Farewell, Slaughterhouse Five

I guess I have come to the end of my blogging project. For everyone who took the time to read my posts, thank you. I hope I didn't waste too much of your time.
There is one thing I would like to end this blog with, one thing this book reminded me of, one thing I had kind of forgotten: hope. Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt. Hope. It's there. Always.
Farewell, Slaughterhouse Five. Somewhere in time, we are meeting again. I look forward to it. I always have and always will.
So long.

Thank you Kurt Vonnegut

 I liked Slaughterhouse Five as a whole. I thought it was interesting, thought provoking and definitely the weirdest thing I've ever read. It offered a unique perspective, an interesting format, and some pretty off-the-wall characters. There were so many things to consider while reading this novel and so many places my mind had to be at once. It was a real workout for my brain, something I think I kind of needed. There were some great references, quotes, and characters. Okay, so, the ending may not have been the greatest thing I've ever read, but it was what it was and I can't change it.
This book made me think outside the box, and it gave me some awesome writing inspiration. Some of the scenes of the more inappropriate nature were kind of unnecessary in my view, but obviously the author did not agree. This novel left me wondering a lot of things. How much of our lives do we live in our minds? How much of what we see and hear is really true? Why do we participate in these wars which ship off our young women and men to the battlefields of a once beautiful, peaceful nation, now transformed into hell? Why? That's probably one of the biggest questions I have after reading about all the things this character and this author went through. Why do we do this to the people of our world? What is the point of it all? Don't get me wrong, I have my own set of beliefs, and one of them is that everything happens for a reason and that we are all part of a plan that will work out for the good, but seeing some of the suffering up close through this character it's just hard not to wonder why people like to hurt other people.
Anyway, now that I've ranted about that for a while, I will get back to the real point of this post: Slaughterhouse Five. I first read this book last year because I picked up a copy in Value Village, read the back, and was immediately interested (don't ask me why, as this is definitely not the kind of thing I will normally even pick up). I started reading and I was hooked. Maybe I didn't get all of the hidden meanings, and there were parts that were all mixed up in my mind, but I knew this would be a book I would come back to over and over. There's just something about Vonnegut's writing that speaks to something in me. Maybe it's the way he turns the simple, mundane things into something spectacular, something I know I could have never thought of. There are things in this book I never would have thought of in such a way, probably too many to name. It's so complicated, yet it's so simple. I am a pillar pf salt.Vonnegut wrote this book for himself, to express what happened in Dresden, yet I feel like he wrote it for me. It's authentic in a way that not many things are. It doesn't feel the least bit fake or made up, even the pieces that are hard to believe are authentic, which is funny because a big chunk of it is about aliens from a planet that doesn't even exist (at least to my knowledge). The book made me feel human. I understood something I didn't think I could understand: the experience of another person in a situation completely the opposite to my own.
The characters too, were memorable. When I really think about it, a lot of the characters from this novel are stereotypical in almost every way, yet there is something about them that makes them unique. Edgar Derby, the army section's father figure, is not just a cliché man as one may expect, he's someone I can relate to people in my life, he's someone I believe could be completely real, and I when he died, I felt genuinely sad, even though I knew it was coming. Poor old Edgar Derby. These characters were more than their stereotypes, and honestly, I've thought about why, and I don't know what makes them so special. They just are.
I think my absolute favourite thing about this book though was that sneaky, hidden theme of hope. There was so much destruction, so much hurt, yet there was so much hope. Thinking of Vonnegut as the cynic he was, the hope is kind if funny. It was there though. Every time Billy survived or overcame something, it was there. In the little, pitiful moments, in the cheesy scenes, even in the war, it was there. In the boxcar on the way to the POW camp, Wild Bob, who was dying, still managed to have hope, telling people that if they are ever in Cody, Wyoming, to come see him. It was beautiful, in a way, to have that there. It was what kept me reading. The hope was always there.
I guess that's all. So, thank you, thank you very much Kurt Vonnegut.

Response to Julia's Blog...

