Slaughterhouse Five + Lovely Bones

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Contemporary Narrative: Test 1

Slaughterhouse Five (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut (or “The Children’s Crusade”, A Duty Dance with Death: (SH5) Chapter I: How does this chapter deal with memory regarding the war? What is the significance of the ‘author´s’ presence? The specific event that impulses de novel is the memory regarding WWII, particularly the fire bombing of Dresden (one ofthe brutalities of the war). Thousands of people died. They used incendiary bombs: they produce fire (it’s not just about the impact). Half of the people died of asphyxiation because of the fire. Civilians died horribly. At the beginning, Vonnegut wants to write an anti-war novel. He’s not remembering everything that he should. He seeks help from a friend from the war. He begins to discover thatmemory is a tricky thing. At first, he couldn’t remember many details (because of the trauma). Trauma: linked with memory. A wound. Psychological wound: event not fully experienced at its time. Strong emotional response. Related to the negative. It modifies us (positively or negatively). It leads to repression: conscious or unconscious, a blocking. Unconscious repression: because it is tootraumatic, so your mind blocks it (and something can trigger that memory back). Seen in war. Shell-shock: PTSD (Somebody comes back from war and hears something like a car backfire and brings memories back: triggers trauma/repressed memories). Vonnegut realizes that memory is a difficult thing to put together. It is difficult to write a serious novel. The first chapter ends with the ending of the novel:tweet of a bird. There is no use in writing a big anti-war book: it is as significant as the tweet of a bird (this changes his objective: we get to Billy Pilgrim). Billy Pilgrim: What kind of individual is Billy Pilgrim? Discuss his perspective regarding life in general. Billy is/as Vonnegut himself. His experience by proxy is through Billy. Billy is a mick? Individual. No strong personality. Notheroic. “Unstuck in time”: past & present & future, he travels back and forth, he’s unstuck from reality, he’s witnessing his own life. He has a dislocated perspective, which has to do with memory and trauma. He separates himself from traumatic events while telling his story. Avoiding trauma makes it less personal (like another person): we already saw it with Vonnegut and Billy (Billy and himself,Vonnegut and Billy: similar dislocation). What is the significance of ‘so it goes’? Vonnegut uses it in the first chapter and then it appears all along.

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It means: things continue, nothing changes, shit happens, life goes on. It is used each time somebody dies: something traumatic and important turns into a ‘so it goes’: related to dislocated perspectives. Death as not such abig deal: time is a continuum. Time is always there. If you die, you are still present. Insanity and madness: possibility that Billy is mad (avoiding reality). Commentary of war/death. Tension develops throughout the novel. Movie: Waltz with Bashir The book itself: End of Chapter IV, Billy is on the Tralfamadorian space. Free will: we have a choice, we have volition. Determinism: antithesis of freewill: we don’t have free will. Billy Pilgrim: Ø He goes to war, comes back, was in a mental hospital, gets married: we don’t learn all of these things chronologically (he’s unstuck in time). Ø He knows how everything will end up, e.g. tells his wife not to lose weight. Ø He’s abducted. He’s put on display in a zoo (equivalent to a stupid animal). They explain to him what is going on. ØTralfamadorian explain to Billy the concepts of time and causality. Human beings see time as cause and effect, a flow of things (Tralfamadorian: “he asks me why?”). Time is like a mountain chain where everything has already happened. Everything is crystallized (amber bug) and can’t be changed. Ø The tralfamadorians know how the universe ends: it is their fault. It’s not about ‘why’. Ø Deterministic...