Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Reading Blog Entry (Chapter #5) Third Part

Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
Chapter #5 (pg. 119-136)

This section of the fifth chapter initiates describing Billy and Valencia’s honeymoon in New England and how they were spending a very romantic evening together. Suddenly while in their balcony, Valencia bursts into tears and when asked why, responds by saying she was happy, especially because she thought she would never get married, and that since she did, she would make an effort to lose weight in order to look beautiful for her husband. Instantly Billy replies “I like you just the way you are.” (pg. 120) I believe this remark was so romantic and would ordinarily come from a person who was utterly in love, but when I continued to read I came against, “He had already seen a lot of their marriage, thanks to time-travel, knew that it was going to be at least bearable all the way.” (pg. 120) At once I was astounded at how somebody could marry another person and be willing to spend the rest of his life with him/her even though he wasn’t in love, he would just do it because the marriage would be bearable. That showed me Billy’s true feelings towards Valencia, and how he was just accommodating to what came easiest, and not having to go through the trouble of searching for his soul mate. I believe it would come to be both unfair to himself and to poor Valencia which believed she had found her life partner.

As Billy and Valencia continued in their honeymoon they saw “A great motor yacht named the Scheherezade now slid past their marriage bed. The song its engines sang was a very low organ note.” (pg. 120) Here we can see ounce again the author’s use of personification by implying the engine sang, we can also see some sort of a metaphor since he compares the engines sound to a low organ note. I consider the author uses these literary devices to give more feeling to the novel, here he gets in touch with our senses. The boat continues passing by and this is when Valencia asks Billy about war. “It was a simple-minded thing for a female Earthling to do, to associate sex and glamor with war.” (pg. 121) When I read this statement I was personally confused, how could they be generalizing that we as women relate sex with war? How are this two subject related in any sense? I find this statement completely absurd, even though there could be some meaning behind it based on the historical period or perhaps in a cultural sense.

Billy constantly time-traveled between different periods, ounce when he was in the prisoners of war camp, he headed to the latrine were lots of American prisoners were excreting the food from the banquet, among these American he found a man which “…wailed that he had excreted everything but his brains. Moments later he said ¨ There they go, there they go.¨ he meant his brains. That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.” (pg. 125) From this declaration we can tell that the author is introducing himself into part of the novel. Right away I eliminated the idea which consisted that the author was indeed Billy; even though they have similar traits we can see they are not the same person.

Ounce again Billy time travels to an instance, already shown before hand in the novel, in which Barbara, Billy’s daughter, is screaming at him believing he has gone crazy and can no longer live alone. She even replies “If you’re going to act like a child, maybe will just have to treat you like a child." (pg. 131) I can completely relate to this phrase since it is something commonly said to children when they misbehave, but that’s what’s so ironic, in the novel the daughter is saying it to the parent instead of the parent to the daughter. Does repeating this event twice in the novel mean something? When Barbara takes the ¨ mothers role ¨will Billy’s thoughts about the Tramaldorians change?

Billy then gets unstuck ounce again on time and wakes up in the Tralfamadores zoo, in which he is found naked next to Montana Whildhack, a motion picture star, also brought by the Tramaldorians for the purpose of watching this two Earthlings’ mate. “The vast crowd outside was delighted. All attendance records for the zoo were broken. Everybody on the planet wanted to see the Earthlings’ mate.” (pg. 132) Past reading this I felt compassion for Billy and Montana, they were being treated as we treat animals on earth, thrown into a cage, and encouraging mating while hundreds of spectators watched them from outside. Off course that when realizing what was going on Montana entered panic, but after a couple of days she got to know Billy and feel comfortable around him. They soon developed a loving and caring relationship which can be interpreted as true love.

As I came to the end of this chapter a comparison caught my eye, this was between a women’s body and Dresden. “The light from the single source threw the baroque detailing of Montana’s body into sharp relief. Billy was reminded of fantastic architecture in Dresden, before it was bombed. I was curious, how was it possible that a women’s body could remind him of Dresden’s architecture? What did they have in common?

Finally the chapter ended when Billy applies all of the Tramaldorians theories and tries to explain them to a small boy which has lost his father. He has learned about them and is starting to believe in them, that is why he makes them his and talks about them with liberty, “…assured the fatherless boy that his father was very much alive still in moments the boy would see again and again.” (Pg.135) Instantly the boy’s mother called the receptionist and accused Billy of being crazy.

2 comments:

J. Tangen said...

This is a good start. You use your text well. Keep an eye out for particular words or important phrases in the novel as well.


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Tramaldorian's theory

or theories

J. Tangen said...

ounce