Jaxon's English Blog

Well, wasn’t that inspirational?! I mean, come on!! If that doesn’t get you hyped for this last post, then I don’t think anything will. Here’s the link to that quote by the way: https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/end-of-journey.html. I know you want it!

Moving on. It’s finally here, folks, the day we have been waiting for! Well, actually it was yesterday, but I procrastinated, so now it’s today. Anyway, I liked the ending of the book. It was done right in my opinion. Vonnegut added a satisfactory amount of context. It wasn’t my favorite ending to a book, but it wasn’t anywhere close to my least favorite either. It was simply just an ending. Once again, Vonnegut presented war as the ugly, disgusting thing that it is. During the last few pages, he really put the nail in the coffin.

Did you know that “Nail in the Coffin” is actually a song by Eminem? I sure didn’t. I don’t recommend listening to it, though, because it did say it was explicit when I googled it.

Unless, of course, that’s your type of music.

Moving on again. One character that I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet is Kilgore Trout. Last time I talked about a character I hadn’t yet, it was Billy’s wife, and I proclaimed my dislike for her. Kilgore Trout is the exact opposite. I love him. He’s one of them characters who kind of just lurk in the background of the book and get thrown around here and there. In fact, the real Kilgore Trout only makes one physical appearance in the book, when Billy strikes up a conversation with him. So why then is he a good character in my opinion? Glad you asked. Kilgore Trout is an author. Billy’s favorite author. He isn’t a big author; in fact, his books are disliked by the vast majority of humanity. Well, the vast majority of humanity doesn’t know he exists, but you get what I mean. Billy, on the other hand, loves Trout’s books. This is ironic because a lot of the books that Trout writes are wild, alien/space events that actually happen to Billy in one way or another. It’s really hard to explain, but you’d understand if you read the book.

Well, folks, my time in Slaughterhouse Five is quickly coming to a close. I’ve actually now read the entire book. Should I have made this post before I finished it? Probably. Will Mrs. Johnson not like it? No clue. The point is, this post will be strictly on the section that it is supposed to be on.

One character that I really haven’t touched on is Billy’s wife. Her name is Valencia, I’m pretty sure. She is probably one of my least favorite characters. It’s not really her fault though. She doesn’t show up very often in the book. When she does show up, I personally think that she displays a pretty low IQ. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like she never has anything important to say. In the section this post is on, she dies. She got kachowed in a car accident.

So it goes.

Beyond this, it was a lot of the normal in terms of how Slaughterhouse Five has been going. Billy has slowed down on a lot of the time travel. Vonnegut has continued to rip out the ugliest parts of war and put them at the center stage of the book. The Dresden firebombing was not a fun event. You can learn more about it at this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden. I’m sure glad that I wasn’t there. Here is what some of the aftermath looked like:

So it goes.

In this section, it seemed like Vonnegut was really furthering the theme of war being a nasty, disgusting thing. Overall, I’d say he has really accomplished that with the way he described the aftermath of Dresden. It was gruesome. Vonnegut never once romanticized the idea of war in this book.

With every page I flip (or rather flipped), I can tell (could tell) that I am getting (was getting) closer to the end of the book. Vonnegut really starts to water down the pages and cuts to the chase. Billy’s time traveling is almost strictly to and from Dresden. These pages definitely give the feel that the end is near.

So it goes.

Well, well, well. Based on how close my bookmark is to the end of the book, I am now at the beginning of the end of Billy Pilgrim’s journey. There has been a recent shift in the tone of the book. Vonnegut lost the confusing, random edge that he had in the beginning. There is significantly less time traveling now, and the book is really starting to hone in on Billy’s time as a POW. It feels as if there is a heavy weight lying on the pages of the book. It’s like a calm before the storm type of thing. Something is coming, and it doesn’t feel like it’ll be a good thing… for Billy at least. Or maybe rather for Edgar Derby, who is a character I’ve grown to like. I don’t have much to say on Edgar Derby at the moment, but he is a fellow POW of Billy.

This is an image of American POWs in the Battle of the Bulge, the battle in which Billy was captured. This link (https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/captured-in-the-bulge/) gives an insightful overview of the capture of American POWs in the Battle of the Bulge.

