7,000,000,000 seven billion 7^9

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-10-30/world-population-hits-seven-billion/51007670/1

"On an average, 324,000 new babies are born into the world every day. During that same day, 10,000 persons, on an average, will have starved to death or died from malnutrition. So it goes. In addition 123,000 persons will die for other reasons. So it goes. This leaves a net gain of about 192,000 each day in the world. The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000.

'I suppose they will all want dignity, ' I said.

'I suppose,' said O'Hare."

So we have, and yes they do. Our population is unfathomably large and growing exponentially. Hundreds of thousands of lives come and go each day, and it is really hard to realize or even conceive of this fact. Thus when a massacre occurs like Dresden and World War II it is an even more difficult subject to discuss. Death is always a sensitive topic but there can never be growth or any justification of those lives sacrificed if we cannot openly discuss and comfort one another about such issues. All seven billion of us on Earth do most definitely want dignity, and revolutions such as the one in Egypt earlier this year will turn up at every place that dignity is denied. Rather than perpetuate a cynical kill or be killed Darwinist mindset, there need to be more cooperative discussions and compromises quite soon. On average now that the world's population has doubled, one can estimate for every bomb dropped twice as many lives will be lost. Thus every war from now on will murder twice as many innocent people, and if we cannot realize these facts and talk about them we may be doomed to repeat history.

Q: What does the phrase "If you're ever in Cody, Whyoming, just ask for Wild Bob." mean to Billy Pilgrim now that the war is over and Wild Bob is dead?

Horse Pitiers

“Billy asked them in English what it was they wanted, and they at once scolded him in English for the condition of the horse. They made Billy get out of the wagon and come look at the horses. When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tear. He hadn’t cried about anything else in the war” (197-small book)

While reminiscing on his life, Billy considers that if given the optimistically selective mentality of the Tralfamadorians, he would choose the moment while snoozing in the back of a wagon, as the happiest moment of his life. His musing is soon interrupted by concerned voices. Billy then notices a couple pitying the state of the neglected horses of his wagon. They force Billy to observe the horse’s pathetic condition. When suddenly exposed to the miserable horses he bursts into tears, and claims “he hadn’t cried about anything else in the war”.

This sudden, unexpected, impulsive response made me wonder what triggered such contrasting emotional states inside Billy’s mind. Seemingly minutes before, he was relishing in blissful thought, all to be abruptly replaced by a surge of tears. This response reveals just how confused and abnormal Billy’s emotional state of mind has fallen victim to. He fails to notice the obvious death and misery of his surroundings. This enforces Billy’s inadequate credibility as a factual narrator. As the war lingers around him, Billy becomes oblivious and uncomprehending to just exactly what he is experiencing. I think the author uses this instance as example for how emotional the war is for these soldiers without glorifying or justifying war. Throughout the novel, Billy is presented as a passive, inexpressive, and detached character. He seems to go through moments as an observer of his own life and never really attaches his emotions to what should be a traumatizing experience. In this moment, his character is allowed to evoke feelings of sympathy and pity. Vonnegut strategically makes one of the few emotional events in this book circa horses and a random couple, rather then perhaps the bombing of Dresden. Thus the reader may not be swayed emotionally to sympathize with killings of war, but still can recognize sympathy towards the individuals involved.

Q: Why do you think Billy claims this moment to be his first moment he cries about the war?

Jesus and the Time Traveler

"The time-traveler in the book went back to Bible times to find out one thing in particular: Whether or not Jesus had really died on the cross, or whether he had been taken down while still alive, whether he had really gone on living. The hero had a stethoscope along." 260

* * *

The time-traveler's curiosity about Jesus' death status raises and interesting question; why does it matter if Jesus had died on the cross or whether he lived? No matter what, people would have believed in Christianity. This is an example of Vonnegut's fatalistic theme throughout the novel. It didn't matter if the future technology of a stethoscope proved that Jesus' heart was still beating and his resurrection was not a complete revival of a dead person. Those who believed he was the Son of God would have deemed it a miracle anyhow and the world would still have Christianity. The knowledge gained by the time traveler would not have changed anything because the world where he comes from believes Jesus Christ is divine. As it was, "the Son of God was dead as a doornail" when the time traveler checked his heartbeat.

Why does Billy never attempt to change the past when he time-travels? Does he believe that free-will does not exist?

Snoozing...

"Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones- to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. If this sort of selectivity had been possible for Billy, he might have chosen as his happiest moment his sun drenched snooze in the back of the wagon." (195 Dell edition-middle of chapter 8)

This passage occurs two days after the end of the war. Billy and the other American prisoners of war found an abandon wagon resembling a coffin, equipped with two old horses and are returning to the slaughterhouse for war souvenirs. Billy falls asleep in the back of the wagon and claims that to be the happiest moment of his life.

