Drew Bowers - Question 1

I believe the question who loves most truly throughout the play is Roxane. Although in the beginning she seems to only go off the good looks of the men who are trying to woo her, at the end she says she truly loves Christian for who he is on the inside.

Roxane's sexuality is probably one reason why appearance is a main impact on her view of others. She is the main object of the men's sexual 'desires,' and those feelings can be reflected back on Roxane, making her only interested in their outward looks. She also has quite an outgoing personality; she knows what she wants in life and in men, so she is picky and does not want to just settle down with one person. However, she does have her flaws. She admits that at first she was very shallow about her feelings towards the men and admits that it was wrong. She is also blind that Cyrano is trying to win her over, not Christian.

Besides her initial interest being the good looks of the men interested in her, she eventually admits that she loves Christian for who he is inside. However, this is an main turning point in the play. This is where two opinions can be made of Roxane. Although it is hard to just believe that what she says is true and how she really feels, she says she is in love with Cyrano, who is deformed. This shows, however, that her power of love is true and she has more pure love than other characters since she loves someone who is not attractive. Her kindness never changes throughout the play, showing her sincere power of love over attraction.

Drew Bowers - Question 1

At this point in the book, it appears to me that the story is begging to become a little dry. I think that the introduction of Campbell is a very minute, but an essential, part of the story. In my interpretation, Vonnegut introduces Campbell, and his wild and crazy plan, into the story because the characters need something to boost their morale at this point. They almost need something to make them laugh and at least let themselves know that they aren't the craziest ones in there as Mr. Campbell appears to be. Mr. Campbell introduces his “Free American Corps” plan, “You’re going to have to fight the communists sooner or later,” said Campbell, “Why not get it over with now?”. Withered and tiring away from working in the syrup factory all day, Billy Pillgram was not to into Campbell's proposition. Campbell was dressed head to toe in the most ridiculous fashion, as described in the book. I think that Vonnegut dresses Campbell so elaborately because the whole character of Campbell is so elaborate essentially. Campbell is an American who had become a Nazi, which that in itself is kinda crazy. Campbell’s whole entire plan is nuts, so it only fits that he looks the part too. He was also wanting to make it known that he was a converted Nazi by making sure that he was covered in swastikas. I think that all in all, Vonnegut put Campbell in the story to produce some kind of morale. However, in the end, this goal to produce some kind of morale is achieved when Derby decides to stand up and call Campbell out. He decided that Campbell was a “snake” but he later corrected himself because a snake was apparently to high of an honor for Campbell. As it was said by Vonnegut, “Poor old Derby, the doomed high school teacher, lumbered to his feet for what was probably the finest moment in his life.”

Emma and Miss Bates

In comparison from the reading out of the book and watching the movie clip on it I find that the clip was actually the most laughable. When I read the text I thought it was mildly humorous. However, actually watching the clip made me be able to visualize the emotion that was being expressed in the reading. The quote that matched my emotions closet is the quote by Immanuel Kant in 1790, "Laughter is the eruption of emotion that arises from a strained expectation suddenly reduced to nothing." The reason that this quote describes my feelings about this is when the quote talks about an "eruption of emotion that arises from a strained expectation." This portion of the quote best describes my feelings best because I was never really expecting to actually have a good laugh at the clip based on the text. My strained expectation was the fact that I told myself before I ever even saw the clip that I didn't think that it was going to be very humorous or funny. To my surprise the characters in the clip were actually very humorous and very funny in some parts of it. After I began to watch the clip, all of my "strained expectations" were actually "reduced to nothing". After watching a few minutes of it, I was actually expecting the clip to be funny in a way, I had more open eyes to the idea of it being funny. The clip also changed my view on what type of humor it really actually is. Instead of the clip being comically funny, like I had expected it to be, it had more of a dry humor element to it. In my opinion, dry humor is much more funny than a comical type of humor because with dry humor you aren't really expecting it to be that funny nor do you actually know what to expect, and that is what makes it laughter and not giggling.