Slaughter House 5

Seminar Reflection

Reactions

In the Seminar that we had yesterday about the book “Slaughter House Five” By: Kurt Vonnegut, everyone had a very interesting reaction about the writings of Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughter House Five was a very interesting book about Kurt’s experiences in war and about a man named Billy Pilgrim who goes to war in Germany fighting for the Americans. Though this book may seem like a serious war novel but in actuality it has a lot of humor about aliens and the interesting things that happen in Billy Pilgrims’ life. The first question that we were asked in the seminar was “is this book an anti-war novel?” Everyone had good arguments about if it was an anti-war novel and if it wasn’t. What really stood out to me was when Stephen answered right away and said that it was. I found this surprising because it seemed to me that he didn’t have time to think about the question and just answered. He was very sure about his answer and I found that to be very nice. I was sitting thinking about the question the whole time were talking about it and I couldn’t figure out if it was an anti-war novel or not. So I was very surprised when he could come up with an answer so fast. I think that the reason that I couldn’t come up with the answer was because it was both. I think it was both an anti-war novel and a non- anti- war novel because Vonnegut really doesn’t tell about the horrific details about war that other books talk about. Vonnegut says that the war is bad but he also puts in funny key points in the book.

Detailed Response

The question from the seminar is “are you Billy Pilgrim?” I think that in a way we all are Billy Pilgrim. In the book Billy says “so it goes” many times. Many people in the book said that Billy only said “so it goes” after someone dies in the book like on page 69 Billy is talking about Wild Bob he says “The Germans carried the corpse out. The corpse was Wild Bob. So it goes”. We were asked in the seminar what might have been the emotion behind “so it goes”. A lot of people said that it meant that he didn’t care, but I think that he was just saying someone died; we have to accept that and move on. We can’t dwell on that for too long. For me personally I don’t dwell on things that much. I let thing o and move on as quickly as I can. Billy Pilgrim is the same. In the book on page 27 Billy says “I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is “So it goes”. So that tells me that Billy didn’t just one day start saying “so it goes”, he was just quoting what the Tralfamadorians said. This is one way that I think we all have a part of Billy inside of us. We say what wise people have said and try to live by our own morals.

Another way that I think that we all have a part of Billy in us is because Billy has a calmness to him. On page 53 in about the last paragraph Billy says “The boy was as beautiful as Eve”. This stuck me as odd that instead of being afraid that the Germans were right there ready to take Billy and Weary to the prison camp, Billy was thinking about how beautiful the young German soldier was. It made me think of myself. I try to not think about the horrible things that could happen if I do something bad. I sometimes hope for the best and hope that I don’t get into trouble. I think this is relevant because almost everyone wants to seem like nothing is bothering them at sometime in their life.

Connections

I believe that the biggest connection that I made in the seminar that we had about the book “Slaughter House Five” was when Lori asked us if we thought the saying that Billy uses in the book many times “So it goes” could be good or bad. I have been in a youth group at a Unity church in Albuquerque for about three years and this type of question comes up many times in the group discussions that we have. In my mind “so it goes” doesn’t always have to be about a bad thing. Everything we do and experience in life is a building block to who we are and who we will be in the future. When something bad happens in my life I will be sad for a while but then after a while I move on because I know that if I dwell on the past then I will just be sad all of the time but if I go by “so it goes” then I have a chance to not live in the dark but to have a happier life because I chose to move one. As I like to say “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Lori’s Choice

One of the connections that I can make about AQotWF and Slaughter House five are that they both have people in the books that experience something bad in the wars. Edgar Derby didn’t really have any idea about what could happen in war and what he was supposed o do so he ended up dyeing which is pretty bad in my point of view, and the main character in AQotWF has to experience some very bad things in WW1. He had to see death in ways many people have never seen it. I think that they both share the fact that they are both Anti-war book even if Slaughter House Five is only partly an anti- war novel. They all talk about the bad things that happen in war. Like when Billy was drugged by the Englishmen at the prison camp, and when the main character in AQotWF had to see his good friends die in the hospital and out in the middle of war.

And this concludes my Seminar Reflection! J