Overcoming the Fear

It’s the thing that most human beings hate the most, death. It is a thing that creates so much pain, suffering, sorrow and a feeling of emptiness in humans. This is as Epictetus would say because of our judgment about it. This might be true, we hate and fear death because we look at it as a force that takes our loved ones away from us. If we looked at death the way Billy Pilgrim did in Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut we would change our judgment and say “So it goes” as Billy Pilgrim did. He had a very special judgment on death since he had experiences do much during his life. Of course war changes your judgment on war. A civil person who hasn’t had so many encounters with death will see it in a different way. Epictetus tells us something very contradicting, “Let death and exile and everything that is terrible appear before your eyes every day, especially death.” 21. How can he tells us this if it is one of the things that hurt us the most. In a way this would be the only way to change our judgment about death, just as Billy Pilgrim did. Experiencing death a lot is the only way to get ovet the fear of it.

Judgments

Epictetus has started to be a little repetitive. It is clear that he is giving us his concepts about life and how it works. He is trying to help us understand some very interesting things. The point he repeats the most is that things don’t hurt us or get us angry but our judgment about the things are what get to us. Epictetus tells us that,

20. Remember that what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them that they are insulting. So when someone irritates you be aware that what irritates you is you own belief. Most importantly, therefore, try not to be carried away by appearance, since if you once gain time and delay you will control yourself more easily.

This has been to me the most interesting and meaningful passage of Epictetus. It sort of summarizes all of the interesting points I have seen throughout the reading. First, it repeats one of the most important things, the actual action, person or thing is not what hurts us, or affects us, but the way in which we look at it. Our judgment about things is what causes the evil, what makes things becomes or enemies. And in the other hand it also makes us look at good things, it also becomes our friend and makes us see the good things. Next he tells us that it’s our own belief what irritates us, not the people. In the end what he tells us is that we have no choice, our judgment is already established and besides, it is very hard to change the way we judge things.

Fire And Ice

What an enormous change. Reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut to reading Epictetus is a huge change. We come from a war/sci-fi novel from the XX century to a handbook from about the first century. We come from a book with characters and a story to simply one guy talking to you about how life is. It definately is a fire to ice, differenct in all aspects but both are pretty enjoyable in their own way.
He actually gives us some pretty cool advice. In fact he tells us things about life that are very ture and intaresting to know. According to Epictetus, “What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgements about things… let us blame someone else but rather ourselves.”(5) He tells us so many things that ere pretty interesting but this one in particular was very meaningful to me. It is completely true that we don’t get angry at things but we get angry because of the way we look at things. For example I don’t get angry about getting a bad grade, I get angry because to my judgement it is very wrong to get a bad grade and therefore y get very angry at it. Besides it is work that I cant blame anybody but me for doing it poorly. This is what Epictetus tells us about death. The thing that is cruel and gruesome is not death but our perception of it. Our perception is our judgement and that is what actually makes us suffer and mourn. Epictetus says many ture things about life. He later says that educated people don't blame anybody nor themselves. They apparently judge their judgement of things since without it nothing would have changed.

This Is War

So it goes. So it goes. So it goes. Billy Pilgrim had already explained why when someone died he simply said so it goes. But now we are reaching the end of the book and in the last chapter, he says “So it goes” 11 times in 6 pages. This definitely caught my attention a lot, him talking about death and people dying so much. Billy Pilgrim goes back to Dresden with O’Hare after the war. We hadn’t heard anything from O’Hare a long time ago in the book. He actually reads some very interesting facts to Billy Pilgrim in their way towards Dresden. As O’Hare’s little book said,
“On 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.”
It was interesting to read these facts to know about our world and how we are growing, at least how we grew after World War II.
Overall, Slaughterhouse-Five is a very interesting and enjoyable book. It is a fun combination between a Sci-fi book and a war novel. There was a lot of analysis able to be done, and I have to admit many important things that I didn’t notice, for example when Billy talks about Kilgore Trout, I hadn’t noticed that Vonnegut was mocking himself here. The book taught me also about the bombing of Dresden, a massive massacre that honestly, I had no idea about and it was important since around 135,000 civilians lost their lives, this is what war does, it kills innocent people. So it goes.

