Candide

So far we have read two chapters of Candide, and after what we did in class I realized how this that I am reading contains many pieces of satire. For example it totally contains abusurdity in the way that the author expressed Candide’s tutor; Pangloss, that this world is perfect. And not only that the world is perfect but that everything that happens is for a specific reason. That nothing is there just because is there, all things in life have a purpose and meaning to it. Pangloss said to Candide: “He proved incontestably that there is no effect without a cause, and that it is best for all possible worlds,” (Candide pg.20). There are many people on earth that think this way that everything happens for a reason even I share this thought too.

Now the absurd part is how in chapter two Candide is banned from love and this is in a way totally bizarre because we are supposed to create the life that we want and make all the decisions that we want. We should not be restricted form what we feel and from what we think is the right thing to do. Also the part that states how the king decided to stop and help him because of compassion and that is the reason why he is saved. I mean really this may match with Pangloss ideology but is things are so extreme there should be a more sophisticated help.

Letter to Robert Frost

Dear Mr. Frost

As I read through your poem: The Road Not Taken, I realized how you clearly state how there is a big decision to take. This is to choose one of the paths in the woods. During life one encounters many decisions to make some may be harder than others but they are both going to affect the rest of our lives. We must take some time to think on how we are going to make these decisions but most importantly one has to think of the future and be sure that what we are choosing is the right one. One of the factors that will have a great influence in our final choice is freewill.

As you know I have written a lot about freewill. And realizing if we really actually have it or are
we being manipulated and controlled by others. During the process of taking a decision we have everyone around us telling us what to do and giving us suggestions and support. At the end we can see that the decisions are up to us. I really enjoyed your poem and it does relate to my thoughts and opinions.

Regards,

Epictetus

The 5 Steps To Become The Best At School

1. Bribe the teacher on the first day of school.
2. Complement and offer help to teachers.
3. Help others in front of teachers.
4. Copy the intelligent person’s work.
5. Get drunk and go to parties every night.

Epictetus 10-20

“What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about things.”(Epictetus Section 5) As I kept reading through Epictetus I encountered this quote and it really caught my attention. At first when I read it I thought it was not true but then as I reflected more about it I realized that it is true. Well at least that is the way that my mentality works. For example it does not upset me that it rains. In fact I like the rain. I think that it is nice and can help create a cozy environment. But what does bother me is me and other people judging it by saying that due to the rain we cannot play outside, or that the BBQ cannot be made due to the rain. Those are the judgments that make me be upset about the fact that it is raining.

This happens in a lot of cases, it may come to vary depending on the mood that you have. Also on the person that may tell you something. Another very similar example of this occurred in passage 20: “what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them...” This is basically the same idea written in other words saying how what is insulting is not the person that preformed the actions, but the judgments on the way the person preformed the actions on you.

In my personal experience this is very true. As far as I have read of Epictetus I can see how this is a very good manual and a great guide to your life and to your understanding of actions and thought of others.

The Desires Epictetus 1-10

As I began reading Epictetus I realized how this could be the guide for my daily life. It states many different points and very clearly and briefly describes them. At first he talks about how we cannot control our lives completely, and then it begins to talk about the desire: “Remember, what a desire proposes is that you gain what you desire,” (Epictetus Section 2). This is very clear at first sight but I had never thought if desire in such way and now I realize that we can manage to try to do whatever we like. And that all that we accomplish is what we desired and so hard worked for.
Desire: “To wish or long for; want, To express a wish for; request.” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/desire). In the paragraph above I stated how everything that you have is desires. Because it is what you have worked for, what you deserve in return. But if you don’t get what you desire and have really worked hard for you will be considered and unlucky person. “Someone who fails to obtain what he desires is unfortunate, while someone who falls into what he is averse to has met misfortune” (Epictetus Section 2). And this means that if you fall into the opposite of your happiness you will be tricked and haunted into misfortune, or bad things.
If you are to be cursed then you will have to face misfortune. There is nothing that you can so to avoid it. “what an aversion proposes is that you not fall into what you are adverse to” (Epictetus Section 2). So either you will get your desires and be happy or you are going to have to fall into your adverse or in other words your misfortune and will have to learn to live with it because there will not be any turn backs.

Thesis

 How Vonnegut uses animal totems in Slaughterhouse five to relate to the other characters in the book.

Points of close reading:

-                 Horses

-                 Dogs

-                Birds

-                 Owl

-                 Miliapes

Narrator and “Poo-tee-weet?”

