So I should've posted this almost two weeks ago... oh well better late than never.
Some time towards the end of our last school week, we got to writing about and then discussing the passage in Kindred in which Dana first witnesses a slave getting brutally beaten. I'm sure all of us can agree that the way this event is presented to us in the novel allows for us to have quite a different reaction to similar events that took place in the time period. In history classes ever since elementary school all we've been given was the facts and so getting on a more personal level of what a slave beating was like definitely allowed us to develop a more repulsive reaction to slavery.
As I was writing, and later as we discussed, however, I realized that I was only one of many who noticed that our reactions to the slave getting whipped was nothing compared to Dana's reaction. The obvious reason for that would be that Dana actually witnessed this slave getting beaten with her very own eyes while we comfortably sat in our sofas reading about Dana's reaction. But as I delved into the symptoms of Dana's severe reaction, I was reminded of a video I watched a while back. The video was about a Syrian father who had thought that his toddler son had been killed in one of the many massacres the Syrians had gone through (and are still going through today) but had found the son still alive and well. The video brought me to tears as the father and son cried and tightly embraced each other.
I was also reminded of the times when I had to do research for a research paper about a Syrian refugee camp. The research itself made me slightly depressed and saddened and I just didn't want to continue with my research or finish the paper altogether. The two connections I saw immediately between the video and my research and Dana's witnessing the slave getting beaten was: 1. My more extreme reaction to the video and Dana's reaction were similar because we had both witnessed the event before our very eyes (I certainly wasn't in Syria but I did see the video only a short time after the incident had happened) and 2. My wanting to stop researching for my paper is similar to Dana's tries to blur out the cries of the slave as he was getting beaten.
As I was writing down these thoughts in my notebook, I heard a comment that I found quite interesting and relateable. One classmate said that she was trying to experience or get closer to Dana's reaction by imagining what happened to the slave happening to a loved one. I looked over my notes and realized that I could easily imagine any of the atrocities happening to the Syrians, or any Middle Eastern, happening to me or my loved ones (in fact, I've on many occasions asked myself how would my family and I be in similar states to the Syrians and many other Middle Easterns experiencing such violence today). Similarly, maybe part of Dana's reaction had to do with the fact that she was black. She could easily imagine what happened to the slave happening to her (and it kinda does later in the book). Generally speaking, though, I think it's safe to say that when such violence is being done to your people, you feel so much more extremely, whether it's because you find it so relateable and can easily see it happening to you or someone you love or if there's a stronger connection between you and those of your same ethnicity.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Why Are the Tralfamadorians There in the First Place?
As I saw during the panel presentations, many see the Tralfamadorians as something Billy made up as a coping mechanism of his PTSD or simply to make more sense of life. While There are many reasons the Tralfamadorians were made for Billy in Slaughterhouse-Five, I definitely see more advantages of including the Tralfamadorians as something Vonnegut made up for himself.
From the first chapter, we get a sense that Vonnegut is having a hard time writing this book, whether it be that he doesn't want to glorify war or he finds it difficult to even write about the war in the first place, or both. Whatever it be, the Tralfamadorians help Vonnegut overcome his problem. From the Tralfamadorians point of view, there's nothing glorious about the war on earth, they simply see it as something that has happened, will happen, and will always happen in one of so many moments of time. The war has no special meaning to them. It's only humans killing more humans. There is no differentiation of German or American, and furthermore the Tralfamadorians see no pride in winning a war.They don't even focus on war because they only want to focus on the happy moments. Vonnegut adopts this apathetic-like sense of the Tralfamadorians when narrating how things happened from Billy's point of view, and thus this helps us to not think about the war in terms of which side is fighting which and but in terms of people dying who don't individually make a difference after the war is over.
The Tralfamadorians also help Vonnegut get the book done. Having the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five allows Vonnegut to switch to different time periods of Billy's life whenever he so chooses, which he does quite often. This allows Vonnegut to stop writing about a particularly depressing war scene if he can't go on and to switch to a part of Billy's of life when he wasn't in the war. This also helps Vonnegut to not have to remember everything that happened in Billy's life in a linear fashion, so Vonnegut doesn't have to write everything in order and draw all the connections from one scene to the other.
Including the Tralfamadorians has one last major advantage for Vonnegut. Instead of writing a depressing book about war, Vonnegut gets to focus on another, happier story that is all made-up, meaning he gets to decide where the story goes and exactly how it gets there. We as readers have already seen so many anti-war books and I for one definitely don't want to read a book that's only about the atrocities of war, nor does Vonnegut want to write one. The Tralfamadorians help to spice things up by making the book longer and more interesting to its readers.