Serenity, Courage, Wisdom

Through Billy Pilgrim’s life, he has experienced so many things to learn from and has gotten so many advices from many people. Like if fighting in World War II wasn’t leaving a mark or teaching you something. Going through this experience definitely changes a person, even makes some people become crazy since they can’t cope with the tragedy and the suffering the witnessed. Billy Pilgrim gives us two very interesting advices and lessons in chapter 9. “Later in his life, the Trafamaldorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones—to stare only at the pretty things as eternity failed to go by.” Pg 194-195. This is one thing that is pretty true, and it’s a valid advice for people to take into account. This is one thing that Billy should definitely go by after experiencing the war and experiencing Dresden. He also had many harsh moments like the plane crash and losing his wife, for example.
Another thing that definitely caches your attention, it is actually impossible for it not to get your attention since it takes up a whole page. It is the chain Montana had on which said, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” Pg 209. This is a very, very powerful quote. I had heard it before and knew it had a very strong meaning but after reading it in the book I actually got to think about it a lot. I believe that Vonnegut probably says this in reference to the war and to writing the book. Actually writing a war book goes perfectly with the quote. He has the serenity to accept he can’t change the war or what happen but has the wisdom to tell that by writing a book and saying his experiences about what happened to him he can help that history doesn’t repeat itself.

A Little Help Could Come In Handy

The war was finally coming to an end after long years of fighting and hate. During the war, a lot of patriotism is formed mainly because of the propaganda there is en each country. This creates a hate between the people, the civilians of each country. For example if Venezuela decided to declare war on Colombia well Colombians will hate Venezuelans because of the war. Of course, every American hated the Germans during the Second World War and probably the Japanese hated the Americans after the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Billy Pilgrim experienced a very unique thing, a German innkeeper giving shelter to American refugees after the bombings of Dresden. It’s one thing that wouldn’t normally happen, especially during this war, giving shelter to the enemy.
“The blind innkeeper said that the Americans could sleep in his stable at night, and he gave them soup and ersatz coffee and a little beer. The he came out to the stable to listen to them bedding down in the straw. “Good night, Americans,” he said in German. “Sleep well.”
This must have been a very impacting moment for Billy Pilgrim and all the other refugees, being able to stay at a German home. They probably thought of the blind innkeeper as their savor, they had just escaped from the greatest massacre in European history and were refugees at the enemy’s house. This must have been pretty touching for the Americans and should be very thankful to that blind innkeeper.

"All the real soldiers are dead"... So it goes

Another thing that was pretty noticeable was how Vonnegut always refers to the high school teacher as “Poor old Edgar Derby.” He was shot and killed in Dresden and maybe because he was kind of old and had a family back home, Vonnegut feels pity or ashamed for his death, besides they did spend a lot of time together in the hospital and after that.
In the book they make a reference about the war pretty harsh. It criticizes the war and the amount of deaths it had.
“She asked Gluck if he wasn’t awfully young to be in the army. He admitted that he was. She asked Edgar Derby if he wasn’t awfully old to be in the army. He said he was. She asked Billy Pilgrim what he was supposed to be. Billy said he didn’t know. He was just trying to keep warm. “All the real soldiers are dead,” she said. It was true. So it goes.” Pg 159.
This is a very powerful paragraph, at least to me it was. The war was so deadly and it has so many deaths that it is even hard to imagine. Many innocent people, young soldiers and entire families were killed. By the end of the war, there was nobody left and they had to use old, young people and people who had no idea on how to be a soldier. All the real soldiers are dead. And after the Dresden bombings many of the others will be dead to. War is the horrible way for mankind to solve its problems and with this way there are unimaginable amounts of deaths and suffering.

V for Vengance

Billy Pilgrim’s death. Since the beginning of the book they have said that Billy had seen his birth and his death many times. We already know that Billy Pilgrim is Vonnegut himself and in page 125 he clears this, “That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.” Now in this part you kind of get confused since it is obvious that that he isn’t dead yet and even dares to give a date for his own date.
“I, Billy Pilgrim, the tape begins, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976.” Pg 141.
He says his death will be because Lazzaro will send somebody to kill him after the war since his only friend, Roland Weary died on account of Billy Pilgrim. One of the most important characteristics of Lazzaro is his aggressiveness and how he practically wants to kill everybody. “Anybody ever asks you what the sweetest thing in life is— Said Lazzaro, “It’s Revenge” Pg 139.
Revenge and vengeance was what Lazzaro believed in and Billy Pilgrim was affected by this. As Vonnegut predicts, Billy Pilgrim will die because of vengeance and will be killed because of the war because even after it is over, Billy will still be affected by it every day.
But why is it called Slaughterhouse-Five? Well Vonnegut finally makes this clear. It was the address where they had to stay while the time they passed in Dresden. It is pretty clear that probably this address was marked on Vonnegut for all of his life. This was the place where he experienced the bombing of Dresden, one of the “Greatest massacre in European history.” Pg 101. In German the name was Schkachthoh-Funf, Slaughterhouse-Five.

