Kilagore Trout's Trafalmadore.

Is Billy Pilgrim a thief who constantly steals stories from others? Or is he just an old war veteran who suffers from post war trauma? Billy's "experiences" with time travel and Trafalmadore are very similar to the ideas seen on Kilagore Trout's novels. The Big Board, a book by Trout, exhibits the life of two earthlings, who are captured by a flying saucer to then be taken into a zoo for display on an extraterrestrial planet. Huh? Isn't this similar? Where else have you seen this bizarre idea before? Aa! In Billy's anecdotes about his random visits to Trafalmadore. Hmm. Nonetheless, Billy's random time travel began the night his daughter got married, not so long after his release from the Veterans Hospital, the place where he started reading Trout's stories.   

I think the book is just a part of Billy's imagination. He has a lot of trauma from World War II, and his complicated life. Billy believes just traveling through time is part of his destiny, he is destined to do this and that, and then to just die. So it goes.I think, he is just absent minded, and navigates through his old and rusted memories of war, confusing them with time travel. It's like a child eagerly waiting for the letter of acceptance from Hogwarts, even after their eleventh year of life. Unconscious from the fact that no owl got lost, just that he is not going to receive any kind of letter, but acting as if he has, and is going to Hogwarts.

The book procedes from the future to the present, to the present to the future, from the present to the past and vice versa. All the book is seen from the eyes of Billy, and a narrator just tells us every thought in Billy's mind, as Billy doesn't narrate the novel. Slaughterhouse-Five provides the reader an insight of what war is, and an experience of the damage it can have on a person, such as the prolonged effects it had on Billy. It shows the reader how easy people come and people go; how death is absolutely ordinary in wartime, and how people don't care if others die, the only thing that matters is that they survive during those horrid moments.

Kurt Vonnegut Vs. Billy Pilgrim

Does Billy Pilgrim represent someone else?

While reading a post from Perfection is a Matter of Perception, by Ana Maria Villaveces I realized we both had similar thoughts. There are many things in the book that make us connect Kurt Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim. Sometimes I think if they are the same person and Vonnegut incorporated his own person inside Billy Pilgrim, adding in its way different details, emanating from his imagination. 

I have to disagree with Ana Maria when she says that the most probable situation is that Billy is a different person from Vonnegut. She has to look outside the context, search for any sort of connection between them, which actually are many. Both, Billy Pilgrim and Kurt Vonnegut enlisted in the US Army. Both witnessed the Dresden bombing, and both where locked inside a slaughterhouse, incidentally number 5.Therefore, I strongly believe that they are both the same person, and that Vonnegut is just narrating to us his story. I think that the person from chapter 1, is Kurt Vonnegut himself narrating how he wants to write a story about the Dresden massacre, and actually starts writing it in chapter two. Basically the first chapter of the novel, is sort of a preface, introducing to us the actual story. 

"I, Billy Pilgrim, will die, have died and will always die on February thirteenth, 1976"

Have you ever thought of knowing the future? Would you choose to see your future, and even know the date of your own death? Wouldn't you be curious if you had the opportunity of knowing? I would be, and Billy Pilgrim has been given this opportunity by the Trafalmadorians. Many people would think, how lucky he is to know the future, but actually is it really that "cool"? Knowing something and not being able to stop it is terrible, being able to count the days you have left with your loved ones, becoming eager as the date approaches. I believe it’s a terrible thing, interesting in some ways, but knowing your fate is not part of our lives. We become who we want to become, but what if you become who you are destined to become. What if the future you have the chance to watch is you dying from the death penalty? Knowing that eventually you’ll do something you have no control over, just to do as destiny says.

I think of the kind of situation, in which you know the outcomes and you know what is going to eventually happen, but find yourself without a voice; Unable to speak up and change things. Such as a criminal, a victim and a silent bystander, something very common in life. The poor bystander has no control of what is happening, because if he dares to come closer he might end up dead next to the first victim, or they’re silenced by a threat.

"Don't worry. It will never be bombed."

Dresden, through World War II, was an undefended city, free of threats of being attacked; it had never had suffered any mayor damage, until February 13 1945, when it was throughly bombed by the allies. The bombing lasted around two days and Dresden was destroyed almost to ashes. Thousands of people died, innocent people who didn't deserve to die. People who where on their way home to meet their family after work, just to enjoy a happy dinner, while praying to their God they had survived this awful time of war. Only to be stoped dead by a never-ending rain of missiles. 

