Slaughterhouse Five Final Project Katherine Thomas and Victor Chavez
Utopian World- Pg 77 "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why...when he regained consciousness, he wasn't on The flying saucer. He was in a boxcar crossing Germany again."
Most likely to cope with his PTSD Billy creates Tralfamadore for an escape. His lack of free will here is apparent but Billy has accepted it and learned to love his utopian World.
Relativity- Pg 27 "Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about death, which is 'So it goes'"
Because of all of the loss Billy has seen he uses this statement "so it goes" to deflect his emotions and cope with what is happening around him. His time in the war has desensitized Billy so that he needs the escape of Tralfamadore to help him face with what is happening in his real life.
AntiWar- Pg 3 "What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too."
Along with his conversation with Mary O'Hare, Vonnegut is reflecting that wars are an inevitable thing. Also this human nature to create a war to solve a problem but creates more is inevitable. These events in the war developed PTSD in Billy which is plausibly expains most of the events in the novel.
Free Will- Pg 86 "Only on Earth is there any talk of free will."
This theme in the novel is ironic because constantly Vonnegut is showing his lack of free will and here the Tralfamadorians are mocking humans for thinking they have free will.
Human Reinvention- Pg 75 "Everyone turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed."
By saying "He supposed" at the end it makes his statement ironic because Adam and Eve fell from good graces and lost everything because they weren't perfect. Which brings to point that even as we try to change or reinvent ourselves we will always fall into temptation because of our human nature.
Work Cited:
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The children's crusade: a duty-dance with death. New York: Dial Press, 2015. Print.
Credits:
Created with images by Sean MacEntee - "sunrise" • elianemey - "skull cemetery genoa" • cdrummbks - "slaughterhouse-five" • davitydave - "Vonnegut" • esudroff - "newborn baby feet"