Honors Blog Post 3

Here is a quote from the book, the Vonnegut Effect

““This veteran decided to take his car into the basement, and he closed the door and started down, but his wedding ring was caught in all the ornaments. So he was hoisted into the air and the floor of the car went down, dropped out from under him, and the top of the car squashed him. So it goes”. End of the story? Not in the brave new world of harsh details and naked emotions that was characterizing American life as toughened up by four years of war effort.”

This is just one of the quotes from the book but the reason I chose it was because one of the books that the author, Jerome Klinkowitz talks about in the book, Slaughterhouse 5 which was derived from Kurt’s real life experiences, has powerful emotions because of the realism behind it.

Connections

In the first few chapters of the book, the author talks about Kurt Vonnegut in college, I related this to myself because I’m applying to universities right now and when I read about Kurt Vonnegut’s enrollment at the Cornell University that sparked my mind. It’s weird looking back at Universities back then when you could suddenly be recruited to go to war since that’s exactly what happened to Kurt Vonnegut.

An obvious connection that I had made was when he mentioned Kurt Vonnegut’s time as a prisoner of war because he survived the bombing of Dresden during World Ward 2 by hiding in a meat locker. I connected to this because I read Slaughterhouse 5 but also from the movie Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull because Indiana Jones had survived a nuclear attack by hiding in a refrigerator.

The author also talks about Kurt Vonnegut’s works with the Saturday Evening Post, I had no idea that it was a real newspaper till I discovered Kurt Vonnegut because the only pictures of the Saturday Evening Post I had ever seen were in a Hometown Buffet near my house.

Discussion Questions:

Do you think Kurt’s experiences in the war inspired him to switch his major from Chemistry to Anthropology?

Kurt described himself as many different affiliations of religions, which religion do you think he had before he died?

Does Kurt use black comedy in his books to hide or try and take away from some of the sadness of his books?

Did Vonnegut ever seem to show his actual feelings or emotions in his books?

How can Vonnegut’s influential writing be shown in today’s books and articles?

Image: Skye the image thing isn't working for me but here's the link. http://www.artrepublic.com/attachments/image/304/16304/16304.jpeg

I chose this image because in the text, Jerome writes that "If there is a major difference between the stories Vonnegut preserved and those he did not, it may involve a delayed appreciation of the domestic element.

What I think the author means by this is that, the stories that Vonnegut had kept and didn't forget about were the stories that related to himself, other people may have enjoyed the writings but Vonnegut kept the ones that seemed most important or related to himself.

Breakfast of Champions

When I first heard of the title I didn’t know what to expect especially since I had finished Slaughterhouse 5, a book by the same author that was pretty surprising. The book is about two men that have crossed paths, one sane man that considers himself an unknown writer while the other man is a maniac that gets even crazier when he reads a book written by the other man. The narrator of the story eventually breaks the 4^th wall and talks to both you and the characters in the story while being completely conscious of the fact that he controls the story.

“I hold in my hand a symbol of wholeness and harmony and nourishment. It is Oriental in its simplicity, but we are Americans, Kilgore, and not Chinamen.” This is a quote from the epilogue of the story where the Narrator is talking to Trout, one of two main characters in the story. I believe this quote represents the story’s symbols, every symbol that has appeared in the book is interpreted differently by different people and that there may be a different meaning that the author was trying to show us or there was no meaning at all and he was just trolling.

I thought of several connections when I read this book, most of my connections are with Dwayne Hoover, the other main character that is crazy and psychotic. Dwayne reads Trout’s book and believes everything that the book had said, I don’t relate to Dwayne this way but the information that he obtained from the book intrigues me because I have always thought that perhaps no one in the world is actually real, that everything is an illusion, I am the only true person and I am trapped in this fake world.

Another connection that I thought of was how the narrator had joined the other characters in the book and started interacting with them. This reminds me of Bruce Almighty because Bruce talked to god and it just reminded me of the book because Bruce had met the creator of the world.