"You don't need to worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden is an open city. It is undefended, and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance." - Chapter 6, page 146

This quote reflects the irony and black humor in "Slaughterhouse-five". What a perfect target for the allies than to bomb an undefended, open city? If the main objective of theirs is to exhibit power, why not do so by killing thousand of lives in a place that is easy to attack? It's a flawless strategy, however an inhuman one. I have always thought of war as an event filled with cruelness, evil and desire for power. It is something that will never be justified, I mean, how can someone justify the death of thousands of people just for the greater good, or just to prove a point. Do we humans always have to seek violence as our main alternative? Is it in our nature? is it an instinct?  I do not know the answer but something has to be the reason. Nonetheless, the ones who declare war are not actually the ones fighting it; I imagine how small, irregular, and short wars would be if the leaders themselves fought them. It would be unwise, but more human. 

"Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones"

"Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams."- Ashley smith

Since I was a toddler, I've always enjoyed reading, however, I wasn't the type of child who read every book I could reach. I wasn't like Matilda from Roald Dahl's book, yet, last year I realized I really liked non-fiction books, especially those who talk about the future, such as utopian and dystopian novels. Through his life, Billy Pilgrim has encountered a rather interesting source of life, the so-called Trafalmadorians, who inhabit the Trafalmadore planet. As every different civilization they differ from us in various ways, such as their perspectives on life’s aspects and their anatomy.

Life is Life. It can be lived in many different ways, in different manners, but it will always be life. You can enjoy its every aspect and receive nourishment from the first day of life, or throw it aside and let life die. I believe, we humans choose our destiny, our choices makes us who we are. Haven’t you ever wondered what would have happened if you hadn’t done something when you were smaller, or what if you had done this other thing? We all reach a destiny, however, we all take different paths to reach it. The Trafalmadorians think that we have a destiny with a predestined route we cannot vary, we have our choices already make and the only thing left for us to do, is to enjoy life. “On other days we have wars as horrible as any you’ve ever seen or heard about. There isn’t anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at the pleasant moments” 

War means death, and if there is war there is death.

“So Billy uncorked it with his thumbs. It didn't make a pop. The champagne was dead. So it goes”- Chapter four, pg. 73 

So it goes. What do you think when you hear this sentence? It may mean many things, it could fit in different situations, it could relate to various topics. It just states that things go on, time passes and things change, that's life; but, what does it mean when Vonnegut uses it? I’ve come to realize that after a death occurs in the book, so it goes. Vonnegut uses it after the decease of someone. An utterly common event in war.  This is one of the few things that cannot be avoidable in war, it is something we have no control of. War means death, and if there is war there is death. 

This book is dedicated to war, to the Dresden bombing in World War II. I believe Vonnegut is trying to convey the message that in war there is always going to be the loss of life, that it something ordinary but, grotesque. That as there are so many losses there is really no time to stop and think about it, just time to run and protect yourself, its the place to be selfish and only think about me, myself and I. It makes me think of the holocaust, of how hundreds of jews died everyday but no one really cared, they were treated as something not worth living. Those hundreds of people who supported Hitler what were their reasons to follow him? To clean the world? To clean the world from what? Everyone is different and just because of their believes they are not less worth than others, not even by their skin color they should be classified as not pure, there is nothing like that. Everyone should be equal. Still, Vonnegut seems to have compassion to all of these deaths, as he writes about the Trafalmadorians and their thoughts about life and death. Which are about how when someone dies they are not truly dead, the just seem to be so. They may be dead in the future and present but, they're always in memories that come from the past, they continue to live in other places and times. 

1944, 1958, 1955, 1967?

Is this all part of Billy’s imagination? In what year is he really stationed? Did he make it all up? Why does he suddenly travel in time? or are they really flashbacks? These are some of the questions I often ask myself while reading "Slaughterhouse-Five". 