I have decided to do a response to Julia's Blog (although I don't think she knows that yet) because when I read through her posts, I found them particularly thought provoking. Here is a link to her blog in case you haven't had the opportunity to read some of her posts: http://night0before0eternity.wordpress.com/
After the book is over: I had the same response to the ending of the novel as a lot of people, including Julia: that's it? I did like the poo-tee-weet ending, I thought it was cute, but it didn't seem like enough. The whole final chapter was just so short and to the point, then I turned the page, and it was over. There was nothing left. Personally, I enjoyed this book and all of its obscurity a lot, but there was something missing here. Vonnegut did say that there was nothing intelligent to say about a massacre, and maybe he just ran out of things to say. I know that happens to me sometimes when I'm writing. I have this flood of ideas and emotions and I just write and write and then I am drained. There is nothing new I can say about it and I just have to end it, whether it seems finished or not. About the point of a happy ending, it would have been nice, but I don't know if it could happen. We all want the happy endings. I get so attached to a character that it breaks my heart when a novel ends, even more so when a novel ends sadly. Sometimes though, there is no way around it. After everything Billy had been through there wasn't much that could be said or done to make it better. As unsatisfying as it was, it had to end because Billy's life was over. He was abused so much on the pages of that novel that I just wanted to let him rest in peace, but sometimes we don't get the endings we want. Probably the biggest disappointment of the novel.
The Children's Crusade: I am not a fan of war in any way. I think that it should be prevented as much as possible, and I know that's not always how it will go, but I wish it would. Young men and women are sent into places which can only be described accurately as some sort of hell, handed weapons and told to fight, to kill, to win. People just a little older than myself are thrown out into this reality that doesn't seem at all real and so many of them die. It's traumatizing, horrifying, unimaginable. And they're just a bit older than I am. It's heartbreaking. I can, in no way, classify myself as someone who has any understanding of this world. I will be 18 in just over a year, and legally I will be called an adult. Legally being an adult doesn't mean you automatically understand or that you can fight any better than you did when you were 17. You can vote, so you must be able to fight for your country. So many of the people who fight are children. Parents lose their children in war. Children lose their parents. People lose their friends, relatives, neighbours. Honestly, no one is old enough for war. No one is ready. No one is ready to march onto a hellish battlefield and shoot to kill other human beings. No one.
Nuggets of Wisdom? HAH: I wrote a post about this a while back, but Vonnegut, in the year 1984, actually did attempt suicide. He had a hard life and that shows through in his writing. I can't imagine some of the things Vonnegut went through, especially after having read SH5. In some of his books, there is an undertone of hope, like this one, but in others, all you can see is cynicism. Sure, he makes it humourous, but when I think about it, it takes a lot of pain to have that much material for cynical jokes. The quote Julia talked about about being alive and feeling nothing, I think, is something Vonnegut probably actually experienced in his life. I'm not saying he used drugs to numb the pain, because I don't think he was like that, I think it was one of those things where there is just so much going on around you that you don't know exactly what you should feel. There is so much pain coming at you from all sides that you just retreat into your mind and let everything hit you, but make sure you don't actually let it hurt you. You hold back the emotions, the tears. You feel like you could just break down and cry, but you start thinking numbers and math (a friend told me about this and it actually works) and you let go of the need to cry (at least until a later time). I think this book is a great example of that fully conscious numbness. There is so much pain, and if Billy felt it all, let it all seep in, it would have taken him over, killed him even.
By the way, Julia, if you're reading this, I really enjoyed your blog. :)

Dresden

From the beginning of the novel it was revealed to the reader that Vonnegut was writing a book about Dresden. He had been there, Billy Pilgrim had been there, and it had all been a big deal. Now, years later, it was something he had to get off his chest, so he was going to write a book about it. It seemed though, when I read this book, that not much was said about Dresden. Every time there was a page or two written about Dresden, Billy would travel somewhere else in time as if to get away from Dresden. If he wanted to write a book on the subject, why keep running away from it? I guess just getting it off his chest was what he needed. I guess sometimes for me it is enough too. Sometimes it's not enough though. Sometimes for the bigger things in life, just saying it out loud isn't enough, is never enough. We know they went to pre-bombing Dresden and it was beautiful. We know they stayed in Slaughterhouse number Five. We know Dresden was firebombed and almost no one survived except Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim. We know they mined corpses on the moon like surface. About the mustard gas and roses. It was tragic. It was horrible, but that's all we really know. It was enough for Vonnegut though. I guess that had I experienced something of that magnitude in its tragedy, it would probably be enough for me too. And then sometimes it's never enough.

