Audience:  your classmates and instructor

Length: 3-4 pages

Due:  8 Feb

Prompt.  Write an essay on one of the options below. 

Option 1.  An important part of reading poetry that we haven't much discussed is personal response.  We all respond with different levels of intensity to different poems, mainly because of the way(s) in which the poems activate certain elements of our experience and the ways our personal experiences activate elements of the poem's suggestive surface.  Build a paper in which you explain the emotional and experiential basis for a particularly strong personal reaction you have to one of the poems we've read this term. For a sample paper on this option click.

Option 2.  Here’s another version of the approach described in “A”: explain why someone you know ought to read carefully one of the poems we’ve read.

Option 3.  Write an essay in which you use one of the poems we've read so far during this term to highlight some element within Candide.  You might want to help us to understand one of its satiric methods by explaining its operations in terms of those employed by Anthony Hecht in "The Dover Bitch."  You might want to try to understand the degree of Candide's changed attitude toward Pangloss by comparing him to the speaker in "Dulce Decorum Est." 

Option 4.  Have you ever met and gotten to know a Pangloss?  Have you ever become acquainted with a Candide?  How about a Cunegonde, or even a Cacambo?  If you have, write an essay in which you explain how understanding the essential traits of these literary characters actually gives you "a handle on" someone you know.  Expain how you understand, feel about, and react to such a character in "real life."

Option 5.  Write an essay on one of the pairs of poems below.  Your purpose is to explain why you think one of the poems offers a more compelling, more interesting, and/or more important approach to the theme they share.  Do not write on a pair that includes a poem on which you have already written an essay.  For a sample successful student paper from the past click here.  Click here for a sample opening paragraph of the sort that might open such an essay on another pair of poems.

Pairs

--"Miniver Cheevy" and "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"

--"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "Traveling through the Dark"

--"Western Wind" and "The River-Merchant's Wife"

--"To His Coy Mistress" and "To Virgins to Make Much of Time" (224)

--"Naming of Parts" (click) and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

--"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant" (244) and "The Cool Web" (386)

--"The Sick Rose" (129) and "Spring and Fall"

--"Nothing Gold Can Stay" and "Spring and Fall"

--"The world is too much with us" (153) and "Dover Beach (233)"

--"The Road Not Taken" (301) and "Ulysses"
 

Expectations

1.  Overall organization that matches the paper's purpose and controlling idea (not just a retelling of the

poems!). 

2.  Thoughtful ideas.

3.  Nicely organized paragraphs, whose main idea emerges clearly.

4.  An interesting opening, one that gets your readers interested from the start. 

5.  A lively title.

6.  Control of basic grammatical matters (click).

7.  Signs of editing for the following stylistic issues that we've discussed in class:

               (a)  wordiness and redundancy
               (b)  excessive use of the "to be" verb (click)
               (c)  lack of sentence variety and subordination (OWL link--link; our in-class exercise click)

Some Repeated Writing Problems from Paper #1

1.  Throughout the poem, Owen communicates setting and morbid imagery to express the futile and inescapable feeling which he felt as a soldier fighting in the trenches of WWI.

1.  As soon as this feeling arrives within the reader, Owen dumps agony upon them through the description of a soldier succumbing to a gas attack.

2.  The tigers are described as prancing, proud, and unafraid.

3.  The disparity between the reactions of Aunt Jennifer and her tigers serve to show the audience how oppressed Aunt Jennifer really is, how little slack her shackles have.

4.  However, in Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est,” he contrasts the general perception of war as something heroic and adventurous with it harsh reality.

5.  Initially, someone who comprehends the title may have the first impression that it is about something that might be deemed worthy or honorable.

6.  Owen’s poem structure throughout is not a very complex or intricate one at first glance.

7.  After filling our heads with images of poor, lackluster soldiers, they are required to spring to action because of a new threat.

8. By making the men move towards that “distant rest” and by having the “Five-Nines” drop behind the men, a feeling of hope emerges however small it might be.

9.  There is no sense of time in the poem except that these instances happened in the past, which also seems to explain that these distant instances happened often, especially on winter Sundays.

10.  Hayden also employs the use of precise adjectives that not only describe the situation but how it relates to the feels that father and son have for each other. 

