Slaughterhouse-Five
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Please use this thread to discuss the above chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five.
In total there are 5 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 5 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
Most users ever online was 871 on Fri Apr 19, 2024 12:00 am
Kurt Vonnegut wrote:What the Englishman said about survival was this 'If you stop taking pride in your
appearance, you will very soon die.' He said that he had seen several men die in the
following way: They ceased to stand up straight, then ceased to shave or wash, then
ceased to get out of bed, then ceased to talk, then died. There is this much to be said for
it: it is evidently a very easy and painless way to go.' So it goes.
The Englishman said that he, when captured, had made and kept the following vows to
himself: To brush his teeth twice a day, to shave once a day, to wash his face and hands
before every meal and after going to the latrine, to polish his shoes once a day, to
exercise for at least half an hour each morning and then move his bowels, and to look into
a mirror frequently, frankly evaluating his appearance, particularly with respect to
posture.
Here is uncontrovertible evidence Karl was a Pastafarian - https://www.spaghettimonster.org/2007/1 ... ouse-five/Robert Tulip wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:03 am "Tralfamadorians can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti."
Maybe this is where the idea of the Great Spaghetti Monster came from?
C'mon, wurk with Kurt! You couldn't walk with your bub legs and you would not want to run - God willing - with the legs of your 95 year old self! I think that millipede reference is pretty cool.Mr. Tulip wrote:That makes no sense. We have the same two legs as a bub that we have in our dying casket.
Hi Harry, very pleased to see your comment, which I can’t thank because the thank button is mysteriously missing from this thread, to the extent that clicking a button is necessary to actually convey thanks. The constant shifting between different times of Billy’s life reflects the underlying theme of post traumatic stress, whereby Kurt Vonnegut was so affected by his Dresden war experience that his flashbacks and memories of that vivid time seem somehow more real to him than his current experiences. The Tralfamadorian sense that all times are equally real arises from a Stoic sense of eternity, an ability to equally inhabit all moments of life. This eternal trope provides a convenient novel device, keeping the reader engaged by constantly switching from one time to another, so all the plots weave together in a braid.Harry Marks wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 11:20 pm Just finished Chapter 5. I must say it is not easy to see what thread KV is using to hold together his chapters.
What readers love about Kurt Vonnegut is his whimsical irony, or maybe his ironic whimsy, or maybe his irenic whims. Now I am wondering about the relationship between ireny and irony – actions aimed at peace that use a mocking laughter about the stupid ignorance that leads to war.Harry Marks wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 11:20 pm If there is one here I would say, based on the last part of the chapter, that it is his disgust with superiority.
This brings to mind Thucydides’ description of the Athenian conquest of Melos – in the Melian Dialogue the Athenians say “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” It also brings to mind Marx’s comment that history repeats first as tragedy and then as farce. Hitler and Stalin and other tyrants did what they could, partly because the scale of deliberate genocide they practiced had no immediate precedent. When something has happened that causes all to recoil with moral horror, it can have varying effects. For some it is far more difficult to do it again because people can see the trajectory from the initial path of terror, while for others it makes it easier because once broken a taboo can be broken again. The value of literature describing acts of mindless destructive terror like the bombing of Dresden is that reading it helps people to reflect on their own ethical values, and to see that mindless revenge has appalling effects that should be avoided and prevented.Harry Marks wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 11:20 pm Perhaps he has in mind that the destruction of other people (and so it goes) is so often done by people "because they can."
‘Disgusted’ doesn’t seem the right word. I found the description of Billy’s daughter Barbara far more nuanced. It is clear that when an old traumatised war veteran has suffered brain damage from a plane crash that killed everyone else on board, he could easily start imagining that the science fiction novels he has read are fact. That is the actual plot in Slaughterhouse Five, with key elements of Tralfamadore coming from Kilgore Trout. Billy is lucky to have a daughter who is so concerned for his welfare. Elderly people without children can find themselves totally isolated. Vonnegut is asking us to have more compassion for crazy people, to recognise that often our conventional opinions might be wrong. But really, if a person actually went on radio saying what Billy Pilgrim said, people would regard a daughter as negligent if she failed to express the concern about his sanity that Barbara shows. The twist of suspended disbelief is that the science fiction story tells us these events really happened. It makes the story a parable for how our most obvious assumptions (eg that the Tralfamadore story is delusional) can be wrong.Harry Marks wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 11:20 pm So he is disgusted with the manipulations of the Tralfamadorians, with the domineering daughter, who is excited that she can take away mad old Billy Pilgrim's dignity in the name of love.
You seem to be talking about the mockery of British culture among the prisoner of war officers. I did not think he was obviously disgusted at all. In fact I thought he was quite impressed by them.Harry Marks wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 11:20 pm He is most obviously disgusted by the superiority of the Europeans (especially the officers, who are, of course, upper class) who look down on Americans for thinking themselves as good as others.
There were a lot of Nazi sympathisers in the UK and USA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_in_the_AmericasHarry Marks wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 11:20 pm He puts their thoughts in the mouth of a traitor (I had the feeling he was an actual person, but wiki says no, he was the creation of an earlier Vonnegut novel, "Mother Night") named Howard Campbell, Jr.
Thanks for the good discussion. I appreciated the citations to earlier writers on what the strong do. A few chapters further on I have more to say about it.Robert Tulip wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 7:06 amWhat readers love about Kurt Vonnegut is his whimsical irony,Harry Marks wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 11:20 pm If there is one here I would say, based on the last part of the chapter, that it is his disgust with superiority.
Disgust with superiority, deconstructing the delusions that enable conflict and disdain, brings a profound ethical reflection, observing the absence of thought in how people instinctively behave. Again the irony that we pretend to be intelligent and rational even when motivated by revenge and domination.
The value of literature describing acts of mindless destructive terror like the bombing of Dresden is that reading it helps people to reflect on their own ethical values, and to see that mindless revenge has appalling effects that should be avoided and prevented.
And yet as I read it I did not get a sense of his luck at all. Yes, I think KV recognizes that she is being helpful, but he is appalled at her shallow lack of actual empathy and her attachment to convention. The narrator's comment is that "it was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love." To some extent this may be KV commenting on how civilians cannot make sense of the viewpoint of soldiers who return home after such appalling trauma. Their lack of empathy is not appalling but it is obnoxious to him. With some effort the person caring for a PTSD case can actually find what is there to be understood. Readers in the age of nuclear fear could not help but understand how appalling it all is, and we easily take his side despite the disjointed, incoherent way the life of Billy Pilgrim unfolds.Robert Tulip wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 7:06 am‘Disgusted’ doesn’t seem the right word. I found the description of Billy’s daughter Barbara far more nuanced. It is clear that when an old traumatised war veteran has suffered brain damage from a plane crash that killed everyone else on board, he could easily start imagining that the science fiction novels he has read are fact. That is the actual plot in Slaughterhouse Five, with key elements of Tralfamadore coming from Kilgore Trout. Billy is lucky to have a daughter who is so concerned for his welfare.Harry Marks wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 11:20 pm So he is disgusted with the manipulations of the Tralfamadorians, with the domineering daughter, who is excited that she can take away mad old Billy Pilgrim's dignity in the name of love.