Sometimes, when one goes through a very shocking and distressing event the most common reaction our mind has is to erase all these memories. To block them and put them in box in the corner of our minds, to never have to revive them or ever think of them again. However, what Billy Pilgrim may be going through is the opposite, the opening of that box, the peeking into what is inside it, receiving in its way flashbacks. In the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind there is this company which erases memories from our mind; things we won't like to remember. It similar to when someone drinks too much alcohol and doesn't remember anything from the night before, which would leave a gap or a missing part in one's memory about a specific event, the difference is that here it is voluntary. In the process of deleting his unwanted memories, the main character of the movie has to revisit and restore them in order to forget about their existence. Which although not very relevant to Billy's situation, it is similar and it could compared. He is resuscitating everything he went through in World War II, living through every detail and every sensation as if he where there again. Nonetheless, he may have confused this with time travel, and let his imagination flow to the unreal, creating the Trafalmadore. Who then provide him a different way of looking at death, something very common in war. That could be his own, personal and unique way of forgetting the past and getting through with it, by living it again unconsciously. 

How to phrase it?

Relaxed? Tranquil? Careless? Casual? What is the right word to describe how Vonnegut writes about war? It amazes me his writing technique, it is so calm and easy. It's fluent and informs in  a different way, it provides a different perspective of war to the reader.  

This book, especially through chapter 3 has caught my undivided attention. It utterly amazes me how Billy Pilgrim acts in reaction to his experiences in war. This text leaves the reader with a lot to bear in mind providing him with plenty of material to think thoroughly. Through out the text Vonnegut casually ends ideas and paragraphs with the line "So it goes." This adds a certain tone of causality to the book. The chapter is rather emphasized on the war experiences Billy had during WWII. The grotesque images that pop into the readers mind are just horrid. The causalities of war aren't a topic one talks fluently or rather in a relaxed and careless tone. However, this is exactly what Vonnegut does through the text as he describes the crude events of wartime. By using this phrase, so it goes, it is implied that the deaths of a dozens of people during this time was normal, something we saw everyday. It adds a certain relaxed tone to the text, which is a unique way of showing that war isn't as an easy topic to write about, even if what you're trying to say is against it. 

And so on, so it goes.

"It is easier to believe a lie that one has heard a thousand times than to believe a fact that no one has heard before” -Unknown

Chapter 2 of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is based upon Billy Pilgrim. A narrator retells Billy's life since he was born until the current day. Billy fought during WWII as a naive, young and unexperienced soldier accompanied by Weary, and then became an optometrist. Billy then writes about how he was kidnapped by a flying saucer, a UFO, and taken to another planet, Tralfmadore. The planet was inhabited by creatures who thought differently about death, time and life. As a person dies he really is never gone, he only appears to die. He exists in the past, in the which he was healthy and strong, it's a memory that will never disappear, it will always remain.  Moments are permanent, and no one can take away the past. 

This is a different way of viewing the death of a loved one, it makes it less tragic. In its way it's true, a dead person may not be in the present nor the future, but it will forever remain in the past. It teaches us a different perspective of viewing death, which occurs very continuously through the lapse of a war.  Although not really relevant to the topic of war, these aliens can teach us of different ways to understand life and death. Helping us overcome our grief and melancholy of having lost a loved one. Billy's daughter Barbara, reacts rather negatively towards her father anecdotes. He is rejected by her and called a liar, by which a plane crash he had when younger affected him mentally. 
     
This makes think of a situation I saw in a movie, article or a book when I was smaller, although completely irrelevant it made that person feel unsupported and rejected. I don't remember exactly what was the accusation, but the main character was charged for a crime he didn't commit, however he was innocent and that something that none believed. They never believed his innocence until he was proved free of charges and was let go. He was ostracized by society and didn't receive support from his close friends nor family when he most needed it. They thought it was bizarre to believe him, as they where completely sure he had committed that crime. They weren't there when he most needed them. What class of people are they? Are they true friend? Even if they don't share the same opinions and thoughts they could support their friend. I ask myself the same thing regarding Barbara's reaction to his father's stories. They may be a lie, or they may be true, but at least he is doing something that he enjoys. 

Decisions! Decisions!

The first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, is an introduction of the actual book, sort of like a preface. A WWII veteran narrates his vain tries to write a book about the Bombing in Dresden. He has been trying to write about this memory he wants to retell  for some time, though without much success. He is found unsure about what he would like to write about, what experiences and things that happened to share. This story isn't about war, he won't be praising war. It's rather an anti-war book. The chapter is concluded with the finalization of the novel, when he is finally able to write the book. However he finds the book as a failure, a mixture of ideas that don't makes sense, as to him there's nothing intelligent to say something about a massacre such as this. 

