Slaughterhouse V -1

1
Slaughterhouse V -1

• Why Write?

2
Outline

• General Introduction
• Starting Questions on Chapter 1
• Chapter I
• Frames
• Why Write the author in the text
• Views of Life So it goes

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Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - )

• The author in SH-V.
• Joined WWII, became a prisoner of war during the
  Battle of the Bulge (the last offensive on
  Germanys part) on December 14, 1944, and sent to
  Dresden.
• Studied anthropology in the University of
  Chicago, but his thesis was rejected.
• Became a writer since, published
  Slaughterhouse-Five in 1968 (the peak of anti-war
  movement), which made him successful and a guru
  figure in post-60s literary field.

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Slaughterhouse-Five--Background

• Dresden Bombing
• Dresden -- "Florence on the Elbe"
• February 13 14, 1945
• estimated deaths 130,000 to 250,000, almost all
  of them civilians.
• Part of a massive attack coded as Thunderclap,
  which targeted the German cities of Berlin,
  Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz.
• Irony Dresden is not a strategic point (no
  factories, no railways, bridges, etc, but a lot
  POWs) ? meaninglessness

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Slaughterhouse-Five--Plot

• Time Traveling --
• Four segments of Billy Pilgrims
• 1922 - his childhood,
• 1944 - his World War II years,
• 1968 - his postwar life as a family man and
  optometrist in New York,
• his capture by aliens who come from the planet
  Tralfamadore

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Starting Questions

• Why does the author discuss how he gets to
  write this novel?
• What views of the war, history and life does he
  introduces here?

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Chapter I the Frame of the Story

• the author in the novel
• Makes claim to reality p. 1
• Discusses
• his inability to write
• How the novel is prepared for
• Dresden in context

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Why write

• For writing
• Dresden, worse than Hiroshima, but not much
  publicity p. 10
• Obsessed (as telephoners, but his memory
  useless p. 13-14 ? repetitions as nonsense or
  false starts (or rhymes p. 7 of names p. 4 so
  it goes)
• Against writing
• anti-war being anti-glacier, or anti-death 3-4
• OHares wife books encouraging wars 15
• Lots wife looking back

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Preparation Exposing the Frames

• 1. the title decided, Childrens Crusade 15 and
  research
• arranging climax and plots p. 5
• to the publisher 19 nothing intelligent to say
  about a massacre

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Historical Perspectives

• Childrens Crusade --sold as slaves p.16
• The seige of Dresden in 1760
• History is not progressive
• Is it linear?

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Life as a Dark comedy

• Self-Belittling the authors life after the war
  //Yon Yonson 2-3, 7, 11 (//Billy Pilgrim)
• Lifes transience -- So it Goes
• as a reporter 9 -So it goes. ? News medias
  indifference
• (later) airplane crash, and the wifes car
  accident 25)?lice, champaign 84 73
• if the accident will. p. 2

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Life as Presented by Commercial Culture

• P. 18 Worlds Fair in NY Three Musketeers candy
  bar
• More next time

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Characters (mentioned so far)

• Views of people no difference? P. 8
• Bernard V. O'Hare
• Edgar Derby
• Roland Weary
• Paul Lazarro