This passage stood out to me because it seems to me that someone should have much happier moments in their life than taking a nap in a coffin. For instance, the day he married his wife, the day his children were born, etc. I understand that after being a prisoner of war, one would inevitably be elated when the war was over but the fact that that moment was Billy's happiest speaks volumes about Billy. I believe that Billy has PTSD and has not been able to cope with that happened to him in the war.

It's ironic that the happiest moment of Billy's life is when he's in a coffin-shaped bed among the ruins of Dresden. There's nothing beautiful or pleasant about his surroundings. The coffin seems to resemble the fact that Billy, in a way, died in Dresden. The war changed him and left sort of an empty shell. The coffin could also be representative of the lives lost in the Dresden firebombing.

Why did Billy feel so compelled to tell Rumfoord that he was in Dresden during the firebombing if he didn't also want to tell Rumfoord his story?

-Molly

So Long Forever

            “The guards drew together instinctively, rolled their eyes. They experimented with one expression and then another, said nothing, though their moths were often open. They looked like a silent film of a barbershop quartet.

‘So long forever,’ they might have been singing, ‘old fellows and pals; So long forever, old sweethearts and pals—God bless ‘em—” (227)

The night of the bombing, Billy was hiding down in the underground meat locker with the other American prisoners of war. There were only four guards with them—only four guards that would be surviving the night.

Billy watches the guards as they, along with everyone else, wait in terror for the bombs to finish falling. The guards are at a loss of words, which is what ends up reminding Billy of the silent movie of a barbershop quartet; this illustrates the author’s initial warning from chapter one that there isn’t anything intelligent to say about a massacre.

This moment is preceded with a build up of different scenes of Billy and Valencia’s anniversary party, where Billy is overcome with uncontrollable tears when the barbershop quartet sings. In the moment he can’t understand why he’s so affected by the performance, but eventually he is able to look back and see that in his memory the destruction of Dresden is denoted by this image of a barbershop quartet silent film. Seeing four men with their mouths open reminds him too clearly of the four guards that night of the bombing that his emotions finally reveal his grief over the death and destruction of the war.

The awkwardness of the guards seems childish in the way that they roll their eyes and experiment in trying to find the right facial expression for such a moment. They don’t know the words to say, the feelings to express, and in their ignorance they find the innocence and vulnerability that comes with war during times of mass and imminent death. This again references the subtitle of this novel, The Children’s Crusade. Vonnegut portrays this moment through not the use of words that incite emotions of danger and fear but through a comparison to a barbershop quartet singing “So long forever” in a silent film; he thus creates the perfect atmosphere for a truer understanding of what war does to men.

Q: This is one of the few times that Billy is presenting a memory purely as a memory rather than a time-traveled experience. What is the significance of this specific event being remembered “shimmeringly” rather than just another time jump?

Time Travel

Billy's outward listlessness was a screen . The listlessness concealed a mind which was fizzing and flashhing thrillingly . It was preparing letters and lectures about the flying saucers, the negligibility of death , and the true nature of death. ( 243)

The quote gives us an overview of what the narrator describes Billy's lifestyle as: All in one moment. As he lays there unconscious and appears braindead to everyone around him his mind is busy chaotically zig-zagging through past, present , and future moments of his life. He even mentions how he revisits some of these moments more than once . Billy is in and out of every moment whenever he closes his eyes, but he never seems to be in his current reality of time. Billy says he has seen his death several times and he "always dies on February 13, 1976"(183) . He gives a brief description during these pages of how he dies. In my mind , I expected more of a detailed description of his death towards the end of the novel, but he failed to mention this moment ever again . Billy keeps living all in one moment even after his death. However, for Billy dead or alive his description of life is all the same to him . He considers one of his happiest moments to be in a " sundrenched snooze in the back of a wagon" (249 ). Billy doesn't seem to mind being dead or alive because life was meaningless to him long before his death (123) .

Q: Why is Billy so accepting and conformed to the way he dies ? is it because of the Tralfamadorian mind set he has acquired ? or is it because of the war and the outlook on life it gave him ?

War and Vegetables

“Billy's outward listlessness was a screen. The listlessness concealed a mind which was fizzing and flashing thrillingly... 'Why don’t they let him die?' he asked Lily.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘That’s not a human being anymore. Doctors are for human beings. They should turn him over to a veterinarian or a tree surgeon. They’d know what to do. Look at him! That’s life, according to the medical profession. Isn’t life wonderful?’” (243-244)

This comes from the section where Billy is in the hospital after his plane crash. Professor Rumfoord says that he is no longer a human since he is just like a vegetable laying there. I think that in this section, Vonnegut is showing the things war can cause, things like PTSD. Billy's condition could be from the plane crash, but it seems as though it is mostly from what he saw in the war. Rumfoord's inability to write about the Dresden bombing in his history book seems to parallel Vonnegut's inability to write about Dresden, as he describes to us in the first chapter. Even though they can't write about it for different reasons, it seems very similar. Rumfoord also seems to have a different take on life than in the rest of the book, with its "so it goes" attitude. He wants Billy to be gone, just because he doesn't talk to anyone, it isn't as simple as it seems from the outside, to Billy he is traveling all over the place, very much alive, and his life is wonderful, as Rumfoord sarcastically states.