Written on my Grave

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt" is the phrase Kurt Vonnegut says ought to be inscribed on his grave. Knowing he died in 2007, I am curious as to what is actually inscribed on his headstone. Reading this part of the novel made me wonder what would be written on my grave when I die. How would other people sum up the way I have lived my life? What few words would they use to describe me? What words would I use to sum up my life?
I want the inscription to be something that will reflect the live I lived and the way I chose to live it. I want it to be something more meaningful than my name and a couple of dates. I'm not saying that I want it to be fancy or beautiful, nor that I expect anyone to remember me regardless of the inscription. That's not what I'm saying at all. I just think that I would like to leave something of myself behind, and what better to leave behind than words?
I've thought about it a bit since I finished reading the book, but everything I think of seems cheesy and stupid (not that I expected anything better), but I keep coming back to one theme: hope. Not to steal the message from Vonnegut's gravestone inscription, which, by the way, is one of my favourite novel quotes of all time, but I think the message I want to convey is relatively the same. If I could tell a person one thing I have learned about myself, it would be that I need hope to keep going, and somehow I always find it. I would give up my life before I gave up hope. So, tentatively, this is kind of what I want written on my gravestone when I die: "Even when I was brought to my knees I could look up to find that hope never dies."

Stigma

We look at Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five and we can immediately say he suffers from what is commonly known as PTSD, a mental illness. So many of us are quick to judge and say he's 'crazy.' We see all he's experienced and we understand why he would suffer from such an illness, and we sympathize, but we still call him crazy. I'm not saying we're bad people or that we're wrong, but we're only seeing it from one perspective. Billy is mentally ill and he is coping. His coping, to us, looks like lunacy. He talks to aliens and travels in time. It's funny and weird and unfathomable. It's creativity on the part of the writer, but for some people it's reality.
There are a lot of people in Canada and the United States living with mental illness. This is not news to us. Many of us probably know one or more of these people, and we know they're not crazy. They can't change the way things are for them. I have a really close friend who lives with someone suffering with a mental illness. Talking to her, I have learned a lot about what it is to live with someone suffering from mental illness. It is not something that is easy and it takes a lot of patience, which only comes with time. My friend, who has also read this novel, says that there are certain things it has reminded her of, certain experiences she can relate to. Although the person she lives with has a different illness, she understands the stigma and she also understands what Billy has to go through.
The thing she says she notices most though, is the difference in the person. She lived with this person prior to the recognition of symptoms and the diagnosis and she continues to live with this person, and she says that although this person is fundamentally the same, this person has changed in a lot of ways. I think this kind of relates to Billy pre and post war. He was this innocent, frightened young man before he left and he come back so much older and so changed by the war that he could hardly relate to people anymore.
When I've talked to my friend about this book, she says that a lot of the things Billy does, things we would probably judge as crazy, are in fact, things people really do, methods of coping. For different people, they are different, but they are related, and to people who are just seeing these things from the outside, they may seem odd. They probably are odd, but they are how this person gets through.

What I Cannot Change

"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."
This prayer, kept on the wall in Billy's optometry office is something I learned when I was really young. My grandmother gave me a piece of wood with the words inscribed on it and I hung it on my wall. There it sat for quite some time. I read it over a few times, but I never really considered what it meant. I know what it literally meant, but I didn't bother trying to apply it to my own life.
I'm the kind of person who always wants to change things. When something goes wrong, I am the one to fix it. When there is a problem, I have to come up with a solution. I guess it's just the way I've learned to be. There is something I have learned though, and that is that I can't change everything and I can't change other people. Circumstances will not change simply because I want them to, and i have had to accept that, hard as it was. It's not always easy to accept something like that, but  it is unchangeable.
I think this kind of applies to Billy in that he learns to live out these words in his life as the novel progresses.He doesn't question the existence of the Tralfamadorians or their planet (he does, however, question why he was chosen). He understands that things will be as they are. That is something I strive for in my life, to live out the truth of these words. it would be a whole lot easier that way. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...

I HOPE Someday You'll Meet Her.