When I was reading the end of the book I encountered 2 things that really interested me. The first one was that finally here I can see that the narrator of the story was Vonnegut, and that Billy Pilgrim and Kurt Vonnegut is not the same person!! Here is the proof: “Now Billy and the rest were being marched into the ruins by their guards. I was there. O'Hare was there.”(Chapter 10) This means that Vonnegut was part of the story, that he was always there and that he saw and was present in most of the events that occurred during the novel. What Vonnegut did was tell the story of one of the soldiers that attended. And at the beginning of the book in chapter 1 he says that he has changed all the names, so Billy Pilgrim could be his friend or just some person he encountered during the war.

And then the second interesting thing that I found was the ending of the book which was: “Poo-tee-weet?” (Chapter 10) First of all it is important to state that the bird said this. Then also we have to have cleared that in pg 19 Vonnegut says: “There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre …. Everything is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.” This also means that when the massacre ended and that when the birds said this they meant to say something like; no what’s next? Or what are we supposed to do now? The birds are known to be the symbol of happiness and joy, so after this happened they were not really affected adding the fact that whom dies were the humans not the birds. So this is like a what happened is in the past, we are now in the present and what will be our plan for the future?

Aliens

Billy Pilgrim had a life full of adventures. He had a lot of time traveling and was able to in some words re-live his life moments. But throughout all the time travels Billy Pilgrim does not feel fully complete and accepted in each of the moments. In a way he feels lost like for example when he sees his son in the toilet with a guitar in his hands. This made me realize that maybe Billy pilgrim as not been there for his family. He is just there, without being interested in the past, present nor future.

Through the Trafalmadorians teaching and wisdom, Billy has learned that bad things happen and that the most important thing is that he lives the good moments to the maximum. That he really takes advantage of them. Also he learns that the idea of being dead just happens for one moment in one place. And that he may be dead for that moment in that place, but that everywhere else where he had been before he is still alive and that he still has to live those moments.

The Trafalmadorians are really weird people; they are kind of aliens and can be easily be connected and related to the science fiction stories of Kilengore Trout. Since he mentions the aliens. And to some degree I can come to think that those stories that he is writing about can be the sories of Billy Pilgrim in some points of his life.

Time Traveling Or Dreams

By now in the book we know that Billy Pilgrim constantly has experienced a lot of time travel. He is always time traveling without any control over it. But my question is: Is there a difference from dreams Billy pilgrim may have to the real time travel? “Billy was unconscious for two days after that, and he dreamed millions of things, some of them true. The true things were time-travel.” (Vonnegut). Here we can see that after all Billy does encounter both. Not all of his swatches in time are time travels controlled by the Trafalmadorians but sometimes it may also be his own dreams.

There is a part in chapter 7 when we know that Billy Pilgrim knew that the plane was going to crash and even though he did nothing about it nor even mention it. He did this because he did not want to seem like a coward in front of the others. He said: “but he didn't want to make a fool of himself by saying so.”(Chapter 7). I think that maybe the reason of why he may have done this is because he knows about the Tralfamadorians and that they live I the fourth dimension and all of that including: “Tralfamadorians, of course, say that every creature and plant in the Universe is a machine.”(Chapter 7). And hence if they are like a machine then why even try to save yourself if you are a controlled robot? So basically Billy had a feeling that they were going to crash but he know that there was nothing that he could do to help it.

Vengeance

Vengeance is a very common word in our daily vocabulary and actions, isn’t it? We will almost always try to make revenge to those whom harm us, or who harm the people that surrounds us and that we deeply love. Well in the book Slaughterhouse Five, in chapter 6 specifically we can see how one of the main themes is vengeance. In here vengeance is mostly first taken by Paul Lazzaro, whom was a very loyal and close friend to Roland Weary. And when Weary was killed by Billy Pilgrim, Paul Lazzaro promised Roland Weary that he was going to kill the man who had provoked his death. This is vengeance given that he is making Billy pilgrim pay for what he did to Roland Weary with much violence and force. And it is not until the end of this chapter when we find out that Lazzaro did commit vengeance to Billy Pilgrim by killing him.

Also vengeance is seen in pg 138 where between Lazzaro and the Blue Fairy Godmother where they say’s: “The Blue Fairy Godmother knew something about killing. He gave Lazzaro a careful smile. ‘There is still time for me to kill you,’ he said, ‘if you really persuade me that it’s the sensible thing to do.’ ‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself?’ ‘Don’t think I have not tried,’ the Blue Fairy Godmother answered. “ Here Lazzaro is already angry cause the Blue Fairy Godmother has already harmed his arm and so any comment that he tries to do, Lazzaro will answer really bad in order to make vengeance and make him feel bad and regret what he did.

It is very normal for all humans to fell the pressure and to what to do vengeance. Most of the times the reason of why vengeance is used is in order to be on the same page with the other person, for them to be equal and have peace amongst each other.