Q: Why did Billy wait until now to think up his plans for telling everyone "about the flying saucers, the negligibility of death, and the true nature of time"? Why did he feel the need to wait, and why did he decide that after his plane crash and hospital stay that that was the right time?

"There's Something Happening Here..."

“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.

            Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died too. So it goes.

            And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes” (210). (Beginning of Ch. 10)

This quote contains many of the themes and motifs that are present throughout the novel. Once again at the beginning of Chapter 10 we see the story switch from Billy’s account of what’s happening back to an unknown narrator. This goes along with the theme of narrative vs. non-narrative. We also have the use of “so it goes” multiple times. But, the most prominent feature of this quote is the way the author chooses to tie past events with current ones. We are given descriptions of the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King, as well as the mention of the Vietnam War, which lead us to believe that we are now in the year 1968. Vonnegut intentionally moved forward in time to this particular year to show that there is still unnecessary violence taking place in the world. Despite the horror and destruction that was witnessed during World War II we have failed to learn our lesson and continue to make the same mistakes. The casual tone seems to indicate that there is nothing that can be done and it’s just the way things are. Once again this is intentional to force the reader to consider if there really is nothing that can be done, or if we must somehow take action.  

Q: What did Vonnegut hope to accomplish by switching back and forth between a narrator and Billy?

-Jonathan Virdell 

Bugs Trapped in Amber

“Where am I?” said Billy Pilgrim.

“Trapped in another blob of amber, Mr. Pilgrim. We are where we have to be just now…”

“How--how did I get here?”

“It would take another Earthling to explain it to you. Earthlings are great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided. I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”

“You sound to me as though you don’t believe in free will, “ said Billy Pilgrim.

(pg 85) End of chapter 4

Billy’s conversation with the Tralfamadorians here reinforces the Tralfamadorians’ concept of time—instead of viewing life as linear, they believe it to be a collection of moments, emphasizing once again that people are just like bugs trapped in amber. There is nothing they can do about what is to happen to them; they can only learn to accept it. This Tralfamadorian concept of time reflects Billy’s own concept of time, and helps to explain why Billy has become “unstuck” in time. Since time, to Tralfamadorians, is merely a collenction of moments, Billy is able to move around in these moments throughout his life and transport himself to another time and place.

This new view of time draws light on the difficulty or recounting traumatic experiences, and serves as an outlet for Billy to make sense of all he has experienced in the war. It reflects his belief that we cannot control our fate; we must learn to simply move on when experiencing something such as death. It also explains the Tralfamadorians’ notion of free will—they reject it completely, believing that everyone’s fate is predetermined and there is no use asking questions. We are all bugs trapped in amber, and a moment in time simply is. This idea helps Billy recount his time at war, as it leads him to believe that all that has experienced was meant to happen the way it happened.

Q: How does the Tralfamadorian view of time help us make sense of the events of the novel? Would we have a different understanding of the story if it were all told in order?

Heaven and Hell

“The Americans arrived in Dresden at five in the afternoon. The boxcar doors were opened, and the doorways framed the loveliest city that most of the Americans had ever seen. The skyline was intricate and voluptuous and enchanted and absurd. It looked like a Sunday school picture of Heaven to Billy Pilgrim.” (93)

In this quote, Billy Pilgrim and his fellow soldiers lay eyes on Dresden for the first time. This appears to be one of the few moments throughout the novel in which Billy shows an emotion other than apathy; his awestruck description of the “enchanted” skyline contrasts starkly with his usual passive, “so it goes” outlook on life. Billy's description of Dresden as “a Sunday school picture of Heaven” is laced with irony, as we know that the bombing will soon turn the city into a fiery hell on Earth. The beauty and liveliness of Dresden and its inhabitants prior to the firebombing makes its destruction even more tragic, especially when Billy casually notes that "most of the people watching him would soon be dead" (95). Vonnegut makes the cold inhumanity of war strikingly evident through its horrible ability to transform a "voluptuous," vibrant image of paradise into what Billy calls “the surface of the moon” – a lifeless, barren wasteland (43).

