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?