Kurt Vonnegut
Chapters # 7-8 (pgs. 154-181)
When reading this chapter I had the opportunity to answer a lot of the questions I was wondering about and also had the chance to understand and interpret Billy’s time traveling in a way in which it made sense and there was logic behind it. In the beginning of the chapter we are taken 25 years after he visits Dresden, to an instant when he is boarding the plane with his father-in-law and saying goodbye to Valencia. Billy mentions: “He knew it was going to crash, but he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so.” (pg. 154) How could he possibly know the plane was going to crash and do nothing about it? What could he be ashamed off? He could at least have saved a couple of people, including his father-in-law. This made me think that maybe it isn’t the case that Billy can’t change the future; it is that he doesn’t want to change it.
During this passage I also noticed how Lionel Merble is referred to as a machine. “Tralfamadorians, of course, say that every creature and planet in the Universe is a machine. It amuses them that so many Earthlings are offended by the idea of being machines.” (pg. 154) Clearly I’m insulted by the idea of being called a machine due to the fact that I consider machines to be something managed by others, controlled by a superior power and unable to act coherently without orders, in other words they do as their told. We as humans refuse to accept being seen as object and the fact that we can be managed so easily.
Due to Billy’s lack of interest in saving the passengers, they board the plane along with a barbershop quartet that begins to sing Lionel Merbles favorite song after his request. What shocks me is the content of the song:
“In my prison cell I sit,
With my britches full of shit,
And my balls are bouncing gently on the floor.
And I see the bloody snag
When she bit me in the bag,
Oh, I’ll never fuck a Polack anymore.” (pg. 155)
What could the context mean? As we can see it contains revolting words and most importantly a repulsive message with no significant meaning whatsoever. I believe this are the phrases to which the interviewer asks Vonnegut, referring them to be rude and with sexual content. They are meaningless, and could be taken out of the novel without affecting it.
The quartet then sang another melody, and “Billy, knowing the plane was going to crash pretty soon, closed his eyes, and traveled in time back to 1944.” (pg. 156) This phrase made me think about a theory, could it be possible that Billy could choose, when to time travel? How come when he closed his eyes he switched places? This also led me to think that maybe all that Billy was going through was a sum of various dreams, when we come to think about it we can see that there are various times when he time travels that he is in a place where he could probably fall asleep. For instance in previous chapters when being exhausted in a war field, working on a patient in the optometry, or going to the bathroom after making love to his wife on their wedding night among others. Could this theory be just my imagination? Or I’m I actually right? Most times Billy time travels he is in circumstances in which he is tiered, or just sick of being in a specific place.
As I continued reading through chapter eight I came upon a sentence that caught my attention. “He had supposed for years that he had no secretes from himself. Here was a proof that he had a great big secret somewhere inside, and he could not imagine what it was.” (pg. 173) What does this mean? Is it possible to keep a secret from yourself? And if it were what could Billy possibly be keeping from himself? Was he denying an inedible truth? This came to make me think about Kilgore Trout and Eliot Rosewater. Eliot was a war veteran that lay next to Billy in the hospital and sort of introduced him to science fiction novels, especially to those of Kilgore Trout which Billy meets in this chapter. I’m being able to prove that Billy creates all this time travels and theories such as the Tralfamadores one in which he invents this utopia in which he can always be in the places he wants to, those which make him feel satisfyingly. In other words, Billy is trying to imitate a utopia in which he feels comfortable and enjoys every moment he finds himself, and when encountering those he dislike, he can switch places and move ounce again to those which made him feel comfortable.
During this passage I also noticed how Lionel Merble is referred to as a machine. “Tralfamadorians, of course, say that every creature and planet in the Universe is a machine. It amuses them that so many Earthlings are offended by the idea of being machines.” (pg. 154) Clearly I’m insulted by the idea of being called a machine due to the fact that I consider machines to be something managed by others, controlled by a superior power and unable to act coherently without orders, in other words they do as their told. We as humans refuse to accept being seen as object and the fact that we can be managed so easily.
