"Poo-tee-weet?" This bird seems to be the only one who knows what has happened throughout the war. The last lines of the novel show the unknown of war. Many people who live in a country at war do not even know what is happening in the war. They are oblivious to the death and destruction that surrounds them. When people try to explain what is going on, it sounds like gibberish. The people could understand the bird better than the war. Poo-tee-weet?
Throughout the whole novel, Vonnegut uses the phrase "so it goes." "He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot. So it goes." That is one of the many instances where "so it goes" is used. This phrase is a motif. A Motif is a recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout a work, unifying the current situation to previous ones, or new ideas to a theme. This phrase tends to come after the information that a death has occurred. Vonnegut uses this phrase to appeal to the Tralfamadorians' idea that people are still alive in the past, even when they are seemingly dead in one moment.
Billy Pilgrim and other Americans are looting abandoned houses in Dresden when they come across a wagon with two horses and a coffin in the back. They decide to take this and use is as transportation. When Billy Pilgrim is riding in the coffin, it makes me wonder about the connection between war and death. I believe this is a symbol that after war is over, a part of all who took part in it has died.
In Chapter Nine, Kurt Vonnegut talks about his epigraph for Slaughterhouse Five. An Epigraph is a quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme. The epigraph of Slaughterhouse Five is "The cattle are lowing, The Baby awakes. But the little Lord Jesus No crying He makes." Vonnegut chose this quote from the famous Christmas carol, Away in the Manger, because of Billy Pilgrim's quiet and private weeping. Vonnegut said Billy Pilgrim resembled this epigraph because he saw many things worth crying about, but he didn't.
The Dresden Firestorm takes place in this chapter. So many lives were taken, some guilty and some innocent. Kurt Vonnegut was among the few that survived the incident. When Billy Pilgrim arrives at the German inn owned by the blind man, he and the other Americans are given food and shelter. This shows that mass destruction can bring together any enemy.
In Chapter Eight, Billy Pilgrim is having an eighteenth wedding anniversary party at his house. He invited his favorite author, Kilgore Trout, and he was talking to a pretty young woman named Maggie White. Billy Pilgrim described her as "a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies." Kilgore Trout was telling her stories and she was so gullible that she believed them and was scared of some of the fictional details. Maggie White is a stock character. A Stock Character (a.k.a. Stereotype) is a fixed idea of a character that does not allow for any individuality, often based on religious, social, or racial prejudices. Maggie White is the equivalent of our society's "dumb blonde." She is a pretty girl who is not as smart as most people.
When Billy Pilgrim described his father-in-law as a machine, it made me think of the Terminator movies. Billy Pilgrim says that "Earthlings are offended by the idea of being machines." Just like in the movies, the people are scared of the Terminator so they try to hunt him down and kill him. The Tralfamadorians say that every creature is a machine. If you think about it, our bodies are organic machines that work in such a meticulous way so that we can live and function.