Q: Why does Vonnegut choose such a passive, detached character as his protagonist?

the children's crusade

"The eight ridiculous Dresdeners ascertained that these hundred ridiculous creatures really were American fighting men fresh from the front. They smiled , and then they laughed. Their terror evaporated. There was nothing to be afraid of. Here were more crippled human beings, more fools like themselves." 
pg. 191


In this passage and chapter as a whole, Vonnegut makes clear the toll that war has taken on these young men. I think this passage is one of many moments in the novel that exemplifies the subtitle of the book, The Children's Crusade. It seems that Vonnegut is constantly trying to show us the juxtaposition of the romanticized ideals of war against the harsh reality of it. The image of war and soldiers evokes a certain sense of heroism, strength, courage and dignity but I think Vonnegut really wants us to see how that isn't the reality. These men are reduced to mere boys and are often stripped of their dignity and courage. There is a sense of unfulfilled goals or dreams. Historically, the Children's Crusade is remembered as a voyage carried out by a great number of adolescents in medieval times who claim they were on a mission from God to convert Muslims to Christianity. However, most all of the crusaders died in shipwrecks or were captured and sold into slavery. I think this idea, being the subtitle, is incredibly evident and important to the novel as a whole. These soldiers were sent on this heroic voyage to save the world but it seems that along the way, Vonnegut would argue that more was lost in regards in terms of dignity, mental health, and human lives than was gained.

Q: Do you think this passage exemplifies the subtitle The Children's Crusade? Or, do you think he meant something else by it?

Annie Baker

Scarred for Life

"They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in the war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking him for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes." (128)

This passage sets a tone for how Vonnegut wants his audience to perceive war in this novel. From a normal perspective, it seems that coming back from the war, the two med had gone insane. Rosewater starts shooting public service workers, and Billy thinks he can time-travel now. This passage implies to the reader that war is a terrible experience and that there are events which can scar a person for life if seen. That's exactly what happened to Billy and Rosewater. The war had taken its toll on their minds, and they were left coveting obscure science-fiction novels.

The Tralfamadorians, as it seems, view death as just another small event. They move on like nothing had happened. It's true everyone will die, and they just accept it as part of life and progress. As humans, we mourn when someone close dies and hold different ceremonies for the person and their relatives. Basically, we put a lot of importance in the value of a life. As of now, it is unclear what, during the war, had made Rosewater go insane, but the audience knows what influenced Billy. Watching Thousands of bodies have fire bombs rained on them clearly affected the way Billy lived after the war. Billy saw the lives of thousands of German citizens extinguished instantly with the Dresden bombing. Clearly, Vonnegut tries to show his readers that what was seen can't be unseen, and what Billy had seen in war would mentally affect him for the rest of his life.

Q: How does someone mentally recover from seeing something as horrific as the Dresden fire-bombing?

What is true?

“Billy was unconscious for two days after that, and he dreamed millions of things, some of them true. The true things were time-travel.” (200)

This excerpt comes from right after Billy’s plane crashes on its way to an optometrist’s conference in Montreal, which Billy knew was going to happen. He fractured his skull and had to be taken to a hospital. Earlier in the novel, we learn that after this accident is when Billy begins to go slightly crazy and talk about the Tralfamadorians and time-travel, and becomes unfit to practice his profession.

This passage begs the question of what is true in the novel and what is Billy’s imagination. It makes the reader recall the very first words of the entire novel, “All this happened, more or less.” Well, what really did happen? Since we know that time travel is not real, but it states that one of the only true things that Billy dreamed of is time-travel, we are presented with an enigma. Perhaps this is the moment that all of his “time travels” begin because his mind has to go somewhere while he is unconscious. In one journey that Billy goes on, he is entirely convinced that aliens take him to a ship in outer space whose inhabitants see in four dimensions and treat him like a zoo animal. The Tralfamadorians end up having a huge effect on the reader. Their point of view that time is not linear, but all moments exist at once, is similar to the structure of the novel. Therefore, the reader does not get a 360-degree view of Billy as a character, but learns to accept the events that occur during random snapshots in time as what is important in the novel.

Q: What effect does the Tralfamadorian’s viewpoint that everything happens at once have on the reader’s understanding of the structure and narrative of Slaughterhouse Five?

Revealing structure

"There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time." (76)

This is an excerpt of what the Tralfamadorians tell Billy Pilgrim of their books. They explain how they are structured as clumps of brief messages that do not have to be read in any necessary order. Vonnegut is essentially revealing the reasoning behind the structure of his book. He implies that the reader should interpret it based on the whole experience, the big picture rather than each individual event or minute detail.

Vonnegut's compilation of multiple moments also reflects his hesitation or initial lack of confidence to write a novel about war. Flitting from moment to moment could either suggest that Vonnegut is recording whatever snippets he remembers as he recalls them. However, it could also suggest that he is unable to elaborate on one point for too long a time. By suggesting that he is mirroring the Tralfamadorian style of "deep" writing, Vonnegut is simultaneously suggesting that is how he shows depth. Due to the widespread popularity of Slaughterhouse Five, I think most of the world agrees that his unusual layout worked for him.

-Madhu Singh