As I have read Slaughterhouse Five, it has been difficult for me to pinpoint one central theme. When I think of the theme of Slaughterhouse Five, I think of confusion, impending doom, chaos, and a hidden message lying in the midst of it. Or, more tangibly, war is chaotic and painful, and it brings permanent changes to so many lives. When I think of the theme, I have to remember that this book is an anti-war book, and it gives war a messy, watered-down perspective. This theme also goes right along with the author’s craft: confusing and chaotic. The main way that Vonnegut demonstrates this is with the constant time travel of Billy Pilgrim and the horrific events of war. Vonnegut does this all throughout the book.

This is what half the book looks like. Time travel.

Alrighty folks, this book is starting to make more sense with every chapter. As I mentioned in my last post, Slaughterhouse-Five is an anti-war book. Up until this point, it was difficult to decipher how exactly Vonnegut was accomplishing his means of protesting war. While it still isn’t clear, Vonnegut’s argument is starting to come across. While Billy Pilgrim is going through wartime moments of his life, Vonnegut highlights the atrocities of war that surround Billy. He brings a lot of the dark, ugly aspects of war into the light. When Billy is going through post-war moments of his life, Vonnegut presents him as confused, an outcast, or plain crazy in the eyes of those around him. Nobody in Billy’s life truly understands him or what he went/is going through. I think Vonnegut does this to symbolize what war does to a person. Billy, a World War Two veteran, is now stuck living the rest of his life with the memories of his painful, horrific past. He then throws in the aspect of time travel, meaning that Billy constantly has to relive these experiences. This symbolizes flashbacks and PTSD. The only time that Billy truly seems to be himself, or at peace, is when he is on Tralfamadore. A place that is trillions and trillions of miles away from Earth. This symbolizes that the only way for Billy to escape the horror of his past is to escape reality itself. Billy does this by way of Tralfamadore, but many veterans did this by way of alcohol or suicide. Vonnegut uses Billy Pilgrim as a walking and breathing metaphor for what a veteran’s life looks like in post-war times.

This is a picture of Tralfamadore: the only place where Billy feels free of his past.

It all makes sense now!!! I cannot begin to explain how helpful chapters 4 and 5 were. Actually, more helpful than chapters 4 and 5, the one sentence that sums up the book on the back page! It’s maybe a 25-word sentence that explains very simply the plot of the book, and it unlocked a lot for me. I now understand that Billy Pilgrim is the main character, and it’s an anti-war book told through the story, or “odyssey,” of Billy Pilgrim.

Here is a link to a website with the definition of an anti-war book: https://fiveable.me/key-terms/introduction-to-literary-theory/anti-war-novels. I included this because I wasn’t entirely sure what characteristics made a novel about a soldier, specifically an anti-war book. Many of the characteristics fit into other genres, like the last book I read, called Unbroken. Like Slaughterhouse Five, Unbroken gives the same feel about war and suffering on the frontline, yet it focuses on the story of a soldier and how he meets Christ.

Anyway, like I said, I understand the plot now. Or at least how it fits into the author’s intent of the book. There is still a lot of grey area to me, though. Sometimes it feels like Vonnegut is talking about the fictional world that Billy Pilgrim is living in, and sometimes it feels like he is talking about his own life and experience. This is mainly because that is exactly what he is doing. Slaughterhouse Five is a unique mesh between the life of Billy Pilgrim and the life of Kurt Vonnegut.

I mean, Kurt Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim sure do look alike. Could this mean something? Well, of course it could!

More than that, Vonnegut even identifies as one of the American POWs that Billy Pilgrim encounters. I mean, he literally says in the book, “That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.” In my opinion, it’s one of the characteristics of this book that keeps me interested. That and the trips to Tralfamadore that Billy Pilgrim spontaneously takes. Fun fact: Billy Pilgrim was shown off in a Tralfamadore zoo for a while. He had his own enclosure, and the Tralfamadorians insisted that he be naked while in the enclosure. Billy actually enjoyed life in the enclosure. I can’t blame him. I think I would also enjoy it if I didn’t have to be naked in front of all of Tralfamadore.

Well, folks, that’s all for my weekly check-up on how confused I am about Slaughterhouse Five. Hasta luego.

Man, O man, is this going to be awesome!! Today I’m going to introduce y’all to a man named… You guessed it… Billy Pilgrim! Ever been to Tralfamadore? Me neither. Billy has though. He was taken there in 1967 in a flying saucer, where he was displayed as a naked zoo animal. Billy comes back and time-travels a little bit. He was also a WWII vet. That’s Billy Pilgrim for you.