He's Not Crazy

Writing about war must be a very intense and horrifying thing to do, especially if you actually live through it. I had wondered all through the book why this war book included the aliens of Tralfamadore. I thought it was Vonnegut’s way of describing the post war trauma. As it is well know that the veterans of big bloody wars like WWII or Vietnam experience so much suffering and deaths that it has a mental effect on them after the war. One perfect example was the Colombian Vietnam veteran who went crazy entering a restaurant and killed almost everybody. Even after the wars there are more deaths. In chapter 5 of Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut starts to give us clues on what was really going on with Billy Pilgrim. In this chapter they introduce Eliot Rosewater. They were assigned together at the hospital.
“It was Rosewater who introduced Billy to science fiction” Pg 100. This is exactly what the book is about, science fiction. In class we had discussed that science fiction appears after the war and becomes very important. We actually saw the first science fiction movie ever which was very interesting. After this, Vonnegut states:
“And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes. So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help.”
This was the last clue, it was the easiest was to tell the story, using this new thing science fiction. So Billy Pilgrim wasn’t crazy, it simply was hard for him to write about what he had experienced.

Back And Forth

As you read through chapter 4 of Slaughterhouse Five you feel like you jump through time with Billy Pilgrim. Every time he becomes unstuck in time and starts telling you something more about his mysterious you have to follow him. He moves around quite a lot in the chapter.
“When he regained consciousness, he wasn’t on the flying saucer. He was in a boxcar crossing Germany again.” Pg 77.
The author guides you through the story jumping from time to time. As happens in many other books or movies, they don’t write a linear story but they move around all the time. I would think it is also a very interesting way to tell the story. Here Billy Pilgrim jumps from being abducted by aliens back to the war in Germany.
“And then Billy was a middle aged optometrist again, playing hacker’s golf this time.” Pg 85.
And then, only one paragraph below, “Trapped in another blob of amber, Mr. Pilgrim. We are where we have to be just now-three hundred million miles from Earth.” Pg 85. Once again Vonnegut moves us around a whole lot. We jump from place to place all the time and move back and forth. Sometimes you even get lost and have to read back and pause for a second but this way makes it a different story than what we are used to and is pretty enjoyable to read.

The Conventional War Story

“And he traveled in time to 1967again-to the night he was kidnapped by a flying saucer from Tralfamadore.” Pg. 71. Many events and changes in the book have brought my attention in great amounts. First, the author is talking about the book itself and what it cost him to write it. Then it continues to talk in this way by saying
“It begins like this:
Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
It ends like this:
Poo-Tee-Weet?
And the ending of the book is actually that. I believe everyone turns to the last page after reading this to see if it’s true. After this it starts telling the story of Billy Pilgrim. The thing is that this is not like any World War II book. It adds science fiction to it. It is not the conventional war story where the survivor talks about his heroic survival. It adds some pretty odd fiction in it. The fact that Billy Pilgrim can travel through time is pretty weird. And even worse the way he insists how he was abducted by aliens. Perhaps the author wants to tell us a more diverse Holocaust story than the rest by adding it and it sure catches the attention of his reader.

Billy Pilgrim

The story of Billy Pilgrim is pretty strange in the sense that they say he lived through WWII and probably had some sort of trauma. At the beginning of the chapter they say that “He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another in 1941… He has seen his birth and death many times.” Pg 23. This starts the story pretty weird. Besides, after a couple more pages it becomes a pretty normal story like any other. Nothing extraordinary happens. By the end of the chapter it becomes weird and extraordinary again by saying how he supposedly travels through time. Another pretty strange thing that happens with Billy has a plane accident. “The plane crashed on top of Sugarbush Mountain, in Vermont. Everybody was killed but Billy.” Pg 25. Billy had gone through many tragedies and experiences. It wouldn’t be strange if he had any mental issues after this. There have been many cases that war veterans end up with many problems because of all the pain and suffering that they have witnessed of experienced. Billy insisted in “Tralfamadore” some sort of planet that he said he had been on. This story shows that the author is telling us how the events of war left a psicological effect on the veterans.