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Comparing Slaughterhouse Five 'And' Cat's Cradle

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The question of what makes or breaks a revolution is one that persists today. Several movements like the Occupy Wall Street has faded from the public’s eye in the previous years. What differs the Occupy Wall Street from a more successful revolution like the French revolution is the cause behind the revolution and what those revolting believe in. One of the indirect causes of the French revolution was the Agrarian Crisis of 1788-89.(Schwartz) Those that stormed Bastille and brought about the French revolution weren’t concerned with the liberty and freedom but instead they were concerned about survival. Marxist literary theory describes literary works as reflections of the social institutions and hierarchies they were written in. Cat’s Cradle …show more content…

On the other hand, Slaughterhouse Five uses the time jumps as a way of implying history repeating itself. The key focus of said time jumps center around the protagonist’s experiences in war as well as the bombing of Dresden. Vonnegut’s use of absurd beliefs and interactions between social classes demonstrates a societal system that not only exploits the lower classes but also aims to eradicate them. SO WHAT. To begin Vonnegut uses absurd beliefs that push the boundaries of believability in both Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle. The use of such beliefs is used to emphasize the negative aspects of holding onto an ideology. The term ideology means a way of thought or a strong belief one holds. Thus demonstrating the need for the dissolution of said beliefs not for the sake of free thought but for the sake of survival. A recurring ideology held in Slaughterhouse Five is one’s fate being static. A Tralfamadorian advises Billy to “take it moment by moment, and [he] will find that [they] are all, as [it had] said before, bugs in amber”(Vonnegut 86). The term bug implies a lack of power. In the grand scheme of things, a bug is …show more content…

Yet, the irony of the advice and the danger of this ideology is that what dooms the bug is not the amber but the bug’s resignation. The ceasing of the bug’s struggles will then allow gravity to pull it deeper and deeper into the amber. Just like how one’s present situation does not doom them, but it is when the person accepts that situation and resigns oneself to that situation does one experience their downfall. Therefore, in Slaughterhouse Five, the Tralfamadorians are doomed not by the fate itself but by their own resignation to that fate. The ideology of resignation or hopelessness appears in Cat’s Cradle after the ice-nine release. The leader of the fictional religion Bokononism advises his followers that “God was surely trying to kill them, possible because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die”(Vonnegut 104). The ideology of Bokononism appears to not only just have a malevolent god but also expects their followers to die to appease it. Not only is this faith sinister but the leader Bokonon is a hypocrite, Bokonon survived until the end of the novel in which he is found writing another chapter in his Book of Bokonon. Bokonon’s actions show how

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1055 Words | 5 Pages

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, is a postmodern, anti war novel, involving the main character, Billy Pilgrim, and his transportation through the different moments of his life. The timeline of this particular book ranges all the way from when Billy was a small boy and all the way to his death. Because of the book taking place in many different times of Billy’s life and in many places of it, Kurt Vonnegut both hides and reveals truth in it. Many examples of this can be found throughout the events of Billy’s adventures, most notably before and during the fire bombings of Dresden.

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436 Words | 2 Pages

Vonnegut use of existentialist detachment can be used to describe the tone of Slaughterhouse-Five. The novel is fragmented into miniscule sections. The majorities of these sections is rather thrilling and contain much action, thus the narrator does not give himself ample room to become emotional regarding the events he is concerning. Therefore, it is difficult to understand what type of emotional meaning the narrator is endeavoring to communicate. The narrator detaches himself from events, then, does not get emotional, consequently the novel is spoken in a straightforward means.

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889 Words | 4 Pages

For example, the analogy of “bugs in amber” helps describe how being stuck in the linear progress of time is like (86). Instead of being able to move freely, the bugs are analogous to humans who cannot move in the amber, which is analogous to time. Vonnegut also explains how Tralfamadorians are able to see “all time as [humans] see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains” (85-86). This analogy helps visualize how the Tralfamadorians process time, by relating it to how humans perceive matter and distance. By simplifying an abstract concept through analogy and

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930 Words | 4 Pages

Through the use of characterization, an immense amount of novels are able to satirize and symbolize different types of people. In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, this technique is applied in many instances within the novel. The main character Billy Pilgrim symbolizes the common man, and everything about him, including his name, contributes to this representation. In this deftly written novel, the author deliberately chooses the minor characters as the embodiments of different archetypes. Valencia portrays the average housewife and the general unhappiness of married couples.

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673 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut intertwines reality and fiction to provide the reader with an anti-war book in a more abstract form. To achieve this abstraction, Kurt Vonnegut utilizes descriptive images, character archetypes, and various themes within the novel. By doing so, he created a unique form of literature that causes the reader to separate reality from falsehood in both their world, and in the world within Vonnegut’s mind. Vonnegut focuses a lot on the characters and their actions in “Slaughterhouse Five.”

