Trafalmadore vs Dresden

War must only be entertaining when your in all the action and not marching towards a camp.  Life must be fairly simple when your in the second situation because Billy Pilgrim has a lot of time for daydreaming.  He must have way to much free time if he has the time to come up with a whole future life for himself. Yup, definitely too much free time! He wakes up in 1967 once again and it is the night after Barbara's wedding.  He is watching a Second World War movie forwards and then backwards.  Billy really focuses on the movie when it plays backwards. I guess that maybe he wishes life and war were like the movie when it plays backwards. If life could fix things and major worldly issues then we would not be in the tough situation that we are in at the moment.  We wouldn't have a violent history and the world would be a happy peaceful place.  Adam and Eve appear again when Pilgrim wishes that the world would have stayed perfect when these two perfect people were alive.  This chapter has a lot of symbolism.  In his opinion everything is dead and cold.  He describes corpses as ivory and blue which only helps me picture what someone dead may look like.  While he is walking to the waiting flying saucer he describes his bare feet as ivory and blue while saying the champagne is dead.  When he enters the saucer he describes what it looks like and what the trafalmadorians are like. He says that time doesn't matter to them and that everything is what it is.

He awakes back in Germany on the moving train. While on the train no one allows Pilgrim to fall asleep on the floor. They all had stories of what he had done to them in his sleep.  I feel bad for him because when I was little my sisters didn't like it when I slept in their room or bed.  They both would have sleepovers in each other's room and I would never be invited because I spoke and kicked in my sleep.  Billy Pilgrim and I are very similar in that way.  When they arrive at the camp Pilgrim realized that Trafalmadore and Dresden are very similar. They have many of the same buildings, the first order was for him to take off his clothes, and they didn't speak english.  While naked, the Germans were preparing the showers and inspecting them.  The man with the best body, according to Pilgrim, would get shot in 67 days by a firing squad.  When they all enter the shower and the water comes on, Pilgrim has a flashback of when his mother was bathing him when he was just a baby.

Uh Oh Spaghetti O!

When someone falls behind from the group while walking in a forest, it usually has a negative effect.  In my opinion, negative things can always turn into positive things; at least that is what happens in Slaughterhouse 5.  While Roland Weary and Bill Pilgrim try to catch up to the group, German soldiers begin to shoot at them.  The soldiers captured Pilgrim and Weary, and killed the two remaining soldiers.  While being captured Weary had to give all his belongings to the german soldiers while the soldiers gave him theirs.  During this process the captain was cleaning and polishing his boots when Adam and Eve reflected off them.  Could "Adam and Eve" be a symbol? Will they appear in the rest of the book? Only time will tell.  In the beginning of Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut tells about his companion when he was in Dresden, O'Hare.  Is it possible that O'Hare and Weary are the same person? It's possible because Bill and Weary are both captured together and are taken to Dresden together.  When they both arrive to the cottage they see about 20 other americans.

Once again Pilgrim begins to daydream (what a surprise) and wakes up in 1967 as a 44 year old man.  He is in his optometry office with a female patient that stands up and leaves.  He begins to observe his surroundings and sees that he owns a very nice car.  When a siren starts to sound Pilgrim begins to freak out because he think World War Three will start at any minute. Wow this dude is paranoid!

He is rudely waken up and is told to keep walking.  While thinking about 1967 the soldiers make him reenact the capture so that the German media could take pictures.  He starts to daydream (again) about his perfect rich life in 1967. His son is a sergeant in a present-day war and his daughter, Barbara, is about to get married.  While driving to a restaurant in Ilium, NY he drives by the ghetto and sees the similarities it has with Dresden, Germany.  When he arrives to the restaurant he is named President of the Lion Clubs and then wakes up in Luxembourg.  I don't understand how the Germans let Billy live.  He kept bumping into everyone due to his daydreaming and injured leg.  I am extremely surprised they didn't murder him.

While on the march he met a man named Bob, a colonel with pneumonia.  He was telling everyone to remember him as "Wild Bob" and that if they were ever in Wyoming to ask for him.  They are transported to a train where they didn't move for two days.  "Wild Bob" had died while on the unmoving train and the soldiers brought a cotton stretcher and took him out of the cart.  On Christmas night the train starts to move and he begins to think of 1967.  That night he is kidnapped by a flying saucer from Trafalmadore.

