Reading Blog: Slaughter House - Five (Pg. 119-136)

“It was a simple-minded thing for a female Earthling to do, to associate sex and glamour with war.” (Vonnegut 121). It is weird how the author of this book makes this association, a female Earthling with war, why, does he think that women are incapable of seeing the true nature of war, since they may look at war as a glorious thing for their half orange to do? Or does this sentence mean that women have a stereotypic perspective towards soldiers being good in bed. Also, the author uses the word Earthling instead of using human to describe the females in Earth. Is it that the author wants the reader to realize that war is getting so common to us Earthlings that women, and maybe some men, are starting to relate it to good and pleasant things such as being a good lover, or even husband?

The word “secret” showed up through these pages, catching my attention, since a secret means many important things in human nature. A secret may be a symbol of the amount of trust one person has towards another, to the amount a person is “worth” to other people. A secret is indeed a very controversial thing since it may, and probably will, hurt many people or things when revealed. For example, if I hold the secret towards having eternal life, my life is priceless, but as soon as I let go of that secret I held within me, I abruptly stop form being a priceless human being, to being a simple and common nobody who just happens to know the secret towards eternal life, as well as other human beings. A secret is similar to the price of the global currency (dollar), when many dollars are circulating in the international market, its value falls in contrast to the value it would have if there would be few dollars in the world.

Another sentence caught my attention as I was reading this book, “He suddenly found a door, which opened, let him reel out into the prison night.” (Vonnegut 123). Notice that Vonnegut explicitly related the night, to being a prison, since he didn’t use a possessive noun when talking about the prison. This made me think about the obstacles and fears that the darkness has struck on humans, making the night our captor, and us their prisoners (since we are unable to see at night).

Poverty in the American society then shows up, “America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.” (Vonnegut 128). I though of this monogram held by the German friend of the British as a criticism the author makes towards the United States economic wealth as a nation in contrast with the wealth that its inhabitants have (morally and economically). This criticism may be an attack that Vonnegut makes toward the savage capitalism that is held in the U.S. which make few prosper, and many live in the wilderness. It may also be interpreted as how capitalism creates a gilded nation, were its foreign affairs are booming, while its people are rottening beneath the greedy hands of the wealthy capitalists who build their wealth in the labor the poor. I personally think that if this is what Vonnegut thinks, I disagree, since the poor are also having something in return for their labor. The only thing a capitalistic economy really affects the poor on is in the lack of opportunities of them rising in their economic status in small amounts of time.

A question then came to my mind about the time traveling that Billy experiences in this book. Well, the fact that he had a wet dream about Montana Wildhack: “He had had a wet dream about Montana Wildhack.” (Vonnegut 134), suggests that Billy’s time travels may be a simple illusion he has of he premeditating a future he has already lived. For example, he predicts that the teacher Edgar Derby is going to die soon in the war; however, this may be a dream he mistakes with the reality he lived some years earlier, making him think he is in fact time traveling. And the Tralfamadorians may simply be an explanation his mind made up to convince Billy that he is time traveling.