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742 Words | 3 Pages

In the film American Sniper directed by Clint Eastwood and the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, both works exhibit depiction of war through the protagonist. However, each work is portrayed differently as they each show a representation with opposite depiction of war. While one decides to promote war, the other diminish it. In Eastwood’s adaptation of American Sniper, his insight appears as a promotion for pro-war propaganda, in contrast, Slaughterhouse Five depicts ideas that portray the war in a poor light. American Sniper retells the story of Chris Kyle, a Navy Seal who was reported to have 160 confirmed kills.

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1039 Words | 5 Pages

Vonnegut as the author and narrator of the novel removes the doubt in the first chapter that not everything we read in Slaughterhouse-Five is true through the first words of the novel: “All this happened, more or less.” This opening line introduce the readers with Vonnegut story mixed with real and fictional events, a future which is blurred by past, time jumps from inner space and outer space and even human ethics verses extraterrestrial morals. Vonnegut managed to create a collision of these strange juxtaposition with true historical events narrated in an ironical voice. Victorious and glorious historical events such as “The Florence on the Elbe”, Sodom and Gomorrah down to WWII are portrayed with a humble language and through multidimensional

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974 Words | 4 Pages

Vonnegut tells us, “Truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies”, (Vonnegut 172). Bokononism is outlined in The Books of Bokonon. Bokononists believe that good societies can only be

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423 Words | 2 Pages

The American and French revolutions were two of the most consequential events in world history. Both of these revolutions represented a shift from traditional modes of governance to new forms of political organization that placed a greater emphasis on individual rights and liberties. Although these revolutions occurred in different countries and at different times, they shared many similarities in their underlying causes, methods of protest, and outcomes. One of the primary causes of both the American and French revolutions was economic hardship.

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1106 Words | 5 Pages

To understand the history of past cultures, it is imperative that both sides are heard. Many novels continually showcase this new outlook on history. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, demonstrates the New Historicism perspective with subjective accounts, reflections of the time it is written, and lack of the opposing side ’s outlook. To begin, New Historicism is showcased by subjective accounts that are apparent in developing the

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668 Words | 3 Pages

Skilled authors know how to utilize diction, details, and language, just to name a few, to create a tone or central message. In a short story, Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was able to manipulate details to create his own theme in his work. Vonnegut was able to generate a dystopian society in this particular writing with elements such as imagery, details, and language. With these three factors, he shows us his thoughts on what a society with total equality can be like.

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599 Words | 3 Pages

Vonnegut’s novel is more of a science-fiction novel and references time traveling and aliens. The jumping around of events throughout the book makes it hard to concentrate on the timeline of the book. At one point Vonnegut writes how Billy Pilgrim is “simultaneously on foot in Germany in 1944 and riding his Cadillac in 1967.” (Vonnegut 58) This passage from the novel illustrates how the storyline of Slaughterhouse-Five becomes convoluted due to Vonnegut’s sporadic use of fantasy.

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766 Words | 4 Pages

The movie A Bug 's Life is the story of a colony of ants which are trapped in a vicious cycle of gathering food for the "powerful" grasshoppers every year. One of the ants, Flick decides to rebel against the grasshoppers to end the harsh work forced upon the colony. The primary motivator for continuing to obey the grasshoppers under such horrible circumstances is the fear of the grasshoppers and their dominance. The head grasshopper, Hopper, is shown as being narcissistic, a psychological disorder that involves the lack of empathy for other people and only caring about oneself. Hopper is fully aware that the ants are afraid of him and he uses that to motivate himself to continue his control.

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624 Words | 3 Pages

The main cause for any revolution is the want for change. That’s the whole reason why we have revolution. In Revolutions, there is dissent among people, and that sparks change. That is true for every revolution in the world up to date.

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1729 Words | 7 Pages

Amis acknowledges the direct influence of a particularly memorable scene in Slaughterhouse-Five, which forms the basis for the converse flow of time experienced by his narrator. The scene unfolds in chapter four, as Billy experiences a movie of the bombing of Dresden play out in reverse, whilst hiding in a meatlocker as it is happening: ‘Miraculous devices’ gather up the fires into canisters collected by American bombers; the German guns suck ‘fragments from the crewmen and the planes’. The logic of this sequence is appropriately echoed by Odilo in Time’s Arrow, when he remarks, “[c]reation is easy, destruction is hard work” (a succinct summary of a world in which, at least from our perspective, entropy is

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