                                                                             A Matter of Attitude

                                                                                                      Brad Egbers

     As good as life may be, men and women always find faults in their current situations and long for something more, something
different, perhaps something exotic. Both people leading lives in unbearable poverty and those in the comfort of wealth long for escape
from the normal, the routine, to the life they wish they could have. Both Aunt Jennifer and Miniver Cheevy make their escape to worlds
where they think they would be happier. However, the message in "Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers" proves more powerful, as it offers much
more interesting contrasts, both on a literal level and in a more subtle, convoluted sense.
     While both reality and escape in "Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers" appear striking and provoking in and of themselves, excitement resides
only in Miniver’s world of fantasy. The description of Miniver’s existence focuses on his thoughts of an ideal life in the more “romantic”
ages of the past. Although the images offered: “swords were bright and steeds were prancing,” “the mediaeval grace of iron clothing,”
and “the vision of a warrior bold,” paint a vivid picture of his fantasy and display that he has thought about it often and in great detail,
these exhilarating images lack an equally provocative counterpoint. His actual life lacks any detail that could make it interesting
independent of his fantasies. Although he “grew lean while he assailed the seasons” and “coughed, and called it fate, / And kept on
drinking,” his life has no complexity. "Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers," on the other hand, offers an interesting situation within Jennifer’s real life,
as it speaks of “terrified hands,” “ordeals she was mastered by,” and the “massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band.” The ideas
presented in her life all have a distinct contrast in her fantasy. Her tigers “do not fear the men beneath the tree,” but in reality those
tigers are made by “terrified hands.” Her tigers “prance across a screen” while in reality she finds “even the ivory needle hard to pull.”
Rich’s offering of contrasting, yet equally intriguing images between reality and fantasy vastly outdoes Robinson’s one-sided, though
vivid, description of the extraordinary juxtaposed with the ordinary, as the mundane in itself fails to excite.
     Aunt Jennifer’s fantasy is more interesting because her escape actually mirrors her real-world ‘prison.’ Although neither character
makes a real or at least successful attempt to realize his respective fantasies, Miniver’s plight pales next to that of Aunt Jennifer.
Miniver dreams perhaps of living as a knight or an aristocratic noble: “Miniver loved the Medici, / … , He would have sinned incessantly
/ Could he have been one.” However, he intensifies his depression and disappointment with his drinking, making the fantasy world all
the farther away by partially destroying his real world. Aunt Jennifer, on the other hand, escapes into a world in which she creates
things of beauty and power through sewing. The aspect that separates the power of Rich’s message from that of Robinson lies in the
actual product of Aunt Jennifer’s escape. Her tigers “pace in sleek chivalric certainty,” and “do not fear the men beneath the tree.” At
first glance, this description may appear as a comfort to Aunt Jennifer, who has become accustomed to the terror and captivity of
marriage to one of those “men beneath the tree.” However, upon further consideration, it becomes clear that the “sleek chivalric
certainty” actually mirrors the attitudes and actions of Aunt Jennifer’s husband, creating a horrifying situation where even in her fantasy,
she cannot escape the “ordeals she was mastered by” in her marriage to a chivalric husband. Even when she makes her final flight,
death has become her only real way out: the tigers and therefore the tragedy of masculine dominance “will go on prancing, proud and
unafraid.” The dilemma offered in "Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers" presents a much more interesting and disturbing contrast than that of
"Miniver Cheevy."
     Although both poems address the idea of an “escape” or “fantasy,” and, interestingly also the idea of chivalry, only "Aunt Jennifer’s
Tigers" carries an underlying message about society or humanity in general. Miniver’s actions may speak to the emptiness of
alcoholism or the hilarious eagerness to romanticize the past, but it conveys no real commentary on anything controversial or
interesting. "Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers," even in its brevity, deeply explores the injustice of “traditional” marriage as a result of the chivalry
and masculinity present in society. Even in death, Aunt Jennifer cannot escape the inwardly terrible life she experienced: “When Aunit
is dead, her terrified hands will lie, / Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.” On the other hand, the author’s tone in "Miniver
Cheevy" detracts from the melancholy and seriousness of the poem’s message. The author belittles Miniver time after time, making
the generalized idea of an irrational escape into a specific disorder within one diseased person. The snide follow-on to the line “Miniver
loved the Medici, / Albeit he had never seen one” promotes the interpretation that Miniver doesn’t understand that which he dreams of,
or that he dreams to live a life that he pieces together from tidbits of history he simply placed together at his pleasure. The repetition of
the word “thought” in the second to last stanza again emphasizes the idea that Miniver lacks the ability to do anything but dream,
accomplishing nothing except building his mediaeval castles in the sky. The tone set by the author turns the attitude toward Miniver
from sympathy to almost humorous pity, an emotion which lacks the power of the sorrow felt for Aunt Jennifer. This difference in
attitude again makes the message in "Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers" much more powerful than that of "Miniver Cheevy."
     Each poem addresses the ideas of escape and fantasy quite differently. Rich uses Aunt Jennifer’s attempted escape as a symbol
to promote an argument regarding the treatment of females. Robinson uses Miniver for little more than entertainment, to poke fun at
those who have lofty or seemingly impossible dreams. Although each author’s attempt may have reflected different goals, "Aunt
Jennifer’s Tigers" proves much more powerful in the end through its complexity and subtle commentary.
 

