Slaughterhouse Five Seminar Pre Write and Reflection

Slaughterhouse Five Seminar Pre Write

Slaughterhouse five is a book based on the firebombing of Dresden. By telling this story they use a character by the name Billy Pilgrim as a partaker in the war and his experiences with it. The author, Kurt Vonnegut, introduces Billy as a confused, spacey type of person who maybe wasn’t even meant to be in the war, or in other terms, ‘war material.’ During the war, Billy doesn’t particularly have many friends, actually he has more enemies than friends. This is so , because he wasn’t somebody you could really depend on and in war you want somebody whose ‘got your back.’ He was told that after the war he better watch it because he could be killed by one of his inmates in prison of war. After the war, Billy went on living his life with his wife and kids. A tragic airplane crash changed his life. After the crash Billy claimed there was a planet of the name Tralfamadore. He also claimed that the flying saucers came form there to pick him up. This so called Tralfamadore’s saucers took Billy and put him in a zoo to be observed. With all of these stories, everybody concluded that he had gone insane.  As a conclusion, Billy entered the war already being in his own world and came out a little more lost but with the crash, he lost it.

I personally think that Vonnegut wrote this book with certain elements of science fiction because he wanted people to see the effect war could have on people. Experiencing all the aspects such as death, it could have such an impact on the way you think and go on living. Using this certain type of writing genre also just makes the story harder to keep up with and more confusing. Some people enjoy this.

These are the 5 most important page numbers to the most important passages in my opinion for this book:

1.     Page 23, paragraphs1,2,3, and 4.

I think this passage is important because it introduces us to the fact that Billy will be traveling in time throughout this book.

2.     Page 34, the whole page.

I think this page is important because it shows what kind of character we are dealing with and what he’s like.

3.     Pages 111, bottom of page 117.

This is a long passage describing what goes son at Tralfamadore and how they treat Billy.

4.     Page 136, paragraphs 1 and 2

I think this is important because it introduces some of the characters and I feel at this part that the war is staring to tone down.

5.     Page 214 and 215

These pages are the last pages to the book which is also saying that this is the end of the war. Billy and his companions were let out of prison to go on with their lives.

Slaughterhouse Five Seminar Reflection

During the entire Seminar, there were many comments made that made me think and wonder about many things. A lot of the comments that were made were portrayed towards certain characters. The main comment that made my brain rattle and question things in the world was when our conversation veered towards whether or not we believed in free will, whether I believe if things happen for a reason. This, I believe is opinion.

I cant really say that this Seminar made me change the way I think, it just made me think differently towards things. It made me think about how free will affects my life and whether or not I believe in it. I didn’t come to an actual conclusion, but a majority of the time for me, I believe things happen for a reason ad that if something is supposed to happen, it will happen with time. However, it did help me have a better understanding about the book.

One thing that I think I can relate to for this Seminar would be the move my family did this recent year to Saratoga Springs NY. Before this move I’m not positive that I truly believed in free will and whether things happened for a reason. After the move though, I questioned myself as to “Why would we have moved there, unless we were supposed to have all the great new experiences that we had and meet all the new, fabulous people that I will hopefully always keep in touch with and be with in spirit forever?” I cant come up with any reason other then it was supposed to happen and that is why it did.

I think that personally I was best at the outside connections category.  I remember referring to outside topics. As an example, I remember using the movie Troy to relate coming out of war. I used the warrior, Achilles, to show how the only reason he went to remember him. I would like to improve on referring to the text, I think that this is an important strategy to use. If you can refer to the text, you have proof and examples for everything which means it is easier to say what you are thinking and persuade people to think the way you are.