Hope's the cruelest teacher
Making promises she
Can't keep,
She beats you up
And breaks you down
Until you're on the ground
And all you can do
Is weep.
Hope's the greatest giver
When it's her time to shine,
She'll give you everything
She has
And more, as long as
You promise to believe.
Hope's my greatest friend
And my worst enemy,
It may be cliché
But sometimes she is all
There is to keep me going
In this broken world.
Hope has torn every piece
In my heart to create
One more,
And she has laughed as
I've fallen weakly
And lay crying on the floor.
She's merciless
And priceless,
Rich and she's
Penniless.
Hope is not one
Ever to discriminate,
She doesn't care about
Who you are
Yet she knows every detail.
Hope is what drives me
On a cold morning
To face my reflection,
Hope is what pushes me
Out the door.
Hope is what brings me home
Again at night.
Hope is what sustains me
When I want so badly to
Give up the fight.
Sometimes I hate her
Brutality because it strikes me
Like a whip,
But regardless of how I feel
About her,
I am grateful everyday
For hope.
I would be nowhere without her,
My cruel, lovely teacher.
I hope someday you'll
Meet her and
You'll know just
What I mean.


I think this kind of goes along with the whole hopeful tone of the book, and with the message of "everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." To me, it's representative of Billy in that there is always something there to give him the strength he needs to get through the day. Billy has seen what hope can do. There are times he has hoped for things and been disappointed, and other times hope has worked for him. That's why I kind of think this goes with the novel.

Dabbling in some fiction

I create a story that’s real to me

And who are you to say

It’s not truth?

I find some solace in my mind

Far from the tragedy

Of this life

And who are you to judge me?

I traveled to a land

In my dreams

Where nothing I see

Is as it seems,

And I found a haven there

Surrounded by a planet fair

So different from

This earthly life.

I found answers for

All my questioning.

It may be strange

To think this way,

To dabble in fiction,

Changing my fate

But if it’s all

Just going to work out anyway,

My question is:

Why not?

Why not make it beautiful?

Why not have some fun?

Instead of killing time,

Just lying around

Staring up at the sun.

You may not believe my story

Because maybe it isn’t real

But in this world

So full of death,

Why not make something more pleasant?

A Novel Idea

What would I write a novel about? That would be the question whose answer I have been thinking about for almost as long as I can remember. I certainly know a lot about the little pieces, but I wouldn't know where in the world to begin with the big picture. I could tell you all about my purpose in writing the story and what it would be based on, but all of that would probably change as soon as I picked up the pen to write. It certainly is an intriguing question though, and one  I would love to have answered by the time my life has ended.

I think much like Vonnegut's purpose in writing Slaughterhouse Five, my story would be about a lot of the things that have happened and will happen in my life, although there will definitely be some minor (and major!) changes. It's not like I want to write an autobiography because I think I would get bored of that even before the readers would ( which would be on the first page!). I just want a way in which I can tell my story, but tell another, different story at the same time.

I can tell you one thing, my main character will be the Billy Pilgrim to my Vonnegut. She will be just like me in so many ways, but so different in others. For example, she would definitely look different, with auburn hair and hazel eyes. She would be a normal size and her hair would be wavy. I could tell you a bunch of the little, unimportant details of her life too, but they would be pointless seeing as the book doesn't even exist and probably never will. She would be the important part of the story, more so even than the events. She would be my reason for writing, my inspiration.

A lot of the issues I would write about would be related to realistic things like her family dynamics and personal struggles, many things we probably wouldn't even think about. Regardless of their position as minor and unimportant in our thought processes, I would still like to write about them because they can be important.

I don't think it would really matter to me if anyone ever read what I wrote, because at least it would be out there. There was this one quote I heard on an episode of Criminal Minds last year and it kind of popped into my head when I started thinking about this topic: "Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."  -Cyril Connolly, writer

