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Connecting With Others In Kurt Vonnegut's Who Am I This Time

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Recommended: Literary criticism of kurt vonnegut

Max Dressler
Mr. Gale
4/3/17
Composition

Connecting with others is a challenge for some and for others it is not as much. Some people who are very social and very outgoing have an easier time connecting with others than someone who is more shy than that person does. In these two stories, Who Am I This Time, by Kurt Vonnegut, and For Esmé - With Love and Squalor, by J.D Salinger, they contain different themes of connectedness and in this essay, I will explain why.

Who Am I This Time, written by Kurt Vonnegut was an interesting story. I have never read a story of that kind, it's not that it was super advanced but it was more confusing and more realistic, in a way. The narrator of the story is a storm window salesman and he has gotten stuck …show more content…

The year of the book is 1944 and the setting is in Devon, England. Sergeant X is stationed in Devon and is training for the invasion of the continent. At the end of three weeks of training, the group of soldiers is scheduled to travel to London, where they are supposedly "be assigned to infantry and airborne divisions mustered for the D Day landings." The last day of the training, after the narrator packed his bags for London, takes a stroll through Devon and ends up at a church in the center of the town. The narrator walks into the church but it is already in practice. The narrator, sitting in the church pews, becomes fascinated by one of the children that is singing, the girl is about thirteen, "with straight ash-blonde hair of ear-lobe length, an exquisite forehead, and blasé eyes that, i thought, might very possibly have counted the house." Her voice is the "sweetest-sounding" of the bunch, but she seems somewhat "bored with her own singing ability." After the singing was over, the narrator left the church and he made his way to mostly-empty "civilian tearoom". He sits down and orders tea and a piece of cinnamon toast, shortly after being there, he sees that the girl from the church walked into the tearoom. The girl and her little brother sat down at a table that was a few tables down from where the narrator was sitting. After a few …show more content…

I find it easier for me to connect with kids who are older than me. I honestly can not relate to the story characters with my own life because in the first story it revolves around a play and I do not act nor be in plays. For the second story it shows two people who meet in a tearoom and end up talking a lot with each other and I can not really relate to that either. I think that it is important to connect with people because it makes you look better. Being a social and outgoing person is very good for both school and life. If you are social and outgoing you can make a lot of friends and get to know people a lot better and in life, it can help with your job depending on what you do or what you want to do. I connect with people through mutual friends mainly, I started out, a lot of years ago, making a few strong friends and branching off from there. I have lost one of those good friends but I still have about 2-3 friendships that have lasted for more than 8 or 9 years and I care about those a

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