The Narrators Doubt

After having the discussion in class on who was the real narrator of the book Slaughterhouse Five I came to the conclusion that there are three different narrators. First of all there is Billy in the present where he refers to himself as I and expresses his feelings and thoughts during each moment. “I like the way you are”, “’I’m not’ said Billy” (Vonnegut 121). Then second there is Billy but in the past: He hadn’t told anybody about all the time traveling he’d done”(Vonnegut 121).And then last there is the author of the book Vonnegut.

Vonnegut is in the book because at first he says: “I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone. I get drunk, and drive my wife away with a breath like mustard gas and roses. And then, speaking, gravely and elegantly into the telephone, I ask the telephone operators to connect me with this friends or that one, from whom I have not heard in years.” (Slaughterhouse-five, pg 4) And then more towards the middle and end of the book: “Billy answered. There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath—mustard gas and roses. It was a wrong number. Billy hung up.(slaughterhouse-five pg 73). This is the same description of Kurt Vonnegut which leads us to know that yes, Vonnegut is in the book, that he is Billy Pilgrim’s friend and that he is the one narrating the story in different forms narratives. Also it says: “This was I, that was me. That was the author of this book.”(Vonnegut 125) This is a proof that Vonnegut is in the book.

The only question that is still unanswered is why would Kurt Vonnegut write the story seeming to be told in three different narrarives?

Peacefull Eyes

I am here sitting at my desk, staring at the window, with my book slaughterhouse-five wide open and with a blank new word document in front of me. I have to write my blog and time keeps on passing and I have no idea to what I’m going to write about, then I start flipping the pages of my book and found a word that as soon as I saw it cached my eyes completely. This word was backwards, which means; the back side. I re-read that passage and found how Billy Pilgrim was watching a normal World War movie, where if he watched it forwardly in the right direction was a full of scenes of all the soldiers fighting and throwing missiles at each other and many hurt and dead soldiers on the ground. But instead Billy was watching the movie backwards there for he saw how instead of throwing the minerals from ones soldiers to the others they would take them away and put them away. “The minerals were then shipped to specialist in remote areas. It was their business to put them into ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody again.”(Vonnegut 75). We can see how this is related to the beginning when Vonnegut stated that he was going to write an anti-war book and this scene is totally anti-war since Billy is see how instead to seeing the bullet out of the gun and into the other soldiers body it would go from the soldiers dead body and into the gun, this way being very peace full.

The theme of peace and anti-war is also noticed when Billy Pilgrim says that: “Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.”(Vonnegut pg 75) He is trying to say how he would like everyone to start life over again and be good, have no harm and certainly banish war from the vocabulary and the human actions.

No Where To Be Accepted

After reading chapter 3 of Slaughterhouse-Five, I began thinking and realized that maybe Billy Pilgrim has lived a lot of moments, but he does not fit completely into any of them. I think that maybe the reason of why he is constantly closing his eyes and uncontrollably appearing in another moment, another year, and another place is because he wants to fit somewhere, he wants to feel accepted. He wants to have a comfortable moment.

“Every so often, for no apparent reason, Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping. Nobody had ever caught Billy doing it. Only the doctor knew. It was an extremely quiet thing Billy did, and not very moist.” (Ch 3, Page 61). As I mentioned before Billy does not really fit in any moment, and there for he is sad, and that is why he is weeping. He feels disorientated, no were to be accepted. He wants to find a place where he can stay for a long time and just feel received.

From Past, To Present, To Future

In this chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim has lost control of his life. He says that: “He hadn’t been missed, he said, because the Tralfamadorians had taken him through a time warp, so that he could be on Tralfamadore for years, and still be away from earth for only a microsecond.”(Slaughterhouse-five, chapter 2, pg 26) This reminds me of the movie Narnia because, when the kids went into the wardrobe and into Narnia they could spend many months and days there and still be represented as minutes in the real world. Also Billy Pilgrim describes the Tralfamadorians as: “They were two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber’s friends……extremely flexible, usually pointed at the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm.”(Slaughterhouse-five, chapter 2,pg 26)Also I can relate this to Narnia because the habitants of Narnia were also like weird looking figures, and deformed. In the movie Narnia the kids could go into Narnia and into their normal world whenever they wanted to in order to escape bad moments or to remember where they belong to. In the book, Billy Pilgrim can do something similar and escape the moments where he does not feel well and wants to remember his past.
Like when Billy was in the middle of the war and he suddenly moves to when he is old, or when he is young has to re-live those moments. Billy certainly has been in war for a lot of time and has experiences every aspect of it, and in a way all of his life is attached to war. And when he is in the middle of the war he just wants to escape it and find a past moment in his life depending on his feelings: "And then Billy swung into life again, going backwards until he was in pre-birth." Here we can see how the author is trying to link every part of Billy’s life with war.