Entry 7, Chapter 4 - Epithet

     In chapter four, I noticed that Billy Pilgrim began using the phrase "blue and ivory" to describe various feelings in his feet to the look of the dead. If someone was to describe another person's feet as blue, I would assume their feet were very cold and lacking in circulation. Then, the word ivory makes me think that the feet are stone, and not moving as if circulation was nonexistent. Billy repeated this phrase many times in the book thus far as to describe his own feet as,"he looked down at his bare feet, They were ivory and blue," just as he described his hands as," a blue and ivory claw hooked over the sill of the veniliator." Blue and ivory are adjectives that have been used to describe coldness in one's body or in someone else's body, who is usually dead cold.

Entry 6, Chapter 3 - The Mood of Horrific Events

     The sickening, and dreadful mood that was created in chapter three reminds me of what it seems to be like when a natural diaster hits. The Tsumnami in 2004 was heard all over the globe. Pictures were sent to newsteams across the world of devesation, starvation, and hundreds of dead. In the chapter, it wasn't a natural disaster that created the intense and grosteque picture, but a prisoner camp and trains, but still the mood creates dread. Hurricanes, tsunamis, and landslides, especially occuring in poorer areas, create a more dreadful and misery filled picture just like the mood in the chapter.

Entry 5, Chapter 3 - Mood

     Throughout chapter three, Billy is being sent through time from his days in the war to the days of his lucrative optometry practice. During his war days, he descibes the horrendous sights he saw when entering into Germany as a prisoner of war along with his friend Weary. The mood of this chapter is completely dreadful because of the detailed descriptions of dying prisoners like the colonel who wanted to be called "Wild Bob". Creating a dreadful mood in this chapter was done by gruesome descriptions and similes of bloody feet, dying soldiers, and lack of food. The treatment and environment around Billy was appalling as."in went water and loaves of black-bread and sausage and cheese and out came sh*t and piss and language." The mood of the chapter also created a sickening feeling. All in all, the prisoner trains and camps was somewhere the reader did not want to be.

Entry 4, Chapter 2 - Cliche Alien Abductions

     When I first read Billy's passages describing his kidnapping by the Tralfamordians, I had a reaction like most people would have when hearing about a supposed "abduction by aliens." The idea that someone was kidnapped by aliens is so cliche in my mind, but Billy Pilgrim told his story in such a serious manner as though," that everything that he had said on the radio was true." I remember first hearing about the Rosewell UFO incident when I was in elementery school, and like any other sane kid, I believed that the whole incident was made up or simply blown out of porportion. That was a reaction most people have when they hear anything concerning the existence of aliens, and Billy Pilgrim was revealed in the book that his mindset was probably not all there. Many sightings of UFOs and reports of abduction have been told, but in the end most of these witnesses are claimed to be people with mental disorders or are looking for attention. Billy Pilgrim has been revealed to me, as every other "abductee" has been to me, a lunatic.

Entry 3, Chapter 2 - Characterization

     Revealing a character's personality, can make or break the decision of a reader to continue reading the book. Billy Pilgrim begins his story with background on his life before, during, and after the war when he descirbes Pilgrim's adventures in optometry, family development, and his life in the war. Billy explains to his reader that he was not exactly fit to be a soldier after being drafted soon after starting college. Vonnegut shows his reader that Billy was a normal guy, pulled into something much bigger than he could handle. This makes us, the readers, identify with Billy as an average Joe, who like the rest of us, are forced to do something we aren't fit to do. Later in the chapter, Billy begins his story about his life post war, when he was involved in a plane crash and developed a new outlook on life after becoming associated with aliens he called the Tralfamadorians. The reader now begins to feel that Billy is actually a character with a strange mind along with the other characters, like his daughter, agree with. Overall, Vonnegut reveals at first a Billy Pilgrim who was just like the rest of us, but then when talking about his post war days, shows the reader that Billy is a man with a possible psychotic mind when he said,"he had been kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians on the night of his daughter's wedding,"which was a cliche phrase said by those in the past years who had said they had been "abducted by aliens".

Entry 2, Chapter 1 - The "Good" of War?

     Vonnegut's expression of disapproval for war was not only shown through his dialogue, but through the words of Mary O'Hare. The content of Mary's statement," You were just babies in the war - like the ones upstairs" really summed up something I personally have felt for years about. War, guns, violence, etc, has never made me think that these things were made to protect us in the plan for attack. Vonnegut told his sons, "not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that" because of his dissaproval for war itself. Guns and massacre machinery have just seemed so unecessary to me as a result of hearing about tragic events around the world. Recently, after the emotional Colorado movie theatre shooting, I have yet to understand why we, as a nation, allow anyone, proven sane or not, should be allowed to own and buy weapons like guns. Vonnegut himself is motivated to show the world that war isn't a good thing, and the production of massacre machinery is just something that further influences the "good" of war. Most people view tragic massacres in this country as "once in a blue moon" happenings like the Columbine High School and Virginia Tech shootings in the past years. Yet, all of this could be somewhat avoided if the production of weapons was lessened. War is not something to have adulation for, and definitely should not egged on persay by the production of guns and massacre machinery. I applaud Vonnegut for expressing discontent on the production of massacre machinery, and for his book which will show the world that war is not a pretty thing and can affect families everywhere just by a decision to sell a gun to a man who might be planning to murder or injure inncoent men, women, or children in a movie theatre. The influence of war is everywhere, in the media and in our own schools when talking about the victories of our nations in past wars, but when will war ever be something to look upon as "good"?

Entry 1, Chapter 1 - Motivation

     Motivating an audience is key to illustrating an overall picture as to why you even decided to write a peice of literature. Most authors choose to write about subjects that hit close to home. If one was from New York during 9/11, then producing a fictional story about a man who lost his life during the attack makes complete sense. Kurt Vonnegut openly informs his audience in the first part of the first chapter that he was writing this book to simply recall his stories during World War II and especially Dresden. Later on in the first chapter, Vonnegut visits his old war chum, Bernard V. O'Hare in order to gain some more insight on the stories that his own mind has forgotten. As his visit with O'Hare goes on, O'Hare's wife, Mary, finally expresses her dissapproval of the making of this book Vonnegut was composing because Mary strongly felt that the media such as books and movies were encouraging the idea that war is great and that young men fighting in these wars will mature from young, immature boys to strong-willed and mature men. Blunt in anger, Mary explains that,"you'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs,"because in her mind the boys who go off to war are basically babies like her small children playing in upstairs bedrooms and that wars send these "babies" off to combat to witness and fight in and for something they barely can comprehend and are too weak-minded to witness. Vonnegut says that he wants to dedicate the book he was composing to Mary because of her sensible stands on the fact that war is not something to be applauded and praised, but something that needs to be explained first-hand and in a way for people to really see the brutality of war in a different way than the way that the media makes it appear. Building upon his formed opinion from not only his eyewitness accounts of the war, but along with the emotional opinions of families, Vonnegut uses personal and nonpersonal opinions to anchor his motivation to write his book in a way that shows people the real side of war and not just the side the media puts out that expresses praise for war.