Post #3 Week #3 Billy's Crying

Just after the bombing of Dresden when Billy and the other prisoners are being taken to the Russians in a horse and cart Billy starts crying once he sees what horrible condition the horses were in. "Billy hadn't cried about anything in the war" (Vonnegut, 197). I thought that this was strange because Billy was portrayed throughout the rest of the book very weak. I felt like he would have cried at some other time given the stress of being a prisoner of war. Why do you think Billy never cried? Do you think it had something to do with him already knowing everything that was to come? Do you think he felt bad because the horses were treated badly and after being treated badly as a prisoner he didn't want to treat another living thing like that?

Post #2 Week #3 The Books "Cycle"

I have recently finished reading the book. Towards the end I noticed Billy connecting and adding in objects from the beginning of the book. At the very end of the book Billy was in NYC at an adult book store and he was showed a picture. "It was a photograph of a woman and a Shetland pony. They were attempting sexual intercourse between two Doric columns, in front of velvet draperies which were fringed with deedlee-balls" (Vonnegut, 205). This picture was the same one that Weary had at the very beginning of the book. But this wasn't the only thing. Multiple times at the end of the book Billy said, "'If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming,' he told himself, 'just ask for Wild Bob'" (Vonnegut, 206). And I remember this from the beginning of the book too when Billy was in the war. I was wondering why Vonnegut would add little things from the beginning of the book into the end of the book?

Post #1 Week #3 American Nazis

When Billy is a P.O.W. in Dresden he and the other American soldiers are visited by "Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American who had become a Nazi" (Vonnegut, 162). This surprised me because I didn't think that a previous American soldier would want to become a Nazi after they went to war to fight them. I also didn't know that this was happening during WWII. What do you think caused soldiers to switch to the side of the Nazis?

Tralfamadore

Billy, after his trip to Tralfamadore, writes, "The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist." (Vonnegut, 26-27). It's really crazy to think about this quote. All things that will happen in the future, already exist. All the moments in the past, still exist. Imagine if this were real, and we could see all the moments just like the Tralfamadorians. Do you think this is all possible?

Yon Yonson

So I know we have talked a little about it already, but on page 11, Vonnegut narrates, "Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni. My name is Yon Yonson. There was a young man from Stamboul." (Vonnegut, 11). I picked this quote out of the text because it continues to confuse me as to why Vonnegut keeps referring to Yon Yonson, the silly song he told of earlier in the book. He also had a sentence in what I believe to be German, out of no where. The quote is very odd to me, and is alike to many of the other instances when Vonnegut refers to himself as Yon Yonson.

Post #1 Week #2 Human Millepede/ The idea of single Organisms

On page 87, Billy says, "And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes- "'with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other,'" (Vonnegut, 87). This quote really caught my attention because it is so strange and I had a hard time wrapping my head around what it was saying. After a minute I came to the conclusion that this quote might show how the Tralfamadorians view humans as a single organism that keeps on growing. The new part of the organism at one end and the old part at the other. This idea of a single organism reminded me of the train cars full of prisoners which were viewed as single organisms too. Do you think there is a connection between how the humans are viewed/ thought of in both these circumstances that lead them to be imagined as one organism?

Post #2 Week #1 Bugs and Amber

On page 86 after Billy is kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians a Tralfamadorian says to him, "'take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all , as I've said before, bugs in amber'" (Vonnegut, 86). I thought this idea of bugs in amber was very interesting and I thought of it in two ways. One, the tralfamadorians being the bugs in amber, never changing just existing in time and observing what was happening around them. And two, the humans being bugs in amber and the amber is time. The tralfamadorians see humans stuck in moments of time. They see the humans life in different snapshots, yet always alive in some moments. What do you think the connection is between the tralfamadorians, humans, and bugs and amber?

Weary's Face

On page 48, the narrator says, "Billy had never seen Weary's face. He tried to imagine it one time, he imagined it as a toad in a fishbowl." (Vonnegut, 48) When I was reading this passage I was immediately filled with confusion as to how this statement is true seeming that Billy and Weary are together a lot during the war. Although the line before that says, "Said Weary, through five layers of humid scarf from home." (Vonnegut, 48) As I reread this passage it got me thinking about layers. Do you think that the reason why Billy has never seen his face is because of physical layers covering Weary's face, or emotional layers that have caused Billy to never see Weary's true face? Is he trying to say that the war changes people into a different person then they where before, could this possibly be connected to a bigger theme?

I also found the comparison between Weary's face and a toad in a fishbowl very fascinating. Why do you think Billy would imagine Weary's face to look line a toad in a fishbowl?

Post #1 Week #1 Billy Weeping

On page 61 Billy is randomly weeping, "every so often, for no apparent reason, Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping" (Vonnegut, 61). Then on page 63, Billy goes back to the time of WWII and is actually weeping, "he closed his eyes, and opened them again. He was still weeping" (Vonnegut, 63). I figured the random weeping in the future might be connected to what had happened in the past. Previously in the book Billy had been hovering between two times. This lead me to wonder if Billy could be experiencing the emotions of something that happened in the past in the back of his mind while he is present in the future causing him to cry at random. Do you think Billy is randomly weeping in the future because subconsciously he is also at a time in the past when he was weeping?

Example Posts - Meets and Exceeds

The following are two posts that may serve as models for your own. These posts use The Grapes of Wrath as the considered text, but the requirements are the same. The first is an example of a post that MEETS the standard; the second is an example that EXCEEDS the standard.

Meets:

It became apparent in chapter 5 that the narrative of the Joad family is only one perspective of the struggles people faced in the 1930s. The use of racial slurs and culturally insensitive language reminds us that the Joads, although they are a poor family lacking many basic resources, they do have the privilege of being white. The use of the word "nigger" and the highly insensitive way of speaking about Native Americans remind us that whiteness was a privilege that could elevate the status of even the most desperate farmer.

I wonder how this theme of race and culture will continue to develop over the course of the novel. What will the presence of race and racism continue to teach us about the social fabric of the U.S. in the '30s?

Exceeds:

The description of the land in Chapter 5 tells us a lot about the tensions arising out of the industrialization of farming. The physical connection to the land is broken, and this seems to lead to a bigger gap that transcends the physical.

In chapter 5, we learn that the tractor driver "could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth...Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses" (35, 36).

Humans are being replaced by machines, and these machines will never love and appreciate the land (and what the land provides) as much as the humans who farmed it with their own hands. I am curious to see how this theme continues to play out in the novel - will the divide between the human and the machine continue to grow, and will it cause the farmers' struggle to become increasingly bitter and devastating?

Notes:

• Please consider your grammar and spelling. These posts should be thoughtful and well-crafted. 
• As you can see, the posts need not be long. A few sentences, or a small paragraph or two is sufficient. Remember - quality over quantity! 
• Please title your post purposefully - your title should help give a heads-up about the content of your post.