people and disregard them in order to fight and kill and survive.War has been part of our society from the beginning of time and I do think that it brings us back to the levels of animals but in a different sense.War isnt caused in order to fight for survival like animals, although yes some wars have been.After so many decades humans have still not learned how to live peacefully with each other and until we do, if we do, war is inevitable. I think with war go anti-war books because those who fight in war will never see war the same as those who learn about it. I think of books like All Quiet on the Western Front and how vivid the war seemed to me as I was reading it.It puts war into a different perspective as well reading it.
I think war has got to be one of the most difficult things to write about effectively, principally because good writing encompasses a variety of human emotions and good soldiers, effectively, have no human emotions. So how, as an objective observer, a good soldier, and a writer, can you write about something like war without coming off either too sympathetic or too callous? I think it’s a careful balance that has to be observed. That’s why I think we should be extra critical of not only books about war but things we hear about war in the media or see in movies.
When we see movies glorifying war we assume that what they are expressing may not be the truth. But what changes when we see a movie which we assume is “realistic” war. Is that really any better? Sure maybe it makes some of us even more disgusted by the idea or gives us another insight, but it could also have another effect. Even realistic portrayals glamourize war and make us want to believe that these people are fighting for something. Slaughterhouse-five, I believe, is really trying to drive home the notion that although there may be a larger context to why people fight and kill each other, on a basic human level, we are all pieces of meat. When we die in something as silly as a war, it is senseless no matter what the context is.
So are you saying that no war movies should be made? If that’s the case, then why does someone have a right to write a book about them? There are plenty of books that glamorize war as well. I think there’s something to be said about human nature by the fact that lots, and I would even venture to say most (at least most men), like war movies. There’s something carnal about them. There is some part of us that wishes we could have an adventure, for lack of a better word, like some of the characters in some war movies. Otherwise, why would they be so popular? It’s certainly not for the dialogue (see ‘300’).
I agree that some movies and novels do glamorize war, but I think it may not always be the fault of the author. I can imagine it being extremely hard for anyone who has experienced such horrific things to put them into words and thoughts that follow logically as we would see in a movie or novel. Writing purely about ones experiences might not be marketable to the public. So just as vonnegut could not explicitely express his problems and ideals in his literature, maybe those who wrote and published war books had to have them glamorized in order to have them sell. Maybe its better to have a glamorized reenactment of the war then to have it not be represented at all?
As for vonnegut, if his purpose is to demonstrate that wartime casualties are senseless not matter the context, I am curious about the “frame” of that philosophy. I can see many of the deaths in war as being senseless, but at what point do you draw the line? I don’t think context and war can always be separated. If your country is being aggressively invaded, you can cause ‘senseless’ death in protecting your people, or you can avoid killing and risk the senseless death of your people. Can war always exist in the wrong? Or are there degrees of right and wrong just as there degrees of emotion? Could it be that the greater meaning is that death is senseless if you’re fighting for a cause not entirely your own?
Like in the two previous books we’ve read, happiness was achieved when the characters did what they wanted to do, or just ‘messed around’. So maybe if your truly fighting for something you believe in then it can be considered to make sense, that being exercising the full extent of your free will when making decisions. But does free will exist?……… I confused myself again…Vonnegut tends to do that a lot…
No I’m not saying that war movies should not be made. I concede that I love a good action movie. I just think we all have to be very careful when we are watching these movies and perceiving things as glamourous or realistic. You’re probably right in that most people (particularly men) like action movies for the carnal nature in them. Perhaps it is because they represent a repressed human urge that has to lay dormant in our society? I feel that’s what you were trying to say…
I, personally, have no problem with that. I think when you can watch something and be conscious of the fact that you are enjoying it for a certain reason, there is no harm as long as that these things stay conscious. i.e. stay in one’s mind. As soon as these depictions that we see in movies become acted in real life, then we have a problem.
It seems to me that Vonnegut does think wars are inevitable. There are several instances in the book, namely the Trafalmadorian philosophy of time, that serve to refute the notion of free will. And while I do think that writing a book about war is as likely to prevent it as moving an glacier, I don’t think this is the only reason to write one.
I think some people might write war books to help themselves cope with what they’ve experienced. As vonnegut wrote at the end of the first chapter “People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore. I’ve finished my war book now. The next one i write is going to be fun.” Writing this last book could have been something like a last reconciliation of his wartime experiences. He implied that after having written his book, he would cease to ruminate about the memories that had plagued him from the war. It could offer some small amount of closure allowing vonnegut, and other writers, to move onto something more “fun”.
Why do people write anti-war books if they know that they are inevitable?
Closure Lee? Yes! I think so very much… but… Vonnegut doesn’ get closure does he? This theme of war keeps popping up in his writing. Closure on Dresden maybe but (and I can only speculate as I have never experienced ‘Hardship’ such as war) society+politics=war for vonnegut and his politics come through in his writings about society..
or do they? does he ascribe to any political party
we like to compartmentalize…PUT PPL IN A BOX to understand them? I don’t think Vonnegut is writing about stuff in his books due to left wing politics, he is just writing creativly from his common sense which happens to be similiar to the socialist views of the left.
Who? Who is why we write ’bout war and not politics. both are inevitable, but if we can influence anyone to belive in anti-war then one person has been influenced. and if you can influence one you can influence many.
Anti-glacier? no contest. We cannot “talk a inanimate object down” but people can be. and any effort to destabilize war, to prevent effective organization and funding and acceptance and recruitment programs via super fun video games and the glorification of war heros in cinema and the vilanizing of the “other” a.k.a as innocent women, children, and familes…
is worth fighting for in my ‘book’
but thats only because i fight dirty and am good at it and if i am then others are too and ‘we’ cannot be trusted, so why not destabilize these national pissing contests so we can create art and make babies? oh ya, I forgot, some people are afraid of the art inside them, and pursue the baby making by bashing their chest and burying the ‘other’
And the art of external, “Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away”(p.171); the muse that motivates lust, greed, and murder, dirty, bloody, murder is the reason we war and the reason we write about anti-WA…… uh-oh, gotta go, sunday night football is on. toodles!
cam
ooops! i meant to say
“Who? Who is why we write ’bout war and not ice bergs. (not politics)
Our discussion yesterday made me think about the importance of perspective, more specifically, the perspective that Vonnegut is trying to give us about the war (and many other parts of life).
Billy is an optometrist, which I think is really important: he helps people see better, more clearly.
So, in my mind, this book is giving us a perspective, another view to see the world. To analyze what war’s are about and why they happen. We can see the absurdity, the “raw” human element to violence and war, and we can make our own informed assessment.
Vonnegut obviously has his own take and opinion on war and why we wage it, but in the end, it offers the reader a different perspective by which to judge such complex dilemmas as war in our society. Which is why there is so much commentary on things that will be endlessly debated, like whether or not war is inevitable. In the end, all we can really have is an opinion, well informed by the thought and analysis that comes from reading things like Slaughterhouse.
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