Slaughter House-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
Chapter #4-5 ( pg. 72-96)
While continuing to read the novel we still come upon various strange behaviors and events Billy approaches. More questions arise, and the time schemes shown in the narrative confuse and convert what Billy is going through into something even more complicated. The first weird thing I came upon was the repetitive mention of stripes in the first page: “The wedding had taken place that afternoon in a gaily striped tent in Billy’s backyard. The stripes were orange and black.” (pg. 72) Is this relevant in any way? Do the black and orange colors on a wedding celebration (uncommon) mean something? The narrator then again mentions stripes, “The hallway was zebra-stripped with darkness and moonlight.” (pg. 72) Can the continuous mention of stripes mean something, or is it just a distraction? When reading this passage I also thought about the timeless times I have had trouble falling asleep and spent hours turning in bed and walking through the house, just as it happened to Billy.
At the bottom of this page there was a phrase which called my attention: “Billy now shuffled down his upstairs hallway, knowing he was about to be kidnapped by a flying saucer.” (pg. 72) How come he new they were coming to get him? Why didn’t he do anything about it? Was he looking forward to being taken way? This certainly seemed so since he stood in the kitchen and even knew how much time had to pass by before he would be taken, and finally when the saucer arrived he took hold of the ladder to be pulled up. After reading about alien and human interaction I somehow remembered the movie ET in which at first after seeing the alien, the kids are freaking out, but after accustoming to it, they even help him find his way back home.
While waiting for the Tralfamadores to arrive Billy enters his daughter’s room and the phone rings, when he hangs up the narrator mentions, “There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath –mustard gas and roses.” (pg.13) I immediately made a connection to the beginning of the chapter in which the narrator talks about himself and about spending nights on the phone calling all friends after having a couple of drinks and sending his wife to bed because of the gas mustered gas and roses breath. Then after being picked up by the aliens he becomes unstuck on time and remembers about seeing a war movie but backwards and then again forward, they refer to how bullets came out of planes, how planes were built and far back how the soldiers were only kids. Does seeing the movie backwards have a specific meaning? Are they trying to represent how mistakes can be fixed by experience? When talking about the movie the narrator mentions Adam and Eve again: “…conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposes.” (pg. 75) This is the second time around in which they have mentioned them; must they have a significant importance to Billy’s story?
A very interesting characteristic that appears further on in the story is how they tell us the aliens stole: “They carried into to a cabin where he was trapped to a yellow Barca-Lounger which they had stolen from a Sears Roebuck warehouse. The hold of the saucer was crammed with other stolen merchandise…” (pg.77). This makes me wonder why a specie that appears to be so developed and to be able to understand the universe to extents which the human race doesn’t, has to steal from Sears.
As I mentioned before, every time I person died the narrator added “So it goes” For instance “There was a death on the ninth day in the car ahead of Billy’s too. Roland Weary died-of gangrene that had started in his mangled feet. So it goes.” (pg 79) or another appearance is “The Americans were wheedled and teased over to those three stacks, which weren’t hay after all. They were overcoats taken from prisoners who were dead. So it goes.” (pg. 81) Ounce again in this chapter the narrator describes several deaths and ends his statement with the same ending. I still don’t understand what it means or if in deed it has a meaning.
After reading the past four chapters I still have millions of questions whirling around my mind, but I’m starting to have a feeling that Billy is actually mad, he is somewhat trying to avoid reality and what his going through his life, so every time he reaches a frightening or uncomfortable moment , he switches of into a different time scenario.
I continued reading a couple of pages of the fifth chapter and as I just started to read I came upon a paragraph that inspired my curiosity: “Billy Pilgrim says that the universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creature from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and were it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti.” (pg. 87) This immediately caught my attention since the universe has been a subject of my interest always. I have always wondered about it, how it looks and were it finishes, and when such a beautiful phrase was stated I was able to create a mental picture of what the universe was to the Tralfamadore.
As I read through the page I found a small description of human beings which really amused me. “And Tralfamadores don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes-with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other…” (pg.87). That description of the human body was complete nonsense, but as I thought of it, what we imagine as that aliens look like and how we would describe them, could also be complete nonsense to them. Later on Billy ask for a book to read while traveling in the saucer, but he got tired of it and asked for a new book, but instead he was handed a Tralfamadore book. This book contained symbols and brief clumps that “…Tralfamadorians read them all at ounce, not one after the other. There isn’t any particular relationship between al the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at ounce, 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 cause, no effect.” (pg. 88) I found this to be so interesting how in the books they could see many moments at ounce, just by watching a bunch of symbols and scribbles.