Here are some stabs at sorting out the subtle but important differences among theme, statement of subject, moral, and summary.  Can you see the differences?

Theme:   The remembered love and appreciation of son for father as expressed through their rowdy bonding in opposition to female decorum. 

Story:  A boy describes his past, thrilling experience with his father and how his mother disapproved.

Subject:  The tensions within family life

Moral:  It's important to enjoy the time you have with your father because all too soon you can lose him.

Moral:  Be careful, because sometimes when you love one person, you leave behind another whom you might also love.

More themes:

The theme of this poem is the inseparability of violence and love, at least as seen from a comfortable, controlled, even formal retrospective distance.

The poem highlights the lasting, memorable qualities of emotional release as opposed to rational control and organization.

The poem focuses on love as an emotion that, at its strongest, depends on transgression against against norms of behavior.

Wordy Sentences from Context Exercise

1.  Words in the poem such as romped, slid, battered, scraped, and beat are used to suggest chaos and disarray. (click)

2.  In this poem there are many words implying a person’s senses and what they feel as opposed to how they think. (click)

3.  These examples from the text show how the word "now’ is used as a reference to a time and also how it returns the poem to the present. (click)

4.  "Curds" and "flowers" are two words used in the poem which show dairy and nature just as cream. These words can be used to represent life. (click)

5.  In the poem "My Papa’s Waltz the word "Kitchen shelf" is used as a stabilizing word. (click)

6.  In "To His Coy Mistress," the need to enjoy the present due to a limitation of time is expressed through an overall feeling of being rushed and hurried. (click)

7.  The "kitchen shelf" in Theodore Roethke’s "My Papa’s Waltz" is a detail from the poem which aligns itself quite clearly with the image of the mother. (click)

8.  These are all representations that nothing in our lives stays the same. (click)

9.  In "Papa’s Waltz," by Theodore Roethke, the image of the "kitchen shelf" is significant because it is in direct contrast with the details of the rest of the poem. (click)

10. The charts, diagrams, figures, and proofs are hardly words that evoke thoughts of wandering. (click)

11. The use of words such as whiskey, dizzy, romped, and battered are all words that stand for disorder in one way or another. (click)

12.  In the poem "Ulysses," the phrase "to pause" is related to death and laziness. The word "pause" is connected to the words "dull," rusting, and not shining. (click)

13.  "Japonica glistens like coral" is describing a flowering plant in the local countryside that is glistening and shining brightly. This line is different from the rest of the poem. (click)

14.  The "Kitchen shelf" is described in a similar way to the mother: stable and immovable. The father’s instability is illustrated with the use of words such as ‘romped," "dizzy," "battered," and "clinging." (click)

15.  The "now" is a continuation of all the time references which the lover uses throughout his poem. (click)

16.  The harsh words used throughout the poem to describe the father’s actions are in all actuality used in an ironic sense to create the opposition which runs rampant in the poem. (click)

The Great Equalizer

                                    Richard C. Rybolt

With hundreds of different countries, races, religions, and ethnicities throughout the world, the similarities that all human beings have with each other seem few and far between.  However, despite all of their differences, at some point throughout their lives all human beings experience sadness, love, fear, regret, loss and undoubtedly, death.  In Gerard Hopkins’s Spring and Fall and Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay, mortality plays the star role when it comes to theme.  Both poems delve deeply into the fog of humankind’s understanding of, and often times struggle with, death and aging.  However, Hopkins’s poem gains a distinct advantage over Nothing Gold because of the potency of its description of the theme at hand and the power of its perspective.