Due to Billy’s lack of interest in saving the passengers, they board the plane along with a barbershop quartet that begins to sing Lionel Merbles favorite song after his request. What shocks me is the content of the song:
“In my prison cell I sit,
With my britches full of shit,
And my balls are bouncing gently on the floor.
And I see the bloody snag
When she bit me in the bag,
Oh, I’ll never fuck a Polack anymore.” (pg. 155)
What could the context mean? As we can see it contains revolting words and most importantly a repulsive message with no significant meaning whatsoever. I believe this are the phrases to which the interviewer asks Vonnegut, referring them to be rude and with sexual content. They are meaningless, and could be taken out of the novel without affecting it.
The quartet then sang another melody, and “Billy, knowing the plane was going to crash pretty soon, closed his eyes, and traveled in time back to 1944.” (pg. 156) This phrase made me think about a theory, could it be possible that Billy could choose, when to time travel? How come when he closed his eyes he switched places? This also led me to think that maybe all that Billy was going through was a sum of various dreams, when we come to think about it we can see that there are various times when he time travels that he is in a place where he could probably fall asleep. For instance in previous chapters when being exhausted in a war field, working on a patient in the optometry, or going to the bathroom after making love to his wife on their wedding night among others. Could this theory be just my imagination? Or I’m I actually right? Most times Billy time travels he is in circumstances in which he is tiered, or just sick of being in a specific place.
As I continued reading through chapter eight I came upon a sentence that caught my attention. “He had supposed for years that he had no secretes from himself. Here was a proof that he had a great big secret somewhere inside, and he could not imagine what it was.” (pg. 173) What does this mean? Is it possible to keep a secret from yourself? And if it were what could Billy possibly be keeping from himself? Was he denying an inedible truth? This came to make me think about Kilgore Trout and Eliot Rosewater. Eliot was a war veteran that lay next to Billy in the hospital and sort of introduced him to science fiction novels, especially to those of Kilgore Trout which Billy meets in this chapter. I’m being able to prove that Billy creates all this time travels and theories such as the Tralfamadores one in which he invents this utopia in which he can always be in the places he wants to, those which make him feel satisfyingly. In other words, Billy is trying to imitate a utopia in which he feels comfortable and enjoys every moment he finds himself, and when encountering those he dislike, he can switch places and move ounce again to those which made him feel comfortable.
Referring to Gulliver’s Travels we can say that even do this two novels were written in different times, with different settings and characters they were both trying to point out the same thing: humanity attempts at forming a utopia. As we can see they are both setting their stories with hypothetical characters and settings to mock humans. For instance on Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut creates Billy, as a character struggling to find what’s real and what’s not, and his effort to create time-traveling and the Trafamaldores theory as an excuse to live in the moments he desires to live. On the other hand On Gulliver’s Travels, Swift creates two societies, placing the yahoos (humans) as these filthy creatures that stink and are full of vices and Houyhnhnms (horses) as the perfect society. In reality we can consider the complete opposite, thus horses are the ones who stink and serve while we humans, control them and are much more civilized. But Gulliver being a yahoo is against his own race; he is disgusted by them and tries to find a home among the Houyhnhnms.
We can also compare Gulliver’s character with Howard W. Campbell Jr. due to the fact that they were both against their own race. Gulliver considered the Yahoos to be “…the most filthy, noisome, and deformed Animal which Nature ever produced, so they were the most restive and indocile, mischievous, and malicious.” (Swift, pg. 1) He despised them and didn’t want neither to live with them, nor be part of their society as well as Campbell which also backstabbed his own race. He was an American who turned into a Nazi, which tries to recruit prisoners from the slaughterhouse to fight against the Russian, American allies.
In conclusion both of these stories try to focus on the idea of idealistic utopias, as they are impossible to form. It is unattainable to create a society which everyone considers to be perfect due to the fact that we all depict perfection differently.
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