X.  Ending?

The final chapter of slaughterhouse-5 ends in a very good way, a happy ending because it’s not tragic in any sense. Basically he just wants everyone to know what his experience was and tell the whole world about the trafalmadorians, but he keeps it to himself.

A very interesting fact of the book is that Billy cant control his time travel, which means he cant control his memories, the ones that are lost forever o the one that you will remember for the rest of your life.

The final phrase of the book is “Poo-tee-weet.” If you glance at it once, this might seem really random and with not much sence, but after reading it and having a discussion in class, what we concluded was that this really means “So It Goes.” The book is concluded by the same phrase the book emphasizes all the time, it means that Vonnegut, this phrase resumes the whole point of the book, that there is no justice in death. 

VII. The real Love?

Valencia, Billy’s wife, as soon as she heard that her husband had been in a terrible accident she went running down to the airport like a maniac, and because she was so desperate about this crashes into another car and gets poisoned with carbon monoxide and later dies in the hospital.

How can her own instinct of trying to rescue her husband cause her own death? This shows how desperate she was for him, how much she loved him, and even cost her own death loving him this way.

But at the end of the chapter Billy shows a much larger interest towards Montana Wildhack, he starts thinking about what is of her life, and the baby they were going to have together? And is much more interested in her than in his wife who died in theory for his love.

Is this fair? To Valencia? Loving him until she died and Billy secretly loving someone else? Is it fair she died being betrayed and having a hidden secret from his husband?

VII. The Open Window

Chapter nine wasn’t a very interesting chapter, compared to all the other ones I’ve read of Slaughter House-five. Even though what I found most interesting was when trout asks Billy if he had ever looked to the future through an open window and he says no, and is completely blanked out and Valencia then tells him he looks like he had seen a ghost. Billy, who was really agitated, goes to his room to try to calm the stress.

I think Billy was in a shock because he realized how he could time travel through, and see different events and thing that occurred, and be traumatized the same way as if he didn’t time travel and the book emphasizes in this particular moment because Billy hasn’t time traveled in this part.

VII. Time inside the Mind

After reading the 7^th chapter of slaughterhouse-five, I was interested in this phrase the book says:

“Billy was unconscious for two days after that, and he dreamed millions of things, some of them true. The true things were time-travel.” Vonnegut is refereeing that he only believes time travel is the true and real thing. This refers that his dreams are the time traveling. This time traveling can be seen as a dream, which sometime has true facts in them but the mind unconsciously also creates false events, objects or persons. This might be a big dream, or maybe he time travels when he falls a sleep into a dream or a day dream, so is his reality really true? 

Maybe we are all wrong thinking dreams aren't true, always thinking "i wish this dream comes true." Maybe life is a whole dream and we have small dreams in it, or maybe the so called "dreams" are a space-out of the real big dream.

The phrase hyperlinked represents a typical human "dream".

VI. Sweet Revenge?

Is revenge really sweet? Is all the anger and frustration paid off at the end? I believe that when something is made towards you, you should never seek revenge to payback what has been done. If you make bad things to others it will always come back to you as well when you do something nice for someone.

Paul Lazarro wants Billy. He wants revenge as he quoted “the sweetest thing in life is revenge” but will this be worth it? Will karma come back for him? And if so, is it worth it what is going to happen to him?

Resentment is a very confusing state, everyone has the right to feel this way but why spend life resented with someone? People who think this way will never know what they’ve lost by not knowing what would’ve happened, maybe their whole lives would change and its just not worth it.

V. Misunderstood

It’s very complicated to understand how a person thinks differently to another.  Just because your way of thinking and how you live your life is not “normal” dissent mean that you’re insane. What is normal by the way? Everyone is different and each style of life should be accepted. Why does someone decide if you are crazy or not? Like Billie’s patient mom, Billy might seem to be crazy, but they don’t know his past or him to judge if he is crazy.

I also found it very interesting in this chapter how Vonnegut now talks more in dept about Billie’s love life. I think this is a very important topic in the book because love is an essential part of everyone’s life, and by knowing more about it the reader can understand the character better.  Like how he feels for Valencia, when she says she’s going to loose weight for him and he lets her know that he loves her just the way she is.

And to conclude I thought this quote in the chapter was really important towards knowing that Vonnegut is really writing his story:

“That was I. that was me. That was the author of this book.”

IV.  Mustard gas and roses

In many books the author tries to portray themselves in different ways. It can be an experience, values, personality traits etc.

From what I’ve read of slaughterhouse five Kurt Vonnegut is in a way talking about his own life, you can recognize this because he constantly gives hints about his life.

“Billy answered. There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath—mustard gas and roses. It was a wrong number. Billy hung up.”

I find the mustard and roses quotes interesting because its something really odd to say, its not normal for someone to “smell” this way. At the begging of the book, the first time they make reference to this saying, I couldn’t understand it. Like why would someone smell this way? But after reading more I found out that it is talking about drunk people. People who drink a lot generate a really bad breath, and Vonnegut refers to it with this smell. Like Vonnegut said he is the one who called up his friends when he was drunk, so he is portraying himself as the person who by mistake called Billy Pilgrim.