Often in poetry and in life less is more; when the fewest words can mean the most.  In Nothing Gold Can Stay, Robert Frost makes a powerful impact on his reader with just eight lines.  From the first line of his poem, Frost uses nature as a powerful metaphor to state a point about how the most precious things in life, the most precious of which is often life itself, are never permanent.  When viewed from a simple perspective, Frost states the obvious: “Nature’s first green is gold/ Her hardest hue to hold…Then leaf subsides to leaf.”  Basically, nature is most beautiful when it is in bloom, but this phase of nature is severely limited.  One word in the poem, however, changes its entire perceived meaning.  In the sixth line, Frost compares his nature theme, which actually takes up the overwhelming majority of the piece, to Eden, which biblically refers to where man first lived before he sinned and fell into the mortal being that he is today.  The paradise that mankind had once known in Eden was lost and the fear and mortality that man had never known before became a reality.  As the last line of the poem goes, “Nothing gold can stay.”  A human’s life will not remain indefinitely.  Simply put, this sums up all that the poem really has to say.  One can even go far to say that the poem’s title alone says all that the poem really has to say.  It is for this very reason that Spring and Fall offers a more compelling and important approach to the theme of mortality.  Simply enough, Hopkins’s poem just by its nature describes man’s feelings of death more directly and in greater depth than Frost’s work.

            Unlike Nothing Gold Can Stay, Spring and Fall deals MUCH more directly with mortality and aging.  Though the poem utilizes practically the same natural metaphor as Nothing Gold, its message is much less subtle than just one word.  It uses specific comparisons, in fact, between seasons and mankind’s mortality.  Take for example the line “Leaves, like the things of man, you with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?”  Here, the author makes his metaphor more like a simile as he directly correlates the leaves on the trees to the “things of man.”  In Nothing Gold, this connection was at most just insinuated.  This fact alone makes Hopkins’s poem clearer in meaning than Frost’s, and it also makes it more important in its approach to morality.  Hopkins’s poem also trumps Nothing Gold because of its purpose.  Nothing Gold makes a statement about mortality and the brevity of the precious things in life.  It does not even make a case to support itself because the author did not intend for it to support itself.  It deals merely with what.  Spring and Fall, on the contrary, takes on the how and why.  In the beginning of the piece, a young girl weeps for the “unleaving” of trees.  This has literal meaning.  At such a young age, a girl cares about the vanishing beauty of the falling leaves rather than the mortality of man.  Her youth prevents her from even contemplating mortality yet.  Later in the poem, readers are able to connect the simile/metaphor of the leaves and human mortality because as the girl’s “heart grows older,” she will weep for man’s ultimate fate.  As an older person, she will understand why she weeps as well.  The poem states clearly, however, that her weeping for the leaves and for man’s mortality is the same thing, just with two different mindsets.  As the poem so states: “Sorrow’s springs are the same.”  But why?  The poem does not shy away from this either: “It was the blight man was born for.”  Man knows his own morality.  He was born to know it and weep for it, as the poem so suggests.  It has always been his destiny.

            With poetry, the power of perspective can never be underestimated.  Viewpoint, in fact, makes up yet another primary difference in the effectiveness of each poem at hand.  The perspective of Spring and Fall alone creates in the poem a much more interesting and moving argument about the theme of morality than does the outlook of Nothing Gold.  In Frost’s Nothing Gold, the perspective seems almost non-existent.  The poem states merely facts because its only goal is to state what its author believes to be true.  It does not have any desire even to support itself.  However, Hopkins’s poem differs vastly.  Though the poem is told through the eyes of the author, in a way, the poem’s main focus comes through a little girl.  Through the eyes of the author, we see the transformation of a little girl full of innocence into an older person, with whom innocence has been seemingly lost.  The author introduces to his readers a topic as heavy as the mortality of all of mankind, but does so through a little girl.  Combining innocence and mortality, or in more direct terms, children and death, proves extremely effective at “shocking” the audience into understanding the seriousness of the poem.  It is not so much the fact that children and death are antonyms of each other.  This would be far from the truth.  However, the reality of the matter is that average human beings find it unsettling, if not just downright offensive, to link these two nearly polar opposite subjects.  The author has effectively gained the audience’s attention when he does this because he has introduced an idea that seems contrary to normal and logical human thought.  The “shock” value that this scene presents in Spring and Fall if nothing else at least catches the audience’s attention, thus relaying its message about mortality much more effectively than a poem of simple and common language…a poem such as Nothing Gold Can Last.  This reason alone provides enough evidence to conclude that Hopkins’s poem offers a more compelling and important approach in dealing with the theme of morality than does Robert Frost’s poem.