The Rewind Button

On page 74 of Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut decribes a scene in a movie Billy watches backwards. The scene depicts the progression of the events of the war, but seen backwards, all the destruction is undone and the lost lives are given back. Reading this passage, I really liked the idea. It got me thinking about how we see our own lives. What would happen were we to see our lives as Billy saw the war movie: backwards?
Of course the damage done would be undone and all of the things we have to struggle through would disappear because there would be some time in our lives when we were without them. My idea though, is kind of different. I don't really care to take away all the struggles in my life ( though there are definitely some I could live without), but rather find reasons for them. I hold the belief that everything happens for a reason and that all of the trials I have in my life do serve a purpose. Whether that purpose will ever be know to me is what I don't know. Sometimes going through things though, I would love to know the reason. When things get so hard that I just want to give up, I would like to know the point of all the obstacles I am overcoming.
I think that's what I would use the rewind button (so to speak) for in my life. In the end, we often have that understanding of the purpose of what we just went through and it seems worthwhile. Being able to see that in the beginning may have been better, but looking at things in retrospect definitely makes acceptance easier.
This kind of relates to Billy in that he goes through so much, and for what? What does he gain for all his pain? If he could have seen beforehand the results of all the battles he fought, would he have chosen them differently? Would I choose my battles differently?
In the end, we can't see how things are going to turn out. I guess that means we have to take chances. See what happens. If we win, good for us. If we lose, so it goes.

I am a Pillar of Salt

"I looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of great destruction. The sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zo-ar, I read. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

So it goes.

There were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off without them.

And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.

People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore." (21-22)

When I first read this passage, there was just something about it that stuck me. As we went through the first few chapters of the novel, I kept going back to it, trying to figure out what it was about the few simple paragraphs that was so drawing. I knew the story of Lot and his wife and of Sodom and Gomorrah before I read Slaughterhouse Five, but I never really thought of it in the way Vonnegut expresses it.

The story of Lot's wife is the story of each and every one of us, although (to my knowledge) we are not literally going to be turned to pillars of salt. We, as humans, have this tendency to always look back. We line up our memories in our minds and play them over and over until it's as if they were happening again. For some of us, it is a way to remember loved ones we've lost or unique memories, for others, it is a torture device.

So often, it seems, I get caught up thinking about what happened in the past, all the things I've left behind, and all the things I did and could have done. I make myself dizzy chasing the question through my mind: would things be better if I had done that some other way? So much of my time is spent regretting the things I've messed up, and analyzing moments and words that other people have probably forgotten. Sometimes I am so preoccupied thinking about what has already happened that I can't see what is happening right before my eyes. I can't see today or tomorrow or the next day. All I see is yesterday.

I lose a lot when I think like that, when I'm stuck in reverse. I think that's kind of what Vonnegut is saying, that we are all, in essence, turning ourselves into pillars of salt by spending so much of our time walking backwards. We think and analyze and chip away at our pasts until they turn around and chip away at us. We break things into so many pieces and, in turn, we are broken down. We are pillars of salt.

"People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore." (22)

Nice try.

Crazy

They call me crazy,
And I can't deny
They've got science
On their side
But I've got truth
And I think that's better.
Let them think
What they think.
They call me useless,
Think I'm a fool
Because my thoughts
Don't mirror theirs.
They look at me
Then at the ground,
Unable to meet my eyes.
It's okay,
Let them believe what they will.
Maybe I believe in something
Which, to them could not
Be real,
But it's real to me,
It's what I believe.
I'm not crazy
And that's enough for me.
So it goes.

Sons of Suicides

I was recently reading another novel by Vonnegut by the name of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. While reading, I came across two passages which reminded me of the first discussion we had in class when we talked about Kurt Vonnegut as a writer and his life story. It had been mentioned that his mother had committed suicide when he was young, and for some reason that stuck with me. When I read the first passages, I immediately thought of Vonnegut.
The passages are talking about a man named Fred Rosewater whose father committed suicide when Fred was just a boy, something Fred was unfortunately a witness to. It reads: "Sons of suicides seldom do well. Characteristically, they find life lacking a certain zing. They tend to feel more rootless than most, even in a notoriously rootless nation. They are squeamishly incurious about the past and numbly certain about the future to this grisly extent: they suspect that they, too, will probably kill themselves. " (144) The passage goes on to describe how Fred's father had died and all his son had witnessed. A passage from further into the book says: "Sons of suicides often think of killing themselves at the end of the day, when their blood sugar is low. And so it was with Fred Rosewater when he came home from work." (196)
This all got me wondering about Vonnegut himself, being the "son of a suicide." I found reading about this character extremely sad and I wondered whether these passages contained some bit of autobiographical truth, so I did some research. In an article published after the author's death in 2007, I found out that in 1984, Vonnegut tried to take his own life with sleeping pills and alcohol.
I thought this was so sad thinking about the underlying message of hope in Slaughterhouse Five. I think the truth in these passages also highlights the fact that there must be more truth in his other work. This truth, I think, makes some of the horrors we are reading about in Slaughterhouse Five even more real to me, and even harder to read. It also amazes me that a man with such a background could write a book like Slaughterhouse Five with such a hopeful undertone of appreciation of beauty and positivity, then go home and contemplate suicide. It makes it all so much more tragic.

