Chapter 10-Novel Structure

As I read the last chapter, I found it interesting that Vonnegut brought himself back into the novel by saying that he was at the inn keeper's stable that the American prisoners of war stayed at after the bombing of Dresden. Throughout the whole book the way the book was set up was all jumbed up. Unlike a traditional novel the book did not follow a specific timeline or order of events. Instead, the novel just jumped back and forth from time periods through Billy's time travel. I think that Vonnegut does this in an attempt to match a major theme of the novel. This theme would be that there is no logic in war. If Vonnegut had not jumbled up the entire book, the normal structure would not match war's absudrity.

Chapter 10-Motif

When Billy Pilgrim begins to work in a corpse mine Vonnegut tells us that "There were hundreds of corpse mines operating by and by. They didn't smell bad at first, were wax museums. But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like mustard gas and roses." Vonnegut used the motif of "mustard gas and roses" once alreaady earlier in the novel when his describing what his breath is like when he has been drinking. By using this motif in both the first and the last chapter of the novel, Vonnegut creates an otherwise unseen connection between Billy Pilgrim and himself.

Chapter 9-Rumfoord the older cousin?

When Billy Pilgrim is in the hospital in Vermont after the plane crash and his roommate, Rumfoord, is reading articles about the destruction of Dresden he acts kind of like an older cousin. When Rumfoord is reading these articles Billy chimes in and simply says "I was there." Rumfoord does not believe him and says he has echolalia, a disease where the mentally unstable repeat what those around them say. This is like an older cousin because when you are young you always want to hang out with the big kids and do what the big kids do. When you do get to hang with the older kids and you find something you have done that your older cousin cannot you always tell them because it makes you feel cool to do something that kids older than you cannot do. Your cousins usually woud simply say "Yeah whatever!" or "Ok let see it!". This reminds me of Rumfoord because he did not believe Billy was in Dresden and he just tried to ignore him until he found out he really was there.

Chapter 9-Imagery

When Billy's wife Valencia learned that Billy had been in a plane crash she was hysterical and caused a wreck of her own by slamming on her brakes of the interstate. The Mercedes that slammed into the back of her Cadillac El Dorado Coupe de Ville incurred little damage except for a shattered headlight, however, Valencia's Cadillac was destroyed. Vonnegut says "The rear end of the Cadillac were a body-and-fender man's wet dream. The trunk and fenders were collapsed. The gaping trunk looked like the mouth of a village idiot explaining that he did not know anything about anything. The fenders shrugged. The bumper was at a high port arms. The back window was veined with cracks. The exhaust system rested on the pavement." Vonnegut's use of imagery in describing Valencia's car creates a vivid image of what the back of Valencia's destroyed car looked like. Without the use of this viid imagery I probably would have thought that the cars were just in a fender-bender but the Cadillac was actually probably totaled.

Chapter 8-Dresden or Hiroshima?

When Vonnegut described Dresden after it was bombed I was reminded of the bombing of Hiroshima and the book Hiroshima. Vonnegut says that "The sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals . . . Everybody ele in the neighborhood was dead." When Hiroshima was bombed with the atom bomb almost everything was destroyed. Buildings were crushed, trees and grass were burned, and 66,000 people tragically lost their lives. Vonnegut's description of Dresden after it was bombed sounds very similar to this because of the amount of destruction that occured and by the large number of lives lost. This makes me wonder why the United States would take the lives of these two cities within months of eachother. In his description, Vonnegut makes the two bombings sound very similar relative to the destruction they caused.

Chapter 8-Metaphor

When Howard W. Campbell Jr. comes to recruit American prisoners of war for "The Free American Corps" the idea of going to fight as a Nazi against the Russians does not appeal to any of the Americans. Campbell even offers the Americans who do join "The Free American Corps" a steak dinner but this still does not change the minds of any of the starving and sick Americans. In response to this the high school teacher Edgar Derby stands up and Vonnegut describes his stance by saying "His stance was that of a punch-drunk fighter." Derby refutes the idea of "The Free American Corps" by saying that this is not what the American government preaches. The American governement says that everyone deserves freedom and fair play and that the Americans will crush Nazism. The metaphor that Vonnegut uses by describing Edgar Derby's stance as that of a punch drunk fighter reveals to us how sick the Americans really are. A punch-drunk fighter can hardly stand up and if they are able to stand up they would be very unstable. If this is how Derby stands the Americans must be so hungry and sick that the can hardly stand meaning that they are in pretty terrible condition.

Chapter 7-Dreams

For some reason when I read chapter 7 the movie The Wizard of Oz came to mind. After Billy had brain surgery for three hours he dreamed for two days straight. This reminds me of when Dorothy dreams during The Wizard of Oz and her dream becomes the whole movie. To me, this seems to be what is happening in the book at this point. As we read it is not totally clear what the present time, we must just read every time period like it is it's own story and put together a mental timeline of what has happened throughout the course of Billy's life. This chapter also leads me to believe that Billy is not actually traveling through time, but instead he is just dreaming and reliving the moments of his past.