I believe it was hard for him to write about such topic as it is something most people won't like to remember again. Probably his mind blocked away those memories, so even though he remembers them clearly, deep inside him those are images he wouldn't like to ever think about again, and if for the narrator it is hard to remember what happened it should be harder to be put into words. It is easier to say  he is going to write a book, than to actually write it. 


Although many people were constantly updated about how the massacre was advancing or what was going on at the moment none of them felt what the people in Dresden felt at that time. They estimate that around 100,000 lives were lost, and no one will ever feel what these people felt, or what they thought at the moment. The British supported by the United States killed thousands of civilians who didn’t deserve to die. If you weren't in the actual place where a war took place it will never be that accurate or real to write about something like this, because you will never feel what the people in the city or town felt at the time. It will never be exactly accurate. It relates to the drop of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they killed millions of innocent people who didn't deserve to die. If  the US wanted Japan to surrender they could have searched for a more peaceful way to resolve the conflict, not by dropping two atomic bombs.


I feel impressed that someone is willing to write about a moment in history such as this, as this bombing only demonstrates to what extents people are able to go to demonstrate their power and their pride.  War is not an easy topic to write about, as it shares many dissenting views in between people. A country that wins a war, may have won but they have killed thousands and millions of lives, or innocent people who shouldn't be killed. If there's a conflict in between countries, such as WWI and WWII it shouldn't be resolved through war. War is "a sate of armed conflict between different nations, states or different groups within a nation or a state" in which the nation who wins doesn't demonstrate more supremacy or control, it just exhibits more urge, determination and in its way power to kill people and win. A country's people may not share similar thoughts with its leader, they mustn't suffer and pay for the ideas of others. 

Reading Blog: The Perfect Life

The Perfect Life by John Koethe

At first, when the poem had just started I thought it would be about someone who had it all, was happy and needed no more. However as the poem advanced I realized I was totally wrong. When the author reaches the third line he says "happy in a vague way: no disappointments", thus it can connect to a quote that says "Sometimes, we expect more form one person because we are willing to do, that much, for them." This person didn’t have high expectations, or just didn’t have any at all. You may be asking yourself why I am so negative. However, I’m just being realistic even if it's bad, that’s who I am. No one is perfect, makes no mistakes or lives the perfect life, at least thats what I think. There's no such thing as perfection.  This isn't about happy love or great fortune.

"The fake security of someone is the grip of a delusion" 

When I read the phrase stated above, I certainly knew that this person wasn’t okay. They weren’t in a good emotional state, I understand, although not fully. And no, I’m not a drama queen; I am just a bit sentimental. When someone is scared or sad they need reassurance that everything is going to be fine, but sometimes people do not understand and you’re left alone, in solitude. Thus, the only escape route you've got left is to reassure you’re going to be all right. But you're not; you're just lying to yourself. Living inside a bubble of lies. They try to find happiness and joy everyday. However, life its just an interpretation that changes with perspective, some my think its awesome others not. Perfection is just an matter of perspective. Koethe demonstrates this, as feeling we receive as we stop being kids and start acting as adults, as a feeling that grows stronger and sadder with time. 

As the poem progresses to the last paragraph, each time it upraises the perfect life. The author portrays it as an unhappy form of living, as a sad, cold and droopy feeling. Now you think, the perfect life is not perfect at all. 

The poem ends with, "A blank space, like a hole left in the wake of a perfect life, which closes over." as if living good life was just a mere memory, something we can only dream of or imagine. The author suggests that  perfection in happiness doesn't exist. Either someone has no expectations or  as we grow up and become adults. I support him.  

The Divine Comedy, Inferno. Ring VIII, The Malebolge: Ditch IV - Poetic Justice?

The Inferno is completely based upon poetic justice, which means that people in hell are being punished for what they did when they were alive. Poetic justice is like karma, what ever you do, comes back to you. Which all sums up to if your bad in earth, you are destined to hell and if your good, to heaven. 

When Dante and Virgil arrive to view the 4 pouch of the Malebolge (eighth ring), they come to see a crowd of sinners moving slowly as in a procession. Their faces appear to be contorted, for they are facing their backs while tears come streaming down their backside. Here the diviners, seers, astrologers and magicians are being punished. Poetic justice is seen here, as these people that as while on earth wanted to see too far ahead of them, now they can only see that path they have already traveled. It's an ideal penalty for them, because as the definition of poetic justice says, what goes around comes around and they are now forced to look backwards into past, forever.