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.