Hidden Morals

As I continue to read, Billy Pilgrim’s life becomes more and more complicated. We learn other of his traumatic life stories and start to understand his madness. This passage was by far the most simple and original part of this novel yet. We follow Billy in his trip around the universe with the Tralfamadorians. As his trip goes on, we learn more about his experiences at war. The war stories then relate to the other part of the chapter, where Billy is in a veteran’s mental hospital. Will we ever come to understand Billy Pilgrim?

What I most liked about this section was the reference to book titles. “The book was Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, by Kilgore Trout. It was about people whose mental diseases couldn’t be treated because of the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension…” This brief referencing occurs about 4 times. The book titles all explain the current plot. It’s impressive that as it turns out, all these titles exist and used to be best sellers. The book titles all embroil the characters feelings, they explain to the reader the reasoning the characters have. The clarifying of different character’s reasoning is also a very important factor in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. In the movie, the classic comic book villain The Joker terrorizes Gotham City. It isn’t until the middle of the movie, that the audience understands why he is destroying the city. The Joker tells Batman he isn’t looking for money; he is just trying to prove a point. “I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.” The “hidden” explanations in book and films like these are great, they teach us the complicated morals behind a story. In Slaughter House Five, in the quote I mentioned, the author is clarifying that there is no cure for mental diseases. On the other hand in Batman, The Joker is trying to prove that deep down, everyone is as crazy as he is.

I infer that in the first chapter, we follow the Vonnegut trying to start the writing of this book. He discussed with a friend’s wife, that he would call his book “The Children’s Crusade”. Then at the end of today’s reading, a mysterious coronel that is part of the “medical team” in the prisoner camp says, “My God, my God-’ I said to myself, ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade”. This makes it seams as if Billy is a representation of the author, consequently, the title of the book. Therefore, I am very excited to learn the existence of the Kurt Vonnegut, in his novel.