Literature Analysis #2

Slaughterhouse-Five centers on Billy Pilgrim and his predicament with time. Billy grows up goes to school, graduates and trains to become an optometrist. He is soon drafted into the war, but not long after his first battle he is captured. He is moved to a POW camp where he barely survives the firebombing of Dresden by hiding in a meat locker. After the war he returns home marries and finishes his schooling to become an optometrist. He then has an emotional breakdown and he checks into a veterans hospital. He recuperates then returns to his wife where his father in law, the owner of the school he went to, gives him a nicely paying job. Billy becomes well off and has a few kids. He lives the American but on one of his wedding anniversaries he breaks down because of a memory of Dresden. He then has his Tralfamadore incident where he is abducted by aliens. He is kept like an animal in a zoo with a famous actress. It is here where he learns about time and how you live on in another memory after death. Billy returns to earth but keeps his journey to himself. After going on a plane for a optometrist concert the plane crashes killing everyone except for him. Billy still has to go to a hospital and while on her way to visit him in the hospital, his wife dies in a car accident. Billy then begins telling his story to people about time travel and the Tralfamadorians. He goes on radio and writes to newspapers. In the process he upsets his daughter who is trying to control him. Billy then makes a final note of his thought where he predicts his death and how he is comfortable with the idea. As a note this is not the order that the events play out. They are random and come at different points in the novel.

Quasi-freewill. Mr. Vonnegut plays on the ideas freewill.

The tone in Slaughterhouse-Five is playful and ironic. This can be seen in his use of the phrase, "So it goes." It is usually after the death of someone, that Vonnegut injects the phrase. After the death of his wife he uses it. "Poor Valencia was unconscious, overcome by carbon monoxide. She was a heavenly azure. One hour later she was dead. So it goes." Another time he uses the phrase is when the plane actually crashes, "The barbershop quartet on the airplane was singing 'Wait Till the Sn Shines, Nelly,' when the plane smacked into the top of Sugarbush Mountain in Vermont. Everybody was killed but Billy and the copilot. So it goes." Another time is when Billy is describing a hanging he witnessed in Dresden, "Speaking of people from Poland: Billy Pilgrim accidentally saw a Pole hanged in public, about three days after Billy got to Dresden. Billy just happened to be walking to work with some others shortly after sunrise, and they came to a gallows and a small crowd in front of a soccer stadium. The Pole was a farm laborer who was being hanged for having had sexual intercourse with a German Women. So it goes."

As stated above  the phrase, "So it goes," is also a motif for helps to describe Billy's acceptance of death. When ever a death occurs, no matter how obscure or how close the death was to Billy, he never fails to finish with, "So it goes." A symbol of the bird sing, "Poo-tee-weet," represents how in the face of extraordinarily painful times, there really isn't much to be said that can describe how horrible it is or the feelings associated with it. The bird sings after the plane crash, and after the fire bombings. Billy himself helps us understand the theme of quasi-free will. When he is on Tralfamadore, he is taught about time and how it isn't linear which helps to support the claim that we really don't have freewill because he are tossed from one predetermined memory to another in out life time.

Nicholas Lycan
Period Four