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.
There is just something about this quote that has stayed with me since the first time I read the novel last year. It was the page I kept turning back to, the one line I kept reading. I didn't really know why until I thought about what it meant to me. I don't think that Vonnegut means that everything in life is going to be beautiful and that we are not going to experience any pain, because I think we all know that is not true. I do think that this quote is a reminder that the things we should focus one are the things which are beautiful, the things which bring us joy.
When I go through the novel, I find that this is a lesson Vonnegut tries to teach his readers from the opening to the close. There is a lot of pain within the pages of the novel, a lot of tragedy and unspeakable horrors, but even as the characters look upon scenes of utter destruction, there are things that are beautiful. There is hope. That is probably one of the reasons I like this book so much. It has its flaws, I will admit, and there are pieces of it I think are a bit offensive and inappropriate, but behind all that is on the surface, I think the author is just trying to give his readers something that this world doesn't really seem to have a lot of anymore: hope.
I mean, if you can live through even a few of the things this author has experienced, and still have hope, you really have something. It's inspiring, I think.
I guess that's probably why this particular line has stuck with me. Even with all of the bad we experience on a daily basis, with all of the things we see and hear and feel, there is some kind of hope. Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

Travelling in Time...

They pulled slowly into the parking lot, rolling over the cracked asphalt. Some of the pot holes had been large enough to swallow a small animal. Her father cursed, something he had been doing more frequently in the recent weeks, and her sisters stifled laughter in the seats behind her. When her father opened the door to pay the parking fare, Lauren could hear the whipping of the wind through the barren trees. A chill ran up her spine. As her father approached the ticket dispenser a few paces away, Lauren looked behind her and whispered harshly to her sisters that they ought to behave if they wanted to stay out of trouble. They rolled their glitter shadowed eyes at her and continued to pass their little plastic tubes of lip gloss back and forth and squeal in delight about how shiny they were.

A few minutes later, the four of them were making their way to the hospital door, heads down in order to escape the wrath of the night's brutal wind. It was only about 6:30, but it was dark. The entrance way reeked of sanitizing solution and burnt cookies. There were people milling about everywhere looking lost as though they had been thrust into this scene against their will, which most of them probably had been. Lauren and her family were not lost though. They knew their way by heart now. They made it up the stairs and stood impatiently in front of the delayed elevator. Her father tapped his foot quickly, nervously. He was angry about something again. The elevator doors opened and a flood of all sorts of people rushed out. They all had one thing in common.There were expressions of deep worry etched into each of their faces. Lauren stepped onto the elevator behind her two sisters who were vying for the envied spot at the front of the elevator, the spot of the person who got to push the buttons. Their father followed, admonishing the two girls for their behaviour which he found to be embarrassing considering the public building they were standing in.

The elevator ride seemed longer than normal. The silence was almost unendurable. Lauren could hear the squeak of the gears pulling the machine up to its destination on one of the higher floors of the building. They were the only four people in the elevator, and from how they stood so far apart all staring intently at the ground, you would never know they were related.

 Lauren did not want to see her this way. She was not herself. She was not the person she knew and loved. She hadn't been herself at all any of the days they had gone to visit her. Her eyes were empty, as were her words. Lauren closed her eyes and felt the ground moving under her feet. She was waiting for it all to be over.

...

When she opened her eyes, Lauren was no longer nine years old, nor was she in the elevator at the hospital. Instead, she was surrounded by a bunch of rowdy grade eight students packed into an elevator taking them all to the top of the CN Tower. There were people laughing and shouting, but it all sounded like and undefined roar in the back of Lauren's mind. Her hands were shaking and her mind was racing and she grew more and more anxious as the elevator climbed nearer to the top.

When they had first stopped in front of the enormous structure, Lauren had made the mistake of looking up. At that moment she felt that the whole towering structure was going to topple down on top of her. She knew it was irrational, as was her fear of heights, but that had never been enough to convince her not to be afraid.

