Hahahahahahahahahahahaaahaha...

Write a response to or commentary about one of the Vonnegut quotes from the handout provided. Explain how the quote reveals something about Vonnegut that can also be found in his writing. Make a connection between the quote and the novel or a personal connection to the topic or message in the quote that you've chosen.

Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. - KV

This statement applies to everyone in some point in their lives. I remember experiences in elementary school, when I shrugged things off as a joke on the exterior, whilst my insides were jumping with disquieting fright. Vonnegut's absolutely right.

This quote is also quite evident in Kurt's own novel. The humor Vonnegut employs in SH11 hides his deepest fears of the war. All the horrors that he witnessed, when narrated in the book, is shrugged off with a tone of dark humor. Kurt's comrades get perforated with bullets until they resemble swiss cheese; so it goes. He sees and smells the burning corpses of Dresden; so it goes. Kurt uses this bland, repetitive humor to cover up his fears.

I thought of a couple of more examples, but my eyes are bleary, and I don't want to make it all formal... I'd like you to meet a long-time friend of mine: point-form.

- When Billy, Weary, and two scouts are stranded in enemy territory, it's obviously a hopeless situation for them: weak, tired, dejected, the situation couldn't be any worse. Vonnegut uses Weary's delusional mind, however, to lighten the mood and entertain the reader. Remember Weary's 3 musketeer exploits running vividly inside his own head? How he wraps his arms around the shoulders of the two scouts saying, "So what shall the musketeer's do about this?"...and then the scouts ditch him and Billy. I found that quite humorous, but also realized that perhaps Kurt was trying to mask his pain and fear at that time with some comedic relief.

- Another is Billy's silly apparel that he wore while being a POW; I recall the shiny silver Cinderella boots the most. The tight small flamboyant vest that accentuated Billy's armpits were also hilarious. Again, the portrayal of such a silly character could have been part of Kurt's attempt to mask the gruesome realities and conditions of being a POW. It is true that Kurt was POW during the real war in his lifetime...

-Finally, the whole feces incident at the POW camp, when a person is heard saying, "I just about defecated everything except my brains. [Moments later]...there they go." There were a bunch of amusing comments that diminished the real fears and horrors of that scene, such as the illness of the American troops and the god-awful stench that must have filled the entire camp.

So from all these examples, I noticed that Vonnegut tries extremely and excessively hard to incorporate humor into Slaughterhouse 11. His quote "Humor is an almost physiological fear to fear" can attest to that. Maybe Kurt is using comedy as a means to deter himself, and the readers, from facing the absolutely fearful events that he witnessed in the war.

Again, sorry for a lack of organization and formality to my thoughts, but I suppose you'll be more lenient with grammar and typical structure since it's a blog.

That is all.

Fate’s Bogus

This video will blow your mind. But I still think fate is a bunch of ballyhoo. Now read my blog.

Is there an omnipotent force that determines every step of our lives? I don’t think so. I believe in the notion that what you want to achieve solely results from your own actions. If you want to become successful, then you have to work hard to earn it. There’s nothing that forces you to become a specific person; it’s your own life.

Life would be bland if it cohered with the idea of fate. If you knew your life from beginning to end, and if there was no purpose in changing anything, what would be the point of living? Ideally, life should be an exciting adventure, full of quirks and unexpected turns. But by accepting a predestined path for your life, you would be essentially limiting your potential to explore and do great things. Do you want to be someone like that? Someone who strives for nothing and mopes around all day, believing that the outcome of their life is already set in stone? Because people like that are definitely not the ones who have meaningful accomplishments in their lives. Fate turns you into an apathetic individual. Instead, realize that you can control your own life, and do something about it!

Interestingly, Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse Five suggests that the world does revolve around fate. Billy’s time traveling ability implies that his life is a like a story that has already been written: Billy can revisit the events in his life, but he can do nothing to change anything that happens. This reinforces the concept of an unalterable existence. Vonnegut also uses the Traufmadorian perspective to allude to fate. Traufmadorians see the world as a long stretch of events that are bound to happen. When Billy talks about free will, this is how a Traufmadorian responds:

“If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings, I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by free will. I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”

Evidently, free will seems like an absurd concept to Traufmadorians. Vonnegut uses Traufmadorian philosophy to explore the idea of fate.

Even though Vonnegut's book strongly suggests that life is a series of unchangeable events, I still find his evidence to be flawed. On what grounds am I to be persuaded, if Vonnegut uses a delusional Billy, who cracked his head in a plane crash, and a far-fetched extraterrestrial species, to convey his ideas of existentialism and fate? Both of Vonnegut’s means seem ridiculous. There is no credibility to his proof. Quite ironically, free will seems even more appealing to me now after Vonnegut’s bizarre and abstract connections to fate.

Vonnegut displays a strong appeal to fate in Slaughterhouse Five. The notion of there being a fate, however, still seems completely bogus to me after analyzing his absurd connections and comparing my argument to his. So is there really a superior power called fate, which controls our lives? I doubt it. Free will prevails.

Fate is just a fancy word people who fail at life use.

too edgy. new title.

Food for thought

Is it wrong to say that Billy is a "crackhead"? One can use it in a literal sense, because he did end up fracturing his skull from that horrendous plane crash, right?
...Nonetheless, I don't think I should use this in my writing assignment.