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Slaughterhouse V -3

Slaughterhouse V -3. Historical Representations vs. Science Fiction in a Postmodern World . What did we learn last time?. War (cruel & irrational; where myth and heroism are impossible) and the Postmodern World (experience mediated by popular culture)

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Slaughterhouse V -3

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  1. Slaughterhouse V -3 Historical Representations vs. Science Fiction in a Postmodern World

  2. What did we learn last time? • War (cruel & irrational; where myth and heroism are impossible) and the Postmodern World (experience mediated by popular culture) • Vonnegut’s, Billy Pilgrim’s and Roland Weary’s Responses to the War

  3. Starting Questions about Chaps 5-6 • Do you get involved in the story? Where? • What do you think about Tralfamadore and their views of time and the universe? • What roles do the minor characters play • Women such as Valencia and Montana Wildhack • Authors such as Howard W. Campbell Jr. and Kilgore Trout (introduced by Eliot Rosewater) • Representatives of war and revenge: Roland Weary and Paul Lazzaro • The meanings of “So it goes”?

  4. Outline • Plot & Time: From Spastic Fragments to Pattern • More on the War • Parodies of authorial figure— • Two Alternative Perspectives beside the Dark Comic one. Trauma  fragmentation ( reconstruction)

  5. Plot and Time • 1922 – Young Billy in Ilium • 1944 – Luxemburg forest/unstuck in timeEnglish compound [hospital] Dresden • 1945-47 – Studies Optometry [hospital] • 1957 --set up in business (optometry) • 1964 – V meet O’Hare • 1967 – Lion Club meeting; kidnapped by Tralfamadorians • 1967 – V go back to Dresden • 1968 – airplane crash • 1968 – V the novel SH-V • 1976 (future)– US balkanized, BP killed Tralfamadore

  6. Plot and Time (2): Pattern out of Fragments • I: Vonnegut -- preparing to write; fragments of his life; readings of wars and death. • II: BP – talks about his time traveling and experience with T; experience at the forest  moments of death; Weary’s heroism vs. reality of being captured. • III: BP – past: joins the stream of POW, in boxcar; present: Lion Club, his motto, his son as a green beret; Billy weeping. [lack of control] • IV: BP – past: boxcar journey, people dying prison camp; present: daughter’s wedding night, BP watches movies (false sense of control), waiting to be kidnapped; lack of“free will”

  7. Plot and Time (3) • V: BP in T zoo, reading their books, getting to know their views of sex and time; past: in the prison camp, Cinderella play revised; latrine episode; “hospital bed” of 1944 and 1947; present: Valencia marriage and honeymoon (lack of or beginning of connections[Derby & Rosewater]// everything is beautiful) • VI: past: two small lumps in his coat; future death Lazzaro on revenge; BP as Cinderella; the head Englishman’s lecture; trip to Dresden, Billy as crown; B vs. the surgeon. “clowning” [Fate vs. survival]

  8. War – Trauma vs. its Dark Comedy 1. Billy Pilgrim – repressed and then go crazy twice 2. The English Compound –”dead” center; ”wealthiest” p. 93-94; • Cinderella play (98) & the Blue Fairy Godmother (127) • The Head Englishman’s lecture 3. Dresden as an Open City - The 8 “ridiculous” Dresdoners --149

  9. Self-Reconstructions through Author Surrogates: Kilgore Trout • from Ilium 111 • —The Gospel from Outer Space: 108-109 —New Gospel: don’t kill people with no connections • Fourth Dimension 104 • More next time …

  10. Author”s” (2): Ridiculed: • Official Historian -- Rumford183-191; 198 – • Literary critics and the death of fiction: 205 Be-littled, but human • Vonnegut: “I was there.” 125; 148 • Eliot Rosewater 102 (like Derby)

  11. Two Alternative Views(1): Tralfamadorian –Time as SimultaneousMoments • Why me? 77 T’s novel 88 • The moment simply is. We are all bugs in amber. 27; 86 • five sexes on T, seven on earth 114 • human beings as millepedes 87; their view of our concept of time 115 • War & Peace; "We spend eternity looking at the peaceful moment" 116-17 • "Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurts" 122

  12. Tralfamadorian –their Sense of Superiority • in their zoo 111--his life in the zoo, think nothing of the Gay Nineties couple on the wall; happy with his body 113 • Montana Wildhack 132 •  Would you like to live in such a world? •  Do you agree with their world views? (Billy does. p. 190)

  13. Tralfamadorian Views—Possible Interpretations • Fatalist; • Denies progressive views of history; arbitrary causal connections. • Aesthetic: “an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep.” • Escapist & Non-Human: just look at the good moments; • Cosmic or Macrocosmic: we are just a bug frozen in amber.

  14. Two Alternative Views(2): Humanist • Dreams/fantasies of Adam and Eve, • Survival of the weak: giraffes (99) • Next time: 161 births • the innkeeper says in German, “Good night, Americans. Sleep well.” 181 • the horse 197, • the bird; syrup,

  15. So It Goes? • So it goes.” 27 candle and soap made from dead Jews 96; water 101; Billy's own death 143 • Death or no death – 90-91

  16. Repetitions – Obsession or Humanist Concern • 「模仿言語症」 (echolalia) Echolalia?192 • “I was there. Billy//Vonnegut. • Sleep like spoon • Edgar Derby p. 83; “poor old” • Ask about Wild Bob 188; 212 • Songs—Yon Yonson to Cotton workers p. 176  Patterns created but not fixed.

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