Okay, so, Slaughterhouse Five: I reread it because it was on the reading list for my school. But honestly, what was Marky Mark thinking when he put this on here? You have certain questions to answer, and they're all something along the lines of "how did the character change by the end of the book? What is an important event that causes the turning point of the book?" et cetera. But you can't do that for Slaughterhouse Five because it jumps around like Invisible Monsters. Actually, none of these books on the list really fit well to those questions. Figures, the one year we get books that don't belong in the pail we get a crappy set to answer to and I can't even get the extra credit. (Seriously, I've read like half this list... and you know what, I bet it's just the books I did read that don't fit. My luck.) Man, why can't we read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay like the UConn class kids? That would be a fun book to do this, or really any other project, on.
Anyways, this book isn't nearly my favorite of Kurt's. It's a good introduction to him, I guess, and had I read it first I might like it more, but the first I read was Breakfast of Champions, and as you know by now, I consider that to be basically the cream of the crop. Well... after Galapagos. Anyways. It's right in the middle of the range, with Galapagos right in front and Hocus Pocus at the other hand. I guess you'd say it's mediocre, but that sounds too mean. Well, I guess it's the truth, though.... Ah, I don't know. Think what you want about them, I'm not God.
Well, first: this confused me when I read this book the first time, but this book is the "famous book about the war".
A major point in the book is not only that Billy is unstuck in time, it's the way Tralfamadorians view time: Everything is happening at once. The past, present, and future do not exist: time is not one precise moment after another it simply is. I guess it's kind of like believing in predestination, only everything you have done and will do (well, is being done) is preordained, down to the very last millisecond. If you have read Watchmen, think of how Doctor Manhattan views time. It's like that. I guess it's also basically saying 'sucks to free will'. Wait, this quote may help: "When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments." Which, with that mind, the argument could be that when someone thinks of a memory, they are for a moment viewing time as it really is, occurring all at once. Or something? I'll stop now. I could talk myself blue in the face about this, really. This is a theory I hold in high regard because when I first learned about it (not from this book or any other, a random British guy in Boston told me about it) my jaw almost disengaged and dropped at my feet. It was so novel it shocked me right into minor enlightenment, there. Anyways, I digress...
"Among the the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, present, and future." Yeah, so basically it's a big middle finger to the idea of free will... Okay, yeah, and later Billy talks to a T who talks about all these papers on planets he's studied and planets he's visited and such, and basically he says that "Only on Earth is there any talk of free will". And on one level, if free will is just an illusion, it's kind of a relief, I guess. No one can really be blamed for sins, and everyone goes to heaven? Well, not even that, because if this theory is true, one, it'd make a cool Twilight Zone, two, there would be no heaven and hell because no one would be dead, not really.
And, Kurt Vonnegut made his own observation on the New Testament, mainly on the story of Jesus. An alien studies the Bible but doesn't like this area of the New Testament. He "supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes." Yeah, I see this one. Pilate had him crucified and oops, he's burning in Hell. (Wait, actually, that doesn't make sense. Pilate was necessary for Jesus to be martyred and ascend to heaven... Pilate was the good guy? Wait, that makes Judas technically a good guy too! Hey!) Wait, wait, now I've lost my train of thought. Uh. Crap. But yeah, I guess Judas was kind of a hero or at the very least a good guy, cause he was the catalyst in Jesus's death and it was necessary for Jesus to die... man! Don't demonize Judas, guys. He was working in God's plan! Destiny, guys. I mean, don't be giving him out high fives and stuff, but he couldn't help it. No free will. God planned this one. (If I was Jesus I'd be really angry about that one.)
Huh. I guess there wasn't much to respond to. Which I guess is good, because my last two posts are longer than a giraffe's neck.
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