Vonnegut's Essay: The Central Conflict

Billy Pilgrim is the person that the book is written around. We follow him, perhaps not in a straight order, from his youth joining the military to his abduction on the alien planet of Tralmalfadore, to his older age at his 1960s home in Illum. It is his experiences and journeys that we follow, and his actions we read about. However, Billy had a specific lack of character for a main one. He is not heroic, he has very little personality traits, let alone an immersive and complex character. Most of the story is written around his experiences that seem more like symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from his World War Two days, combined with hallucinations after a brain injury in a near-fatal plane

Throughout Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut uses Billy Pilgrim to mirror how people cope with trauma and disillusionment. Upon Billy’s return from war, he is diagnosed with PTSD, and eventually creates Tralfamadorians to help him make sense of his world. The aliens teach him to use the phrase, so it goes, whenever he hears of tragedies or death; however, over the course of the novel the maxim transitions from being an anecdote used to accept how the world works into a warning that presages how the world will end.

The main conflict of the story is between Harrison Bergeron and the government. Harrison disagrees with the government’s way of controlling and handicapping society, especially since he has been given several handicaps. Harrison does not believe one should be limited, however, he is

People react differently to tragedies: some mourn, some speak up, and some avoid the sorrow. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut suggests the danger and inhumanity of turning away from the discomfort by introducing Billy Pilgrim as someone who is badly affected by the aftermath of the Dresden bombing, and the Tralfamadorians as the aliens who provide an easy solution to Billy. It is simpler to avoid something as tragic as death, but Vonnegut stresses the importance of confronting it. Vonnegut, like many artists, expresses his ideas through his creations. The significance of art is not confined to helping and inspiring the general public; the process of creating art also becomes another form of coping mechanism for artists.

It is expected for arguments to arise when writing about controversial topics. Many times the meaning of a book is not as obvious as the author intended, which may lead to problems. Other times, books are challenged because they contain sexual or inappropriate material. When Kurt Vonnegut released Slaughterhouse-Five critics were quick to judge his peculiar way of writing. Although Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five was oftentimes misunderstood, interpreted as inappropriate, and judged for the peculiar point of view, critics seem to appreciate and accept one aspect of it: the structure of the book.

There have always been problems with society. It is seen in our everyday lives. There is a constant search for perfection in an inevitably imperfect world. In the story “2BR02B,” we see a future society, where everything is deemed perfect, when in reality, it is far from it. Kurt Vonnegut uses external conflict as well as internal conflict to express the underlying theme that society’s perception of perfection is not always perfect.

“Fate is a misconception, it's only a cover-up for the fact you don't have control over your own life.” –Anonymous. In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-five, an optometrist named Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time uncontrollably and constantly travels between his past, present, and future. Since Pilgrim is unable to control his time warps, he is forced to re-live agonizing moments such as watching his wartime friend Edgar Derby executed for stealing or going through the Dresden bombing repeatedly. However, he is also able to visit pleasant moments like speaking as president in front of the Lions club or his honeymoon with his wife, Valencia. Vonnegut’s use of repetition and vision of war, time and death are crucial to Pilgrim as he

    Cat's Cradle is, "Vonnegut's most highly praised novel. Filled with humor and unforgettable characters, this apocalyptic story tells of Earth's ultimate end, and presents a vision of the future that is both darkly fantastic and funny, as Vonnegut weaves a satirical commentary on modern man and his madness" (Barnes and Noble n.pag).  In Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut uses satire as a vehicle for threatened self-destruction when he designs the government of San Lorenzo.  In addition, the Bokonists practice of Boko-maru, and if the world is going to end in total self destruction and ruin, then people will die, no matter how good people are and what religion people believe.