Confused yet?

I hope so, because I’m a bit confused myself. Good old Kurt starts off Chapter Two with a mad tangent about a man named Billy Pilgrim. Firstly, this is unusual because Billy is mentioned maybe once or twice in Chapter One, and when he is mentioned, all Kurt says about him is, “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” Now there is a lot I could say about Billy, but I’ve already summarized quite a bit so I’ll stop. So far, I don’t know where Billy fits into the plot. I’m not sure if he’ll be important to it or if Vonnegut will just move on to another topic and completely forget him.

I don’t even know what the plot is. I’m not even sure what the point of this book is, given that I’m only two chapters in (just wanted to clarify that).

This is a painting of Billy Pilgrim. He doesn’t like like much of a soldier. He does, however, like like he visited Tralfamadore (because of the glasses).

Anyway, in terms of questions… I have so many. What is the point of Billy Pilgrim? What is the plot? How long will Billy Pilgrim be relevant to the story? Who is the main character? All these questions will be answered eventually… I hope.

Vonnegut continued his “So it goes.” craze. There hasn’t been any memorable deaths really, but there has been a LOT of deaths. Ope, I just swatted a fly as I was writing this. He died. So it goes.

Alrighty folks, I have officially read through the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. One chapter in, and the plot is all over the place. Kurt switches topics like there’s no tomorrow! It’s like he’s going through a corn maze, and at the end of it is the point he is trying to get across, but he keeps taking the wrong turn even though he knows how to get to the end. Though it seems weird right now, I believe that it’ll come together eventually, and some of the confusing stuff will make sense. In terms of predicting where the plot is going next… I don’t have anything. It could go anywhere. I have no predictions whatsoever about this story.

So far, really, the only main character is Kurt himself. There are a few other characters that Kurt talks about for a page or two, but then he moves on to the next subject. I don’t have much else to say about characters at the moment. Billy Pilgrim seems to be a big character, but I can’t talk about him until post number two. To the next topic!

“So it goes” – Kurt Vonnegut. Whenever Kurt pulls this line out, it means someone has died, and he says this line a lot. Besides this quote, Kurt also has a few other lines that he repeats every now and then. One of them is a few lyrics for a song that go, “My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumbermill there. The people I meet when I walk down the street, They say, ‘What’s your name?’ And I say, My name is Yon Yonsin, I work in Wisconsin. . . “

This is a picture of Yon Yonson that I pulled from the web!! Pretty neat, huh? Anyways, that’ll be it for this week’s edition of Jaxon’s English Blog. Tune in next week for another chapter check-in… wait a darn minute… what do we have here?! WOAHHHHHHHH, NEXT WEEK IS A DOUBLE CHAPTER POSTTTTTT!!!!!!! Even more reason to come back!! Stay safe out there, folks. Adios.

I mainly chose Salughterhouse Five because Mrs. Johnson recommended it to me. After reading Unbroken again, I really didn’t have much motivation to find a good book, and so I pretty much took the first one that was thrown at me. It sounds like an alright book, though, would you agree? I mean, it seems very grim. The word Slaughterhouse reminds me of a butcher. Unfortunately, I think that the only thing being butchered in this book is people, considering it’s centered around World War II. I’m reading this book by myself, and I’m really looking forward to just listening to the author of the book. I like the style in which he writes. It seems like he is kind of just mumbling semi-related stuff onto a page. I’m apprehensive about putting what I’m reading onto paper. It often ruins books for me, reading with the knowledge that I have to do an assignment on it later. Finally, in order to ensure success, I am going to… drum roll please… read my book!! Imagine that. Well, I don’t know how many words I’m at, but I’m calling it a day. Adios.

The text, “The Very Brief Revelation of the Devastation of the Indies,” by Bartolome de Las Casas, fits into the topic of “Cultural Encounters and Frontiers” because of how the two cultures, Native Americans and Spaniards, clash upon meeting each other. The Spanish Christians very quickly start to control the Natives and use them as they like, or rather, as De las Casas says, “ill use them.” The Spanish Christians committed many atrocities against the Natives, as evidenced when De las Casas writes, “And they committed other acts of force and violence and oppression which made the Indians realize that these men had not come from Heaven.” De las Casas also writes later on that, “for every Christian slain by the Indians, they would slay a hundred Indians.”

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