Thoughts of Simon

We’ve been talking a lot about the use of fiction in Slaughterhouse five lately, and it has gotten me thinking. Why did Vonnegut decide to put the Tralfamadorians into his book? They don’t really seem necessary, and in some cases are just plain weird. How did he even come up with that kind of story? It sounds like something from  The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.  Anyways, it got me thinking about PTSD. See, we learn that Billy doesn’t want to talk or think about the bombing of Dresden because of how traumatized he was, and he is only able to do so when he is millions of light years away from home. Maybe Vonnegut is in a similar type of situation. I mean, we learn in the first chapter of how hard it was for him to write this book, and how he wasn’t able to do it for more than 20 years. There’s also this weird connection between Billy Pilgrim and Vonnegut, where it almost seems like Billy is a younger version of Vonnegut, reliving the trauma of Dresden. What if Vonnegut was...

I was going to write a post on the chapter 52s and about how their version of history compares to traditional Egyptian and Greek mythology as well as our understanding of history today, but while reading over that passage again I noticed something extremely odd. Just a few pages into the chapter, there is a diagram about the US bombing campaigns during WWII, the Korean War, and the Indochina War. There is seemingly no reason for it to be there, as there is no mention of the United States or any of those places, nor anything to do with bombs altogether in the surrounding passages. It just appears out of the middle of nowhere in the middle of LaBas’ story. The interesting thing is that all of its data seems to be correct. There’s nothing to suggest that it has any relation to what is happening in the story, so why is it there? Its exact placement is also very interesting, as it is placed between the introduction of Osiris and the introduction of Set, and their different values and ideas...

One of the really interesting things so far in Mumbo Jumbo is the Wallflower Order, and specifically its relation to the Knights Templar. Now, the Knights Templar (Not to be confused with the Teutons) was a monastic order established in the early 12 th  century. They were based on a mountain above what was believed to eb the ruins of the Temple of Solomon and were originally founded to protect Christians who were making pilgrimages through the Holy Land. They later became the force spearheading many of the crusades, and also developed an early form of banking. They became an organization which used early forms of checks and would retain the wealth of nobles while they were on crusades, and also took control of many cities and businesses, becoming a major part of European lifestyle at the time. By the 14 th  century they had become extremely wealthy and powerful, almost to the point where they could do anything they wanted to. Then suddenly they were disbanded by the Pope and ...

Throughout the book we’ve seen various moments where the little boy seems to be able to see the future or control the story. The first of such events being when he is thinking of Harry Houdini and then Houdini suddenly appears. But he also has moments where he “senses” something or can seemingly see into the future. The question is, why did Doctorow put this into the story? I know, its postmodernism so there doesn’t really have to be a reason for it to be there, but there’s still probably some meaning behind it. We’ve talked some in class about how Doctorow seems to like the children in the story more, or how the narrator seems more closely aligned with them. Maybe this is just another manifestation of that. Perhaps Doctorow likes the little boy more than the other characters, and because of that he gives him special powers or grants his imaginary wishes. It sounds kind of crazy but hear me out. If you look at the characters as having a mind of their own, which seems like a very postm...

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Why does Gunnar insist on passively waiting to die, like Psycho Loco says, why doesn’t he fight back? At this point, he could probably rally enough people to pose a serious threat to the US government, and so many white people also support him due to his fame. So why doesn’t he do anything with all this power? Why does he just spend his days hosting Misery Fest or relaxing? I think that there are probably a couple reasons for this, though it’s hard to tell. For starters, he’s just plain tired. He’s been at the center of everything for so long, people watching his every move. He’s spent years trying to entertain them and being seen as a celebrity, that probably gets exhausting after a while. His best friend also committed suicide and he now has a child to raise. It’s completely understandable that he wouldn’t want to deal with running a semi-revolution. I mean, he’s still constantly being followed, and people look to him as their leader, but at this point he’s made it so that he doesn’...