            The human experience with death and aging is deeply emotional and extremely difficult to put into words, let alone poetry.  Humankind fears what it does not know and death is the biggest uncertainty in every person’s life.  Nothing Gold Can Stay and Spring and Fall both approach the topic of mortality and human loss in different and powerful ways.  Frost’s poem is short, concise, and to the point.  It does not support itself or add any claims, for it was never intended to do this.  Overall, the poem’s power lies within its simplicity, though next to Spring and Fall, so does its weaknesses.  Hopkins’s poem proves to be the more compelling of the two in what it has to say about mortality.  It deals with the theme on a much more personal level, and its description of the human feelings about death and aging and the human experience with mortality makes it a much more effective piece.

            (To R.O./ c/o 2011 M Alpha114944

                                                    This Plebe Is Controlled by the State)

                                                                                Rory O’Donnell

 Throughout my life, many have considered me the “perfect” kid. I come from a loving, conservative family with three brothers and faithful parents, ideally representing the “Leave It to Beaver” style American family. In high school I played 3 sports, earned the best grades, only dated cheerleaders, and stayed active in my local youth group. I excelled through high school to reach the Naval Academy with praise and adoration from friends, family, school faculty and coaches, local newspapers, and in many cases complete strangers. They told me I was doing the right thing for my country and for my city. But has this made me happy? Has this made me free? W.H. Auden raises these same questions in “The Unknown Citizen.”

             The unknown citizen in Auden’s poem represents men in modern society, made robotic and mechanical by an apathetic government. He conforms at every level, strictly adhering to every expectation of society. He has five kids, a factory job, a radio, and “everything necessary to the Modern Man.” At the Naval Academy, midshipmen appear robotic and mechanical with exact uniforms, “high-and-tights,” and similar, athletic body types. The man in the poem seems brainwashed by societal “advertisements,” much like the Administration controls midshipmen through propaganda. After the unknown citizen’s life of compliance, consistency, and adherence to societal wishes, the state gives him a “marble monument.” He is rewarded for a life of regularity and conformity. In a similar manner, midshipmen receive praise for their willingness to meet societal expectations, strict rules and regulations, and standards of the Navy and Marine Corps. Both myself and the unknown citizen are coerced into conformity by our governments.

Although we behave and obey the rules to a “saintly” degree, the unknown citizen and I remain just that, unknown. In the poem, a monotonous, unattached speaker gives the epitaph of a man unknown to society except through reports and statistics. The man did everything considered necessary, yet society could not even bother to learn his name, instead referring to him as “JS/07 M 378.” The “Bureau” may have known everything there is know about the man on paper, but they did not know how he felt on the inside, if he was happy, if he was free. In my own life as a midshipman, how many people do I know just facts about, where they are from, what company they are in, or what sports they play? I know hundreds of people indifferently, but very few personally, and I feel very few people know me personally. First names are stripped of Plebes and forbidden to be used outside class or our rooms. “Rory” is much more personal than “Mr. O’Donnell.” The fact that the speaker in the poem dismisses the question is even more troubling. Society is unconcerned with the citizen’s feelings and the citizen’s actual quality of life. The citizen rather has one job, one purpose, to conform and fall in line with the rest of society. I often wonder if the Administration dismissed my thoughts and feelings. In their eyes, I have no purpose other than life as a midshipman, doing what I am told and playing by their rules. I feel I am conforming to society’s wishes by going to college, staying out of trouble, and volunteering for war. Society repays me, however, with an alpha code and a uniform.

Although not intended so by Auden, line five proved the most striking and hard-hitting line to me, “For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.” Auden’s citizen lived not for himself but for his government, namely, the “Greater Community.” He went to war for his government, had a certain number of kids for his government, and read a newspaper every day for his government. Auden’s description of the “Greater Community” reminds me of the age-old Academy philosophy of “Ship, Shipmate, Self.” “Ship, Shipmate, Self” is a hierarchy of loyalties located in the US Armed Forces Constitutional Paradigm. The Constitutional Paradigm also calls on us to “Keep in mind that it is the nation, and not the individual, that comes first” and that “[I] must be willing to sacrifice self for shipmates or shipmates for the ship. Always remember: never is self placed before any other loyalty.” I learn “Plebe rates” for the Academy, train physically everyday for the Academy, and promise the Academy that I will go to war when needed. Just as the unknown citizen lives for his government, I live for the Academy.

