Jaime, welcome to the discussion. I'm afraid we may have lost Margaret and Emily.
A few things before I begin my thoughts on 3-5.
Cat's Cradle precedes S5. I think Vonnegut seems to be a very self-referential author. Ilium I presume is the same Ilium as in Cat's Cradle, and the science fiction writer referenced in this section, Kilgore Trout, is also a character in V's Breakfast of Champions. I'm not quite sure how he's working these references, though, because I think it's too much to assume that the world can be destroyed by ice-nine and the universe can be destroyed by Tralfamadorians looking for better flying-saucer fuel options all in the same time-line. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just thinking outside of the fourth dimension again.
My thoughts on 3-5:
One of my favorite quotes from 3-5 is from when Billy is "trapped in another blob of amber" with the Tralfamadorians, one of whom is trying to convince him to just "take it moment by moment." Billy introduces the idea of free will in the discussion, to which the Tralf, responds, "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."
It's as if Vonnegut is (again) calling attention to utter human arrogance, this time by almost ridiculing that most sacred of existential beliefs; the ability for the individual to decide one's outcome. The notion of free-will does so much for the mind: it creates a sense of order in the world, removes a sense of powerlessness, provides man with a sense of purpose, individual identity...etc. It strikes me that these are all things that Billy lacks in his life experience. He is almost distractingly passive and is swept along in a current of randomness, both before, during and after the war. He's dropped by his father in the pool and freaked out by the grand canyon, he's boxed in a train and marched linearly from one place to another, and 'hears himself proposing marriage' to Valencia. There's nothing that seems to indicate a sense of control over his surroundings or himself.
Vonnegut addresses this powerlessness nicely in the parallel experiences of Billy in wartime and Billy in the Tralfamadorian zoo. Both experiences reduce him to an absolute biological organism (concerns of eating, excreting, and reproduction) with no hope of progress or development. To be swept along and to stagnate simultaneously is a great irony.
I think one reason why I'm into the free will elements of this section is because it does seem to be an idea that is developed more fully and interestingly in this work. I think the kernels of the idea are in Cat's Cradle with Bokonon and his round-about journey that finally lands him in San Lorenzo. However, with Billy, the idea develops much more richly; I'm eager to see where Vonnegut takes him (and us).
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Nope, I'm still here. I just had a full day of packing monday, airplanes tuesday, and now jetlag wednesday. So I haven't quite finished the section yet, but I'll finish it sometime today.
ReplyDeleteI'm still here, too, but am unsure if I'll be able to continue. I leave to farm in Wisconsin tomorrow, and will have limited internet access. We'll see....
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIs anyone still reading this...?
ReplyDeleteSo, I went ahead and finished the book and I liked it. I guess I only have a few comments.
Vonnegut really doesn't like his women, or at least he doesn't like giving them any real substance... or intelligence. They are very stereotypical.
Billy's passivity became really annoying after awhile, but I liked what it did for the story. It's interesting that the only time Billy really seems to assert himself, or be openly assured about anything, is when he is talking about his own death, and how he knows exactly when it will be.
I liked how the sequences of events were all “unstuck”, yet kind of maintained the same mini-storylines within each of Billy’s time jumps. Each one seemed to have its own mini climax, and all of them conveniently occurred pretty much within a single chapter.
I also liked how he randomly put the narrator in the story, but only briefly. Is it Vonnegut himself? He was present a lot at the beginning, then disappeared for awhile and focus exclusively on Billy, then came back in the latrine scene.
P.S. McElliott, if you haven’t already read chapter 6, just to warn you, there is a bit of animal cruelty in it :(
It's been a while since I completed the section, and I haven't read past that point yet, so there's a lot that I'm probably not remembering. I'll write about some of the things that stood out to me.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that the future is set in stone, as seen by the Tralfamadorians, seems to put a lot of strain on Vonnegut's universe, as McElliott said, assuming both books take place in the same one... Unless of course, the Tralfamadorians are a delusional rationalization which Billy adopts in order to explain his flashbacks to himself and give his life meaning, in which case, the lack of free-will reflects more a state of Billy's feeling of powerlessness than a universal actuality (even if free-will IS an illusion).
I'm still not sure which interpretation I like more, Tralfamadorians are real, or Tralfamadorians are delusion, but after Rosewater introduces Billy to Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut writes, "Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war... So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help." I think this statement and the small paragraph that follows it (page 101) provides ample evidence for the delusion hypothesis.
Also, I think Billy's last name is supposed to be significant since Valencia calls him Christopher Columbus during their sexual roleplay. Perhaps he's supposed to be seen as a sort of interdimensional explorer? One of the first humans to experience the new world?
I also thought it was interesting that the narrator made a cameo in the latrines. Apparently, he had shat his brains out. What does that tell us about the reliability of our narrator?
The motor yacht that Billy and Valencia passed on their honeymoon was called the Scheherezade. If I'm not mistaken this was the same rig that Bokonon traveled on during his initial journey to San Lorenzo. If I'm also not mistaken Scheherezade was the female storyteller in the 1001 nights. I'm really curious as to why Vonnegut includes allusions such as these.
That's all I have time for right now. I'll try to write something again in a week. I hope others join the discussion, because I was really surprised to find that we had not moved on, very few people had written anything, and that I was not behind...