Unstuck in Time

     Kurt begins "The Children's Crusade" and uses different names for each character.  The main character is named Bill Pilgrim and the first sentence says: "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." I did not understand this sentence until I read further.  Billy remembers many experiences he has had like his birth and death.  He walks through a door in 1955 and comes out in 1941 experiencing many old events.  Bill is now an old man with a crack in his forehead because of an accident he once had. He has a daughter named Barbara who constantly worries about him and never leaves him alone.  One day Barbara comes home very upset at Bill because he had sent a letter to the Papers telling them about his time on a strange planet named Trafalmadore.  He was working on his second letter to the papers when she walked in and scolded him.  As soon as she had gone upstairs he started remembering his days fighting in the Second World War.  Bill speaks about his first tour of duty and how there was nothing worth remembering.  He was sent home because his father had died in a shooting accident.  When he was sent back to war he expresses himself as being useless and defenseless: he didn't have the proper shoes or any weapons.  He was assigned to a group of three (with him 4) where the leader was called Roland Weary.  Bill describes him as a huge, strong, and fat man with a lot of weapons and clothes.  He had many scarves, socks, jackets, a customized helmet, a knife his father gave him, and a gun. I wonder why Bill didn't ask him for any of these when he was not using them? Weary was a buddy of his who always saved his life.  At one point, the Germans were shooting at them and Bill didn't want to walk any further, so he stopped and willingly let them shoot at him.  Weary ran and pushed him out of the way so that he wouldn't be killed.  When they were finally safe and walking in the woods, Bill stoped and once again starts reminiscing. His first memory is of when he was a child learning how to swim.  He is scared because his father is using the method "sink or swim". (Very scary when your a kid, trust me.)  He then begins to think of other memories until he is rudely awaken by Weary back into the present where he is fighting an ugly war.  He wishes to be back in the free and peaceful times of a young boy whose only worry is trying to learn how to swim.  Weary shoves him for a quarter mile and when they are close to reaching the other scouts he says that when Bill gets out of this war, he will owe his life to the Three Musketeers.  Weary referred to himself and the other two scouts as the three musketeers because they had survived the war together for a long time.  The scouts got tired of waiting for them so they continued walking without them.  They heard dogs and shouting, like a hunt, and it looked like the hunters knew exactly where their prey was.  Bill and the others hid from them and he starts to day dream, once again.  Instead of focusing on the past he starts thinking of the possible future for the events he sees have not yet occurred.  At first he imagines himself as a skater in a beautiful outfit and nice, white, clean socks.  When that image leaves his head he imagines himself being elected president.  Many people ask themselves how Bill can keep daydreaming and reminiscing during a war, but I can relate.  I get distracted very easily when I am bored, even during important events like performances, and start to think of the past and hope what my future may be like.  It is always good to daydream because it can make you forget about the terrible present you might be living in.  It is a way to escape the present, even if it is just for a little while. All though it is mostly good, there are also negative effects.  Billy should be worried about his constant daydreaming because it will eventually get him into trouble.  In wars you must pay attention so that you do not get captured or killed, but with billy never focusing I don't know how he will survive much longer.

The Children's Crusade

    Kurt Vonnegut's first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five introduces the main idea of his novel.  He begins speaking to the reader as himself and presents his best friend from the Second World War, O'Hare. He describes their experiences during the war and when they were captured by the russians in Dresden. Once again he talks about himself and mentions his odd disease which stimulates him to call all his old friends every night when he is drunk.  This terrible habit leads him to calling O'Hare and telling him about his idea of wanting to write a book of their experiences.  O'Hare invites him to his home so that they can reconnect and talk about the old times.  I find it humorous that Kurt speaks about writing a book based on the Second World War within a book already written about the war.  When he reaches O'Hare's home he sits in the kitchen with him and they laugh as they reminice but then they become serious.  When they remember a time where a man was killed in Dresden for using a tea cup that was not his, they could not hold back the laughter. At that moment, O'Hare's wife, Mary, enters and scolds both of them for laughing at a such a serious and terrible matter. She has a negative point of view on Kurt's idea of writing a book and has no problem making it known. This scene makes it clear why Kurt dedicates this book to Mary O'Hare and a cab driver they met in Dresden. She believes that books and movies encourage young children to want to go to war because these movies and books do not tell or show the actual things that happen during a war.  Kurt lets her know that his book will not be like that because it will only speak the truth.  This scene also explains the title of his book.  He names it "The Children's Crusade" because of her reference to children.
    This book gets very interesting when you become aware of the type of history he is coming from and the odd memories he and his friend have had in Dresden. He flows into every new scene and has a reason for each.  Something I realized while reading the first chapter is a very odd coincidence.  Kurt worked in Iowa University and taught Writers Workshop.  When we write an essay in Mr. Tangen's class we always do Writers Workshop.  We give our paper to a partner and they circle and make known the mistakes we each have made.  Something Mary O'Hare said to Kurt has helped me relate to the beginning of this novel.  I feel the same way she does with violent video games, movies, and books based on war.  There are various imperfect things that come with war, but these games and movies make war look like fun. When you die in a video game it is just game over and you get more lives.  During a real war there really are game overs; the biggest difference is that you don't get any more chances or lives.

The Perfect Life

    The Perfect Life by John Keothe is a fascinating poem that defines his life and his opinion towards it.  It appears that when he was a younger man everything was beautiful and had a meaning. He saw his life as perfect because he was content and did not have any disappointments.  He comes to realize that his life is not as perfect as he makes it out to be because he becomes aware that he is living in denial.  His power and superiority give him a delusional contentment for a short while.  As time passes and he reaches middle age items that are beautiful and strong start to mean nothing to him. Additionally, he feels that life looses its beautiful color and becomes a cold open space. (Very depressing.) As old age settles in, so do mental illnesses such as alzheimer's which causes a person to feel alone and disoriented in the world.  He states that things he knows turn into unfamiliar faces and that he is left in a strange room. As death takes over he looks back on his life and acknowledges that in his eyes it has been perfect.
    I can somehow relate to this poem because I too have felt that my life is perfect.  When I am content and having a good time with my friends, I always think to myself "Wow, my life is perfect. What could go wrong?" After a moment like that I may make a mistake in the future and that is when I realize that my life is not as perfect as it may have seemed in the past.  The only difference with this poem and myself is that he describes what he sees and feels as his life comes to an end and I have only described what I have seen until now.  I still have to live my life and hope that the future is full of fun experiences. (Hey, I'm only a teenager!)