From the first chapter, we get a sense that Vonnegut is having a hard time writing this book, whether it be that he doesn't want to glorify war or he finds it difficult to even write about the war in the first place, or both. Whatever it be, the Tralfamadorians help Vonnegut overcome his problem. From the Tralfamadorians point of view, there's nothing glorious about the war on earth, they simply see it as something that has happened, will happen, and will always happen in one of so many moments of time. The war has no special meaning to them. It's only humans killing more humans. There is no differentiation of German or American, and furthermore the Tralfamadorians see no pride in winning a war.They don't even focus on war because they only want to focus on the happy moments. Vonnegut adopts this apathetic-like sense of the Tralfamadorians when narrating how things happened from Billy's point of view, and thus this helps us to not think about the war in terms of which side is fighting which and but in terms of people dying who don't individually make a difference after the war is over.
The Tralfamadorians also help Vonnegut get the book done. Having the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five allows Vonnegut to switch to different time periods of Billy's life whenever he so chooses, which he does quite often. This allows Vonnegut to stop writing about a particularly depressing war scene if he can't go on and to switch to a part of Billy's of life when he wasn't in the war. This also helps Vonnegut to not have to remember everything that happened in Billy's life in a linear fashion, so Vonnegut doesn't have to write everything in order and draw all the connections from one scene to the other.
Including the Tralfamadorians has one last major advantage for Vonnegut. Instead of writing a depressing book about war, Vonnegut gets to focus on another, happier story that is all made-up, meaning he gets to decide where the story goes and exactly how it gets there. We as readers have already seen so many anti-war books and I for one definitely don't want to read a book that's only about the atrocities of war, nor does Vonnegut want to write one. The Tralfamadorians help to spice things up by making the book longer and more interesting to its readers.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
So How Does This Whole Time Thingy Work?
Towards the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five, I was pretty convinced that Billy was some whacko who suffered from some kind of postwar insanity. I thought that Billy was constantly remembering his past memories of war only because of how scarred he was by the war. As the book went on, however, I started to believe that Billy was actually reliving his past memories of war. In a way, he was always time travelling to earlier periods of his life, although he never knew which period of his life he would be acting in next.
Until recently, I thought that Billy was always time traveling back in time from the present (it's pretty difficult to pinpoint the present in the book, but I believe it is right after Billy's article on the Tralfamadorians is published). But in a recent reading, Billy explains the entire scene right before his death and narrates exactly how he will die. It should be impossible for Billy to know the "future" if he's reliving events from his past. So, once again, I had to change my theory.
It was then that I finally took Billy seriously when it came to how he believed time works, that is, how the Tralfamadorians say time works. If we are to apply the way time works as the Tralfamadorians claim it works to Slaughterhouse Five, everything makes sense. There is a sense of the present, but time doesn't work linearly. This explains why Billy is always nonchalantly accepting what happens to him, because he already knows how everything is going to end anyway. This also explains why Billy is physically ageing like a normal human being as time goes by but always seems to be at the same mental level throughout all his time.
My final theory in a nutshell: There is a present in Slaughterhouse Five but there isn't a linearity to Billy's life, thus Billy experiences/ re-experiences moments of his life at random and already knows the outcome of his life.
Until recently, I thought that Billy was always time traveling back in time from the present (it's pretty difficult to pinpoint the present in the book, but I believe it is right after Billy's article on the Tralfamadorians is published). But in a recent reading, Billy explains the entire scene right before his death and narrates exactly how he will die. It should be impossible for Billy to know the "future" if he's reliving events from his past. So, once again, I had to change my theory.
It was then that I finally took Billy seriously when it came to how he believed time works, that is, how the Tralfamadorians say time works. If we are to apply the way time works as the Tralfamadorians claim it works to Slaughterhouse Five, everything makes sense. There is a sense of the present, but time doesn't work linearly. This explains why Billy is always nonchalantly accepting what happens to him, because he already knows how everything is going to end anyway. This also explains why Billy is physically ageing like a normal human being as time goes by but always seems to be at the same mental level throughout all his time.
My final theory in a nutshell: There is a present in Slaughterhouse Five but there isn't a linearity to Billy's life, thus Billy experiences/ re-experiences moments of his life at random and already knows the outcome of his life.
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