The gay son of Hoover’s that went to military school reminded me of my friend that went to military school because he just wanted to have fun but he was sent to a military academy because he didn’t focus enough on his academics.

http://api.ning.com/files/Z9tNby4JdPrtWIRPZJk9bgjwA3FjrvpX1ZZCdjrgcuiRgpQz51bt3mHWYYcWSZpHgogCyRpgMEyzuoaD8g-eyLVsxoxKPQI9/48048693.jpeg

I chose this picture because it reminds me of what Hoover did to a bunch of people in the book because he thought that all the humans were robots. Trout’s book was about how everyone around the reader was a robot and the only real human was the reader, Hoover read the book and took it seriously and started to wreak havoc.

Questions:

How is the narrator similar to the author if at all?

Is this book racist? Why or Why not?

What might have caused Hoover to become crazy?

Is Kurt Vonnegut for or against gay people?

What is the meaning of the title besides the drink?

This book was amazing and I enjoyed this more than Slaughterhouse 5 which is by the same author. I think that the book was well written and the book continued to surprise me, since Hoover is insane the book could jump to many different plots. I do recommend this book to people in high school and older since it contains some inappropriate content but the book is an enjoyable ride from start to finish.

Slaughter House 5 by Kurt Vonnegut "So it goes..."

I recently just finished reading Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, this book surprised me with it's detailed plot, I had expected a realistic book but it was more in depth than that.

Quote of the Book: There are many meaningful quotes in the book, this book was supposed to have similar aspects to Kurt Vonnegut's actual life. The quote I found interesting was “If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will." This quote is appears at an interesting time in the book because these aliens in the book know about all their destinies but cannot run away from them, instead they travel to different points in their life and re experience them instead. I found that interesting with this quote because the aliens had traveled to many different planets but had never heard of such a thing as free will until they came to planet Earth. Because the aliens do not think they can control their fates they seem to not know that free will is possible because that might possibly change destiny (although it didn't).

Connections –

I cannot recall many connections to this book as a whole but there are many small instances where the book connects to other books, events, and movies.

A movie I saw a long time ago called Minority featuring Tom Cruise is about an organization that tries to stop crimes before they happen, they use special people that can see the future to find the location and time of the crime. This movie is of course different from the book because the movie shows that destiny can’t be changed, however, near the climax of the movie ( I won’t spoil it) it appears that some destinies can’t be stopped.

The book brings up a philosophical theory of how destiny cannot be changed, or it can. I have always thought about this philosophy because there are good arguments for each side that I think about in my head and I never really came to a conclusion on if destinies can be changed or not. For one you can change your destiny by not stepping on the bus when you could have and you continue to live while the people on the bus die but that might mean that your destiny was always to never set foot on the bus.

A movie series that I have seen that reminds me of this book is the final destination series. The movies in the series are about people who have escaped death’s grasp but have not been granted a second chance and will die very soon because death still wants them. The movie is again, about changing destiny, the characters in the movie try to be cautious and figure out a way to survive and change their destiny from dying earlier than they wanted to. As a horror movie, they tried to make an ending that would give you a lasting effect on the idea of unable to change your destiny of dying and that is the reason that the movie series reminded me of Slaughterhouse 5.

Visual Representation – I chose this image to represent the visual side of the story because the main character of the story, Billy survived the Dresden Bombings during World War 2 and when he sees a barbershop quartet is reminded of the Dresden bombings because it triggers a memory he had in Dresden making him breakdown for a moment. Billy survived the Dresden bombings by hiding in an airtight meat locker as the fires took all the oxygen from the area around them. Vonnegut was a spectator of the fire bombings and when he wrote this book he probably showed how he felt of the fire bombings through Billy.

Discussion Questions:

How does Vonnegut’s use of time shifting affect the story as opposed to a linear story?

What did Vonnegut mean when he said that Billy was unstuck in time?

Do the aliens have an connection to Vonnegut’s life?

What is the moral message behind Slaughterhouse 5?

What does being human mean to Vonnegut?

Reflection – Vonnegut’s tone is ironic and powerful, his tagline “and so it goes” is embedded into my head, my friends tell me that he uses this phrase in his other books as well and I look forward to reading them. Vonnegut uses black comedy in his book but it does not hinder the emotional and meaningful context of the book nor does it change the tone. I read many books similar to Vonnegut’s style of writing and although I do not enjoy them in the beginning, when I am coming closer to the middle of the book I get a better understanding and start to enjoy what I read.