As I read Slaughterhouse 5, I tried to come up with some possible deep, introspective things about the book that I could write about for my blogpost. The list was very short, and by the time I got around to writing, most of my ideas had already been covered in somebody else's blog. It occurred to me that this might not be entirely my fault. The other books we've read this semester have had something obviously deep and meaningful to delve into, but Slaughterhouse 5 seemed much more simplistic. Maybe it was the phrase "so it goes." It introduces a sense of finality to the statements Vonnegut makes. There's no room for the reader to look more closely at a passage and ponder, "what did Vonnegut really mean when he wrote about this?" because he's already told us what he means. When Vonnegut writes, "The champagne was dead. So it goes" (73), he was not subtly comparing the flat champagne to the monotony of Billy's life. He was saying the champagne was dead. So it goes. This doesn't mean there's absolutely nothing deep in Slaughterhouse 5 - There's still the underlying anti-war message, as well as the message that death is inevitable but it's okay because time is an illusion - it just means that the parts that are truly deep and meaningful have already been beaten to death.
I'm impressed you finished Slaughterhouse Five feeling as though you already completely grasped what Vonnegut is trying to say - I certainly didn't. I dunno, one of the things I really like about Vonnegut is that he doesn't spend a lot of time philosophizing. There are no block paragraphs from the perspective of Billy in which he reflects on the meaning of his odd, non-linear existence. For me, that leaves more for the reader to figure out.
ReplyDeleteTo me, I think the thing that made me think the most was not the moral aspects of war or the war itself, rather it is the thought of how time flowed in the novel. I found myself questioning the way Trefalmadorians think about time and whether or not I agreed with it. I also found myself comparing the way Billy Pilgram time to other characters who time travels such as Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Regular time is hard enough for some to wrap their mind around, including myself. But I really struggled with how time works in the novel and so I think it would be an interesting topic to write about, moreso than the aspects of war described in the novel.
ReplyDeleteI like the pun at the end :)
ReplyDeleteIn a way, I feel like if we really tried to dive deep, we could get things from passages if we went through more closely, but I get what you're saying. Overall, there isn't a lot to talk about. Billy doesn't have a lot of layers as a person and we can see what's going on with him easily on the surface.
The book definitely has a finality to it. I found myself finishing the book and feeling satisfied. Vonnegut doesn't really beat around the bush. I found that most of the deep aspects of this book have to do with how the information is being set, rather than the information itself. Like how when you read the chapter where Billy is abducted and you are told about the styling of Tralfamodorian books, you suddenly realize a large aspect of the book and question the other parts of it that you just read. I also found myself pondering the unstuck in time thing quite a bit, but that might just be me...
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