Blog #2 on Vonnegut

Dear All,




Below are more questions for the final blog on Kurt Vonnegut. I'd like to have no more than two people per question. Therefore, please lay claim to your question by commenting on THIS blog. You should write something like "I, Jennifer Hughes, hereby claim question 14." Per usual, please answer the question with a clear, thoughtful response of 300-600 words. Strive for polished grammar, and be sure to cite the page numbers of the quotations you include.



1. At the beginning of chapter 8 (206-207), we are introduced to the character Howard W. Campbell (he is a made-up character!). Discuss why Vonnegut would create a character like this and dress him as he does.

2. What point about war is Vonnegut making when he says that in war “people are discouraged from being characters”? (208)

3. What is ironic about the moment when Edgar Derby stands up and gives a speech about American ideals? (209)

4. What do you think is the purpose of the quick summary of Kilgore Trout’s book about a money tree? (213)

5. What do you think the purpose of the quick summary of The Gutless Wonder is? (213-214)?

6. Kilgore Trout and Maggie White have a conversation about whether stuff in novels ever “really happened.” How does this conversation suggest to readers how we should understand our experience of the novel Slaughterhouse Five?

7. On page 226, Billy has his first memory, rather than flashback, about his experience in the war. What is it that he remembers, and why does he remember it like this? How does it relate to the barbershop quartet?

8. When Montana Wildhack asks Billy to tell her a story, why does he launch into a war story, do you think? Why do we not get her reaction to the story? (228)

9. Why do you think that Vonnegut describes Valencia’s car after the accident the way he does?

10. Is it important that we see “the Truman thing” from 23-year-old, 103-IQ-leveled Lily’s eyes? (Hint: yes) Why? (238)

11. Having gotten this far in the book, do you have any ideas why Billy has a flashback to the time he was in a waiting room with a gassy old man?

12. Is it in line with Billy’s character that he would insert himself into his hospital mate’s conversation, as he does, on page 245? What is significant about his assertion “I was there” (also on 247)?

13. From what Vonnegut describes as Billy’s happiest moment – a nap in the sun after the war – Billy wakes up to a couple speaking to horses. What do you interpret as the significance of this moment to the rest of the novel (250-251)?

14. Discuss the inclusion of the stanza of “Away in a Manger” in this chapter and as the epigraph of the novel. What does it say about the value of crying?

15. Compare the views of Dresden held between Rumfoord and Billy after Rumfoord begins to listen to Billy (253-254).

16. What does the scientific investigation of Jesus’s death in the Kilgore Trout novel have to do with the rest of the novel (259-260)?

17. Billy gets onto a radio program in which literary crtics are discussing “whether the novel was dead or not” (263). So it goes! Do you think that Vonnegut believes that novels are useful anymore, based on the conversation he includes?

18. Vonnegut doesn’t really linger on the idea that he doesn’t like Billy Pilgrim’s Tralfamadorian worldview. He says on 269, “I am not overjoyed.” Why is he not overjoyed?