The elevator stopped suddenly and Lauren was pushed outside by a crowd of kids impatient to see the ground from a height so great. Another girl grabbed on to her trembling arm and pulled her over to the window where she could see all of Toronto down below. It was almost too much to look at, so she closed her eyes for a moment then blindly followed the rest of the group down a small set of stairs to another observatory.

After spending almost an hour suspended over one of the biggest cities in the country, the classes made their way back to the elevators before they made the last stop on the itinerary. When the doors to the elevator had closed, Lauren was packed in with all the other kids. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, relieved. It was finally over.

...

Upon opening her eyes, Lauren found that she was no longer in the elevator of the CN Tower, but in a hotel elevator in Ohio. Even the enclosed space reeked of that hotel smell that you can't help but wrinkle your nose at. Stranger than the hotel scent even, was the fact that Lauren was standing there with the rest of her family all of whom were dressed in bathing suits. She had wrapped herself in a towel, but somehow she was still shivering. There were a few other people in the elevator too, and they also appeared as though they were headed for the pool, wherever that was.

When the elevator reached the lobby, everyone made their way out and spread like roots in a multitude of directions. There were people lounging in chairs all over the lobby, people in business suits, people with their families, people in uniform, but no one else was wearing a bathing suit. Awkward would have been a fitting description of the scene.

Reluctantly, Lauren followed her parents into a pool room which smelled quite strongly of chlorine and moldy towels. There were at least 50 other people there, sliding down waterslides, splashing one another, laughing at the odd contraption with the metal monkeys who dumped coconuts full of water on your head. Everyone was having a great time. The only exception was Lauren's family. Her mother and sisters were discussing how much time they had and what they wanted to do before they left and her father stood sternly by a plastic table scrolling through e-mails on his Blackberry. Lauren was standing there still shivering despite the heated atmosphere of the pool room.

Contemplating what she was going to do for only a moment before speaking, Lauren excused herself to go back up to the room and change. She said she didn't feel like going in the water. No, not even for a few minutes. Once she was given the key, she made her way back to the elevator, wrapped tightly in her towel in order to prevent any more embarrassment. Thankfully, the elevator was empty this time. The ride seemed somehow longer though. Biting her tongue so as not to let any emotion show, Lauren made her way back to the room, changed and grabbed a book to read. She paused for a few moments before closing the door behind her.

In the elevator she closed her eyes and waited for the ride to be done. When she opened them again, she was back in the present.

Censorship

Should books containing questionable or controversial topics be banned in schools or censored? There are definitely people who hold a variety of opinions about the answer to this question, and all have their reasons, I'm sure. I think that as students, part of the learning process is learning to form our own opinions and take our own stands for what we think is right, even if it goes against the public opinion. Our opinions are our opinions and we have our own reasons for having them, reasons which, to us are completely vaild. If we are encouraged then, to have our own opinions, isn't censorship or book banning a direct conradiction to that? The authors write the things they write in their books for a reason, and they have the right to their own opinions. They are in no way forcing you to believe what they are writing because, really, that is not physically possible. They can try to pursuade you to believe a certain thing and colour their writing to suit that belief, but in the end, what you take from the novel is your choice.
There are a lot of things in Slaughterhouse Five which are potentially insulting to readers, some of which are more obviously insulting, but others which may be insulting only to specific people for specific reasons all their own. Isn't it like that with all other books though? There are things each person finds insulting for his/her own reasons, and they may be bizarre to one person, to that one person they are insulting. Does that mean we should censor everything that anyone and everyone finds insulting? I don't think that would be a good idea because that wouldn't leave much out there for us to read.
The other books we have read this year also contain content some people would find insulting. much of it, in a way, may be considered propaganda for the "enemy." Yes, it gives people ideas, but it is not forcing people to act on anything or believe in anything because it cannot physically change what you believe. I think the controversy scares people and in order to defend themselves from the fear, they try to abolish that which inspires their fear, not even stopping to think that that is not necessarily a solution.
Slaughterhouse Five may very well be a controversial text which inspires fear and questioning from various sources, but it should not be banned because, just like every other piece of writing I have ever read, it contains someone's opinions (even when you don't necessarily notice them), and those opinions, just as every other opinion, should be respected and heard, even if they do not meet agreement in the end.