Equality—“in every which way”—reigns supreme in the year 2081. Noise devices are placed in individuals’ ears to disturb “unfair” intelligent thought, “handicap bags” are placed on necks to equalize performance and to make them “no better than anybody else,” and masks are to be worn by those who are attractive. The United States Handicapper General, or H-G men, who has newly acquired power from “the 211th, 212th and 213th Amendments to the Constitution,” enforces this new state. And the H-G men have whisked away “a genius and an athlete” boy named Harrison Bergeron, the son of Hazel and George, whom are his parents and sit watching ballerinas perform on the television set in their living room. As the ballerinas take the stage, an announcement is made about the jail escape of Harrison, and he soon jumps onto the stage, declares himself and a ballerina Emperor and Empress, and they begin to dance. Each are eventually shot dead by a shotgun by Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, and George misses the tragedy as he had “gone out into the kitchen,” but he questions Hazel upon his return about her tears and her response of “I forget” is suitable enough for George.

     Those who write on the human condition are often philosophers who write with convoluted language that few can understand. Kurt Vonnegut, however, focuses on the same questions, and provides his own personal answers with as much depth as that of the must educated philosopher. He avoids stilted language typical of philosophers, using shorter sentences, less complex vocabulary, humorous tangents, and outrageous stories to get his point across. With this style, Vonnegut presents the age-old question "How do we as humans live in this world?" in a manner appealing and understandable to the less educated mass. When offering advice to writers on how to write, Vonnegut said, "Our audience requires us

The phrase “so it goes” is repeated 106 times in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. From “dead” champagne to the massacre at Dresden, every death in the book is seemingly equalized with the phrase “so it goes”. The continuation of this phrase ties in with the general theme on indifference in the story. If the Tralfamadorian view of time is correct, then everyone is continuously living every moment of their life and dying is not the end. However, if Vonnegut believed in this idea, then he wouldn’t have felt compelled to write about the firebombing of Dresden. It is clear that both Billy Pilgrim and Kurt Vonnegut are affected by the massacre they saw, but they have different ways of rationalizing it. Billy finds comfort in the Tralfamadorian view of life, whereas Vonnegut disagrees, and urges the reader to disagree too. The constant repetition of “so it goes” breaks the reader away from the Tralfamadorian point of view, and allows them to come to their own conclusion that although it would be nice to forget the bad parts of life, it is important to remember all of the past. Vonnegut helps the reader come to this conclusion by repeating the phrase after gruesome moments, and showing how meaningless life can be if the Tralfamadorian ideas are believed, as seen through Billy Pilgrim’s bland life..

This conversation really stood out to me while I was reading the chapter. Kurt Vonnegut was able to connect the dreadful history of our past with important current problems of our present. In this time period of this conversation, Billy is with his wife, Valencia Pilgrim, at their honeymoon. Throughout the book, Valencia is described as an extremely good-natured woman. However, she is slightly large in size and is extremely conscious of it. As you can see, despite the fact that the book was written in the mid-1900s, beauty standards have been imposed on women since the beginning of time.

Kurt Vonnegut’s personal experiences of World War II and the firebombing of Dresden were important factors in determining his writing style and the political and philosophical views that it conveyed. Throughout his works, the overarching message that Vonnegut delivers is the need for love and compassion in a world where humans are helpless against an indifferent fate.

In a tedtalk, Andrew Stanton said “We all love stories. We're born for them.” (Stanton 1:45) Which is true, our society’s culture is driven by storytelling. Stanton was the mind behind well known movies like Finding Nemo and WALL-E. He obviously had has time to perfect the art of storytelling. He came up with rules to create a good story. Some of the rules being make me care, 2 + 2, no happy village, villain, or love story. And those are just some of the rules used to create a good story.In Kurt Vonnegut's Miss Temptation, Vonnegut uses the rules make me care, 2 + 2, and makes a promise. Vonnegut also breaks the rule of no love story as there is potential for a love story in the end.

“Don’t become a slave to society” – Unknown. Kurt Vonnegut is a well know author of many short stories that uses this topic in many of his stories. Sometimes people wonder how today’s society is has come to be reality, people also wonder what our society will be like in the future. During the story, 2BRO2B Vonnegut uses internal conflict and characterization to express the theme of trying to make things better might not be beneficial in the end.