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.

III. Alone

Billy Pilgrim is clearly in grief  (in his present). I felt a kind of emptiness and sorrow when I read the narrators words, “ Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping.” Or “Billy’s home was empty.”

Billy has been through a lot of traumatizing experiences. Just living a war, seeing everyone die makes you go insane. He has lost his wife, and now (in the present) he is wealthy and live in a lovely house, but he is alone, he cries and there is no one there to dry his eyes. I think feeling you are alone and depressed is the most horrible feeling a human being can experience.

I like how the narrator travels through time and shows his present and his past at the same time, its like reading two stories at once and then connecting all the dots.

A book I recommend and is written this way is “News of a Kidnapping” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It describes the life of the “secuestrados” or kidnapped at the same time with the present, showing how their miserable families do whatever they can to find them and rescue them.  Eventually at the end the two parts of the story meet.

II. When it's Gone.

After I read the second chapter of slughterhouse-five I now have a better prespective of  Billy’s personality and past.

Billy starts talking about his own life in chapter one, but now the narrator is some one omicient, a third person. Who is it? Who is watching and knows Billys life? Maybe we’ll never now, but it’s a constant doubt in my mind.

Billy’s life seems to be very ironic. At the end of each memory narrated about the war it quotes “So it goes.” This happens when the narrator talks about something really ironic which is not in any sense normal, or happy. “His father died in a hunting accident during the war. So it goes.” Or when he is the only one who survived a plane crash, and his wife dies.

I also liked a quote said on his second letter published. “It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.” This quote made me realize how precious time is, and how you should spend each moment of your life well because you don’t know when its going to end, and you will only start missing everything when its gone and regret all o the chances you didn’t take.

I.  The Creation.

I started reading slaughterhouse- five last night and it really caught my attention. I’m really into history and when I saw the word “Dresden” and “war” it really caught my eye.

A person’s past is key for anyone to get to know someone and understand them, and what they have become, how the portray themselves and their lives. Billy Pilgrim starts to talk about how he has become “an old fart” and wants to make a book about the war and his memories. To accomplish his goal, he wants to talk to an old friend (Bernard V. O’Hare) this way he can refresh his mind towards what happened to them in the war.

I happen to notice some interesting word and how Billy Pilgrim’s tone is expressed, here are a few quotes:

“He doesn’t mind the smell of mustard gas and roses.”

-Why does he refer to the “bad smell” in this way? –

Here is a more interesting quote referring to his tone:

“My God- from whom?”

“Miss So-and-So.”

And the most interesting quote I saw was this one:

“This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.”

-  He, like Lots wife, looked. He now shows the readers it has made him a pillar of salt. -