Certainty

I was rereading this passage for class today (in my book it's on page 115), the one that talks about the end of the universe. I was thinking about Billy's question that if the Tralfamadorians knew what was going to happen, why wouldn't they do something to stop it? And then  I read the response he was given, that it always had happened that way, always would happen that way, that they always had let it happen that way, and they always would let it happen that way. " The moment is structured that way." (115)
I think I just really liked the idea that they were so certain that that was what was going to happen and that it was supposed to happen, so why would they change it? It kind of made me think of the way I worry about so many things that are happening in my life and it takes up so much of my time, but what is the point to all of that? There is no point in my trying to change something that hasn't yet happened because, unlike the Tralfamadorians, I don't know what is going to happen. I guess the passage just really struck me. I don't know.

Laughter and Tears

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
When I read this quote, I immediately thought of Billy Pilgrim. I think this just sums up the effect the war has had on Billy. He live in a kind of dazed state where nothing really makes any sense, and he doesn't know what to do with the senselessness, so he cries. He's such a pitiful character too, that when I read the passages about him bursting into tears for no apparent reason, I can't help but feel the same way.
 I think this quote also relates to Vonnegut in that it serves as a sort of explanation of why he uses the dark humour in his novels. Some of the things I have laughed at throughout this novel are not really funny, and I feel guilty about laughing at them because they are really just so tragic. Vonnegut though, who is a war veteran himself expresses this tragedy in a way that can be, if you share his dark sense of humour, funny. I think this is the author's way of being able to express what has happened to him in the war. He said that he could either laugh or cry, but he preferred to laugh, and that is what is demonstrated on the pages of this novel.
There is a direct contrast then, between Vonnegut and his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. Billy, when frustrated or exhausted, or even when he just doesn't know what else he should be doing, can burst into tears and just cry about his circumstances, while Vonnegut uses humour and laughter as his personal outlet for these emotions.
I find myself able to relate to this quote somewhat as I have used both of these outlets as a response to a numerous amount of situations. Like Vonnegut though, I prefer to laugh. I think it is probably easier to cry when faced with difficult emotions, but I have found that it is more freeing to be able to laugh, and there is less damage done to myself and people around me.

Billy Pilgrim: Is he Really Travelling in Time?

Defenses. We all have them. When in our lives we face things which may be unpleasant or disturbing, we call upon our defenses to guard us from possible harm. They offer us one of many ways we can escape reality which, in so many situations, seems to be working against us. I think that in the case of Billy Pilgrim, time travel is a defense mechanism for this character to escape the trauma he suffered in the war and could not leave behind in Europe once the war had finished. Billy's time travel and encounters with the mysterious creatures he calls the Tralfamadoirans is merely a figment of his imagination.
To absorb the horrifying things he witnessed in the war, I think Billy has created this alternate universe in which he can forget about the things still troubling him from the war and his difficulties in his post war life. The curious aliens, who, as he claims, abducted him and brought him to their planet offer Billy a new perspective on many of the things he struggles to comprehend. The aliens answer some of the questions Billy struggles to answer for himself, including one which is part of one of the most well known parts of the novel when Billy asks a simple, one-word question: "why?"The Tralfamadorians may only be real to Billy Pilgrim, but who is to say that that makes them any less real?
Billy's defenses may seem odd or irrational to us when we read through the novel, but they work for him. They give him a break from the everyday struggle of coping with many past traumatic events. Who are we to judge him for that? Some people, if they knew the different things we did to defend ourselves from our demons, would probably think we were just about as crazy as Billy is, but we're not. It's just our way of dealing with things. Many people, when I try to explain why I do certain things, think I am crazy. Why do I constantly insult myself? It's my defense. It may seem irrational or stupid to someone else, but it works for me.
I think that's the important thing about all of this. The defense works for Billy. It may not be real to any of us, as it is likely that none of us will ever time travel or visit the Tralfamadorians on their home planet, nor will they visit us, but they have visited Billy and he has visited them. I suppose in saying this I have just disqualified my first statement that Billy was not, in fact, travelling through time. So it goes. Billy is travelling through time because it is real to him. That is all that matters.

So it goes.

I feel like I should be writing something clever to introduce this blog, but at the moment it seems that my creativity is lost. So it goes.
Basically, the point of this blog is to discuss the novel Slaughterhouse Five for my English class. I can't promise anything clever or original, but I'll do my best to make sense.