NOTE TAKING GUIDE FOR SLAUGHTER-HOUSE FIVE (1969):
PAIR # 1: Why “so it goes”: so it has gone, so it goes, so it will continue to go?
How is this from the Experienced Perspective?
4: anti war book? anti glacier book
10 no villains...no difference between people...all constructed same way
77: cannot change past, present, and future
129: need for new lies
PAIR #2: Why Past and Present blended: WWII, Vietnam, Christ on cross, the Crusades, innocent Germans killed in Dresden, race riots in American cities in 1967?
What is the message about the structured moments?
If there are no villains, then what is the villain?
20: Children's Crusade
75 : race riots in cities in 1967...look like Dresden
76: bomb Vietnam to Stone Age to see Reason
122: candles and soap from "rendered Jews and gypsies"
PAIR #3 How do American machismo and British idealism war falsify war?
44-47: Roland Weary on violence
84-85: Colonel Wild Bill on bbq steers after war
120: British romanticize war: "Jerry was on the run"
177: Paul Lazarro on revenge: How is this a comment on WWII?
PAIR #4. What is the effect of Vonnegut as a Character on the novel's message about war ?
12-14: Vonnegut on Dresden as a secret...soap from bodies of Jews...122: soap in novel
86: Vonnegut was there
160: Vonnegut shits out his brains
189: Vonnegut sees Dresden as Oz before the bombing
PAIR #5. Levels of Perception: Define them:
1 Talfamadorians:
2 Reader"
3 Billy Pilgrim:
4 Kurt Vonnegut:
How does the perception of the Tralfamadorians who are "willfully unstuck in time" allow them to maintain the optimism and faith of organized innocence?
How do the diminishing powers of perception make psychological trauma more potent?
-Tralfalmadorian: willfully unstuck in time achieves the Organized Innocence Perspective
33: see in four dimensions
34: all moments in a life are beads on a string
97: no why for a moment
109: no free will
110: see time as mountain range and any one moment in time can be visited or avoided
112: Tralfamadorian novels read all at once...no causes...just depths of existence
149: universe ends...structured that way
196-7: all humans and beings are machines, programmable. Only earthlings take offense to this and believe in free will: How does this fact become much worse for you the reader and Vonnegut when you realize you cannot see as Talfamadorians do?
-Billy: unwillingly unstuck in time and often returns to trauma achieves the Experienced Perspective, but he quests for the Tralfamadorian perspective and has some hope
29: unstuck in time
54-57: unstuck in time to death and pre birth to YMCA fear to death of mother
114-115: sees faces of Russians as radium dials...unstuck in time to fear of death in cave
146-147: Earthling seeing
150: cannot ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones
170: Billy sees Montana's body as Dresden: beautiful
172: Billy tells little boy to revisit his father who dies in Vietnam by becoming unstuck in time
180: Billy does not fear death, nor his own death...and dies...no afterlife does not scare him
-Vonnegut: unwillingly unstuck in the moment in Dresden and exhuming the dead German bodies and smells mustard gas and roses from
the bodies and on his breath lead to a dominating Experienced Perspective
5: drunk breath like mustard gas and roses
11: Vonnegut on elevator death...lots worse in war
160: Vonnegut shits out his brains
PAIR 6: Science Fiction and perspectives of war:
#1 Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, William Blake, Heaven and Hell 132:
-Why is it important that PTSD cannot be seen nor treated by doctors? How is it a commentary on the debilitating effects of war?
#2 138-9: The Gospel from Outer Space:
-- How does Christianity teach it is fine to kill nobodies?
---How is the Biblical story altered so no one will kill nobodies?
---How are the descriptions of the American soldiers in the SL 5 confirmation that the soldiers were youthful nobodies in WWII?
#3 213: The Money Tree
---How is the war in Vietnam connected to the preservation of American capitalism, to the killing over money and gems on a tree?
#4 213-214 The Gutless Wonder
---What is this novel's commentary on Vietnam when only conscienceless nobodies could drop napalm on innocent North Vietnamese villages?
6. DeRomanticizes War:
8. Social Construction of the Self in War: “listeless playthings of enormous forces”:
9. Tralfalmadorian perspective and view of death, war, and free will:
10. Billy becomes “unstuck in time”:
11. Billy’s Quest for the Tralfamadorian perspective of war, death, and free will and Kurt Vonnegut’s quest for the Tralfamadorian perspective of war, death, and free will:
12. “mustard gas and roses”:
13. Unchronological narration allows reader to experience the Tralfalmadorian perspective: Billy dies in the middle of the novel…
14. Kilgore Trout’s novels:
-“The Gutless Wonder”
-“The Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension”
“The Money-Tree”: humans kill each other around the roots and made good fertilizer
15. The failed Quest for a Return to Innocence:
16. Violence toward the Innocent:
17. Familial and Marital Love as a failed antidote to despair:
18. Religion as a failed antidote to despair: