Judgment

According to Epictetus, "What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgements about the things" (sec. 5). The example he gives here is death. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but our judgement somehow depicts it as dreadful. I think that this is a very interesting point of view. I also think that there are many things we can see from different angles, and depending on whichever angle you are looking at it from, it can either be good, bad or somewhere in between. For example, if you drop your doughnut on the floor, you can either see it as a waste of money, or you can see it as you were just saved a couple of extra calories. It all depends on your point of view.

My Beliefs vs. The Handbook of Epictetus (intro)

As I was reading the first few pages of the introduction of the Handbook of Epictetus, I felt as if I was reading Portuges. Almost nothing was really hitting and staying, it was all pretty much just washing over me. Then, suddenly, I am not sure where, I realized Epictetus seemed to have similar views on life as did the Tralfamadorians in Slaughter House Five. They also believed that humans have pretty much no say in what happens to them. "Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well" (2). This was Epictetus' view on the best possible condition a mere human could have. Likewise, the Tralfamadorians told Billy in Slaughter House Five that things happen, because they were meant to happen, have happened, and always will happen.

The early and late Stoics recommended that instead of trying to change the world, make your desires fall "in line with the way the external world actually is" (3). They agreed amongst themselves that the way to create this state of mind, is by realizing everything that occurs in the external world, is determined by previous states of the "universe as a whole" (3).

I however do not believe that the Stoics way of living is very good at all. I think that if you want to change the way your life is, you can. You may not necessarily be able to control your situation entirely, yet you can make your life have the best outcome possible. I think you should be able to set your goals, or your standards higher than possible, and then strive to achieve them.

Also, I believe that a greater power is in charge of everything. I personally believe that God knows what is going to happen, and wants what is best for us. However, it is all up to our personal decisions to determine what is going to happen.

A slogan of the Stoic ethics states that "Nothing is good except moral virtue" (7). I do not believe this, because according to my faith in the Bible, God created everything, and after creating the entire universe he said that it was 'good'. By giving us free-will, letting us decide what to do, we are given the option of choosing good or evil. The evil in the world is from us when we do not follow in God's ways and teachings. Our choices determine the future outcomes of our lives, and effect everyone around us.

"Poo-tee-weet?"

The last words of Slaughter House Five are "Poo-tee-weet?" (275). This however, is no surprise to us, because from the very beginning, we were told how the book would end. "This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this: Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet?" (28).

One might ask, why end with a bird chirp? What does it have to do with the horror of the bombing of Dresden, the soldiers, the muck and the waisted amount of life?

I believe that when the author wrote Poo-tee-weet, he meant it as a symbol, a symbol that no matter what awful things humans do to eachother, life will go on. Nature's life cycles are not affected by human's desolation. Things will get better, and go on as before, people will eventually forget about past horrors, and move on to in-the-moment little problems.

Life is simple. Nature is pure. And birds will sing, even after fire has consumed an entire city.

Chapter 9

When Billy's wife Valencia dies, I felt that it was all kind of sudden, and the author just wanted to 'get rid of her'. Poor thing, she hears that her husband's plane has crashed, and then survives a crash of her own, with a mercedes vehicle, only to be overcome by carbon monoxide, and die. Why was she killed so suddenly? It is kind of interesting that Billy survives, but she dies. Her death doesn't seem to effect Billy at all. He seems completely focused on telling the world about Tralfamadorians. Why has this suddenly become the number one thing on his list? It wasn't very important before the plane crash.

In the hospital, he meets a man named Rumfoord. Billy tells Rumfoord that he was there, when Dresden was bombed. Will Rumfoord be reintroduced in the last chapter of Slaughter House Five? He was brought in suddenly, and then taken out just as quickly. Did he have any significance? Or was he a mere filler?

Billy then takes a secret trip to New York. He slips out while his nurse isn't looking, and tries to find a to broadcast his Tralfamadorian news. How does he think he will convince the world that Tralfamadorians exist? Why does he think this is so important? How will he explain the difficult concept of time, that the Tralfamadorians propose?

At the end of the chapter, Billy travels in time back to Tralfamadore. He is talking with Montana, who has born him a son. The author doesn't give us any information on his son, I wonder why that is. Is he merely not important?

Anyways, Montana seems to be bored with the conversation that she and Billy are having. I wonder how Billy gets off of Tralfamadore. Does he simply just leave Montana and his son there?

Once again, a prayer from earlier in the book is brought into the story. Around Montana's neck is a locket with the engraved words of "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference."

Why does the author bring this prayer into the book, again?

Dresden Is Bombed

When I read that everything in Dresden was bombed, and burned, and that there were practically no survivors, I asked myself, why did they target Dresden, which had no connection with the war at all? They did not house any World War II soldiers. They didn't produce weapons for the nazis. They didn't have an army base, either. Why did the Americans target Dresden? Why not some city that was more important? Some place that would have had an impact on the war, instead of just killing civilians?
The author states that "American fighter planes came in under the smoke to see if anything was moving" (230). They must have known that they would just be killing civilians, "The idea was to hasten the end of the war" (230) but what good would it do to kill innocent people in a city that wasn't threatening anything? Click here for an article about the bombing of Dresden.

Plane Crash

In chapter 7, Billy gets onto a chartered airplane with his crude father-in-law, who enjoys disgusting songs from the war. Somehow, Billy knows that the plane will crash, and that he and the copilot will be the only survivors. I think that he is still looking into the past, and his knowledge of what he knew then has been confused.
Before the plane crashes, Billy timetravels into 1944, and Roland Weary is shaking him, trying to get him to keep going. Does this have a double meaning? Maybe, since he is about to have a near-death experience, his memory goes back to his other near-death experience, when he almost froze to death.
After the plane crashes he is rescued by two Germans. Having suffered a a fracture to the skull, he was slightly dishelved, and didn't know where he was. Thinking that he was still in World War Two, he whispered his address to the German, "Schlachthof-funf" (199). It is interesting that his rescuers just so happened to be German, and that he said his World War II address in their language. Is this an important fact? Or mere information?
After being brought down Sugarbush Mountain on a toboggan, he was taken to a hospital. The author specifies that he went to a hospital that was private, and was operated on by a famous brain surgeon. I think that he specified that the surgeon was famous, and the hospital was private, to make it seem that he was completely normal afterwards, and there was no possibility of him having any brain damage at all.

Schlachthof-funf and a bit of Foreshadowing

In chapter six, Lazzaro has sworn to have the Englishman who punched him killed after the war. This also leads to Lazzaro stating matter-of-factly that he would also have Billy killed. Billy agrees, unconcerned, that this is a true statement of how he will die in the future. I find it quite interesting that Billy knows how he is going to die, and is pretty content with the outcome. Moving on, Lazzaro, Derby and Pilgrim all join the rest of the Americans in the theater. An Englishman gives a speach about hygene, which none of them take seriously at all. After the Englishman had given his lecture, he states, ironically, that he is envious of the American's opportunity to go to Dresden. He describes it as a beautiful city. This is ironic, because Dresden will be bombed later on, and turned into a disastrous and wrecked city. A product of the war.

When it was time to go to Dresden, all of the Americans felt pretty content. They were able to hold their food, and apparently, Dresden was very safe from the War. According to Edgar Derby's imagined letters to home, Dresden would never be bombed. Irony, once again.

The author then uses the colors "blue and ivory" (188) to describe the feet of the dead hobo. Somebody had taken his shoes, and he was "nestling with thin air and cinders", seeing as no one else was there. Does this possibly have a significance? Blue and ivory seems to be a favorite description, that the author uses frequently. In chapter four, Billy's own feet are described as ivory and blue. Perhaps this is also foreshadowing.

When the American soldiers arrive in Dresden, they are met with soldiers as pitiful as themselves. After being brought to their new 'home', their are told to remember their address, in case they ever lost in the big city. "Schlachthof-funf" (195), or in English, Slaughter House Five.