When I though most answer were being to be answered and that Billy was actually insane and just wanting to escape reality, most of the events that took place in this chapter made me reconsider and believe that maybe there’s a meaning behind all this, maybe in deed it is suppose to be happening. Will Billy discover why it’s happening to him?
At the bottom of this page there was a phrase which called my attention: “Billy now shuffled down his upstairs hallway, knowing he was about to be kidnapped by a flying saucer.” (pg. 72) How come he new they were coming to get him? Why didn’t he do anything about it? Was he looking forward to being taken way? This certainly seemed so since he stood in the kitchen and even knew how much time had to pass by before he would be taken, and finally when the saucer arrived he took hold of the ladder to be pulled up. After reading about alien and human interaction I somehow remembered the movie ET in which at first after seeing the alien, the kids are freaking out, but after accustoming to it, they even help him find his way back home.
While waiting for the Tralfamadores to arrive Billy enters his daughter’s room and the phone rings, when he hangs up the narrator mentions, “There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath –mustard gas and roses.” (pg.13) I immediately made a connection to the beginning of the chapter in which the narrator talks about himself and about spending nights on the phone calling all friends after having a couple of drinks and sending his wife to bed because of the gas mustered gas and roses breath. Then after being picked up by the aliens he becomes unstuck on time and remembers about seeing a war movie but backwards and then again forward, they refer to how bullets came out of planes, how planes were built and far back how the soldiers were only kids. Does seeing the movie backwards have a specific meaning? Are they trying to represent how mistakes can be fixed by experience? When talking about the movie the narrator mentions Adam and Eve again: “…conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposes.” (pg. 75) This is the second time around in which they have mentioned them; must they have a significant importance to Billy’s story?
A very interesting characteristic that appears further on in the story is how they tell us the aliens stole: “They carried into to a cabin where he was trapped to a yellow Barca-Lounger which they had stolen from a Sears Roebuck warehouse. The hold of the saucer was crammed with other stolen merchandise…” (pg.77). This makes me wonder why a specie that appears to be so developed and to be able to understand the universe to extents which the human race doesn’t, has to steal from Sears.
As I mentioned before, every time I person died the narrator added “So it goes” For instance “There was a death on the ninth day in the car ahead of Billy’s too. Roland Weary died-of gangrene that had started in his mangled feet. So it goes.” (pg 79) or another appearance is “The Americans were wheedled and teased over to those three stacks, which weren’t hay after all. They were overcoats taken from prisoners who were dead. So it goes.” (pg. 81) Ounce again in this chapter the narrator describes several deaths and ends his statement with the same ending. I still don’t understand what it means or if in deed it has a meaning.
After reading the past four chapters I still have millions of questions whirling around my mind, but I’m starting to have a feeling that Billy is actually mad, he is somewhat trying to avoid reality and what his going through his life, so every time he reaches a frightening or uncomfortable moment , he switches of into a different time scenario.
I continued reading a couple of pages of the fifth chapter and as I just started to read I came upon a paragraph that inspired my curiosity: “Billy Pilgrim says that the universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creature from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and were it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti.” (pg. 87) This immediately caught my attention since the universe has been a subject of my interest always. I have always wondered about it, how it looks and were it finishes, and when such a beautiful phrase was stated I was able to create a mental picture of what the universe was to the Tralfamadore.
As I read through the page I found a small description of human beings which really amused me. “And Tralfamadores don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes-with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other…” (pg.87). That description of the human body was complete nonsense, but as I thought of it, what we imagine as that aliens look like and how we would describe them, could also be complete nonsense to them. Later on Billy ask for a book to read while traveling in the saucer, but he got tired of it and asked for a new book, but instead he was handed a Tralfamadore book. This book contained symbols and brief clumps that “…Tralfamadorians read them all at ounce, not one after the other. There isn’t any particular relationship between al the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at ounce, 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 cause, no effect.” (pg. 88) I found this to be so interesting how in the books they could see many moments at ounce, just by watching a bunch of symbols and scribbles.
When I though most answer were being to be answered and that Billy was actually insane and just wanting to escape reality, most of the events that took place in this chapter made me reconsider and believe that maybe there’s a meaning behind all this, maybe in deed it is suppose to be happening. Will Billy discover why it’s happening to him?
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