Literature Analysis #3

Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut

So it Goes... Thats the infamous, uncompassionate line that the reader always finds after a death in the book. The story was written by Kurt Vonnegut, a World War Two veteran, who, like the main character Billy Pilgrim, was also a survivor of  the bombing of dresden. From what Ive read, researched, and just inferred about Dresden was a city that was thought to be safe because it had no major military fortifications. So when it was reduced to almost nothing, I think that Vonnegut was just blown away at the scale of loss, that he couldn't really comprehend it. So when writing this book, he looks to shock the reader by his unempathetic tone of the phrase, So it goes. Anyways, The story follows Billy Pilgrim, a POW held in Dresden. Just before the bombing they are taken to an extremely deep underground meat locker, called Slaughterhouse Five. Billy and his fellow POWs survive the bombing but when they come up they see massive carnage and destruction. One of Billy's fellow prisoners gets shot while cleaning up the bodies because he touched a teapot or something. So It goes...

Billy then returns home and gets married and has a couple kids. He takes a job as an optometrist (symbolic?) but he feels very guilty. He shows some signs of PTSD ( I assume). Then he is abducted by Aliens called Transfalmadorians. They take him to a distant planet and hold him captive. He gets a new beautiful wife and has a kid. The transfalmadorians are shaped like plungers and they have a weird sense of time. They don't expeirience past, future or present. It is all at once, like, " Looking at a range of mountains." I was initially struggling to understand what this could mean so I researched it and found a video on youtube made by John Green, The author of Fault in our stars. Anyway he said that tthe Transfalmadorians were Billy's way of coping with his immense guilt. And since they view time all as one thing, Billy had no choice in the Bombong of Dresden, alleviating him of his guilt.

I think the tone that Kurt Vonnegut writes in is interesting. The first and last chapters are like a narrative prolouge and epilouge. He writes in kind of a dark humor meant to make you notice the horrible atrocities and the dehuminizng effects that went down in WW2. And if I had to comeup with a theme that would be it. To expose the atrocities and Dehuminization that WW2 saw and the effect on the survivors.

Literature Analysis #2 

Catch-22 by Joesph Heller

1) Captain Yossarian is a US army air Forces Bombadier stationed somewhere in Italy. They are constantly enticed to fly more missions in order to get a discharge from the Army. But the number of Missions is constantly raised. Also you can claim insanity and get a discharge. But you need to fill out paperwork saying you are insane to do so. But if one fills out the paperwork then one really isn't crazy. But, one must be crazy to keep flying missions. So it's a pretty absurd situation.

So the story is kind of fragmented between missions and a recurring memory Yossarian has, when he tries to save a young man named Snowden. Yossarian is also convinced that everyone is out to get him. So it's apparent that there is maybe some PTSD type of disorder or some kind of something, because Yossarian is very Paranoid. And when the cook at the airfield, ( Milo) takes his parachute and sells it for artwork and uneccasary things, this perception is fueled. The general is also very callous and insensitive. He sees his men not as people, but as resources and tools that he can use to advance himself.  It's like that Charlie Chaplin quote, '' Dictators free themselves but enslave the people." I wonder if Heller had ever heard that speech while he was writing that book because the parrallels are pretty spot on. ( military-wise)

2) The theme of the novel. Well, it seems to portray a very dark and realistic view of human conflict and the corrosive effects of power, and the desire of those in power to keep others down. So the theme, succinctly, is that humans have atendency to distance themselves from others and by doing so we have conflict and eventually lose sight of who we are really fighting. is it the enemy himself, or just what he believes in?

3) The authors tone in the story is very dark.

The author uses a mix of direct characterization and indirect characterization,

1) Indirect-- When Milo steals the squadron's parachutes and sells them for his own personal profit, we can infer that he is a greedy, ego-centric person.

2) Direct-- Yossarian tells us through dialouge that he is very paranoid.

The character Yossarian is very round. His mental state detiriorates as the story goes on.

The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock Questions

1) The phrase " There will be time," is repeated many times throughout the poem. IN the context of the poem we can assume that time allows put things off. "There will be time, to say, "Do I Dare, Do I dare." Prufrock just keeps telling himself he will do it someday, and that way he can hold on to his ideals that he loves. Obviously Prufrock has some serious Performative Utterance gong on. And like in Hamlet he puts things off, and precedes to beat himself up over it. But when he says that, he's not Hamlet he means that he has never taken action at all.  " to swell a progress, to start a scene or two." He's articulating the diference between himself and Hamlet. Although Hamlet took a while to kill Claudius, he did take some steps to put himself in the position too. So Prufrock is putting himself below that, saying I havent done any of that. 

" I grow old, I grow old." Prufrock is reminded that he is growing old, however, which contradicts his, "There will be time," statement. There are a few clues that support this." They will say: How his hair is growing thin." Gives us the connotation that Prufrock is grwoing old and balding. 

All of this gives the sense that Prufrock will live his life as a man of dreams, but never a man of action. "Till human voices wake us and we drown." What is he waking up from? His "etherization" of inaction? and when he drowns, is that when he realizes it was too late and wallows in guilt and regret? I think so.