“Greater Community” also stands out with its capital letters. Throughout the poem, Auden uses capital letters to describe words relating to the bureaucratic way in which the government is honoring the unknown citizen. Each capital word seems to tower over the rest of the line, showing an empowerment of the bureaucratic government over the simple citizen. “Public Opinion” and “Union” are capitalized to show the importance of overall public opinion and workers’ unions over one simple man’s life. Here, at the Naval Academy, a similar symbolic effect is made through various phallic symbols and monuments strewn throughout the yard. Upperclassmen tell us to respect the Academy for its rich tradition and storied history, making us feel in awe of our school and all it represents. Just as the capital “Greater Community” looms over the rest of the line, the Academy looms over us, keeping us in-line and maintaining order.

Auden throws a curveball at the reader in the last two lines, asking “Was he free? Was he happy?” Auden leaves it up to the reader to decide as he makes no reference either direction. Although the Academy subjects me to such dehumanization and personal sacrifice for the greater good I do remain happy. I suspect the unknown citizen was happy, or at least convinced himself so. Maybe I am lying to myself. Maybe personal sacrifice gives me a good feeling, or maybe the Academy has brainwashed me into thinking so. Either way, I do not feel free. I see little difference between my freedom at the United States Naval Academy and Michael Vick’s freedom at Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, except, of course, he rates media. Fortunately, I do not see freedom as a requisite to happiness but rather a small factor. I remain content with a lack of freedom, knowing one day my day will come. On the other hand though, maybe I am lying to myself.

The Killings

                                  Brittney Boucher

            In “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy, the harsh reality of war is revealed through the eyes of one soldier who reflects on killing his enemy. The soldier realizes that war is fueled by the killing of people for one lone cause – to win. He understands the sole purpose of war in which it does not matter whether or not you had known your enemy from elsewhere because ultimate end is death for either. Your mind plays an important role in the outcome of such a situation, for it is what controls your actions. Hardy suggests the one pretending the most is the one who can kill most easily in war. I have not been in a war yet, and I do not believe I will be in any war that can be directly compared to the happenings in World War I or World War II. However, this poem can in fact, relate to the competitiveness in sports, when you know your opposition but must treat them as the enemy on the field, court, or wherever it may be.

            Coming from a relatively poor family, I found a safe haven in sports. While my parents were working both day and night shifts, I would emerse myself in as many sports as I could get into. I started with hockey, then soccer, then volleyball, then tennis, then track, and eventually cross country. As I grew older and moved into more competitive sports, I began to see more and more of the same people as my opponents and naturally became friends with a lot of them outside the sport itself.

            My first real experience with facing a friendly enemy occured back in middle school in the finals of a 3 x 3 soccer tournament. The other team was comprised of another three girls from our club soccer team of fifteen girls. Before I stepped onto the field, I remember my dad saying, “Pretend like you don’t know them and go out and play.” I thought to myself – “easier said then done.” For the first few minutes, it turned out to be one of the most awkward and plain out weird situations I have ever been in, playing three of my close friends. However, by the second half, we played as if we had never known each other. At the end of the game, there was some hostility, but after a while, our minds came out of the “trick” mode they had been in and allowed us to realize the contest was only a temporary situation. This was the first time I had honestly felt the power and control the mind can have over someone’s actions and thoughts. Playing some one you know is far easier when you can fool yourself into thinking that you don’t know them, which is something I had to do repeatedly in years to come.

            My second, more personal experience, relates almost directly to the soldier in Hardy’s poem. During my high school career, I played two sports, tennis and track. Tennis took up most of time with traveling across the state of Texas as well as across the country. I went to a tennis academy in the San Antonio, Texas where I ended up meeting my best friend as she still is today. We practiced for hours on end every day with each other, along with others. In competitive tennis, you end up playing a lot of people you already know because of the age brackets. In the semifinals of one of the national tennis tournaments our coaches took us to, my best friend and I had to play against each other. We roomed together as well during that tournament and did not expect at all to meet up against each other in the draw. Our coaches had a hard time watching as we battled it out in a three hour long match, considering we knew each others game inside and out. It was one mind against the other, and although both minds were acting as enemies at the time, as soon as we stepped on that court, we were strangers and as soon as we stepped off, we were best friends. During the match, my mind thought only of how to win and not about the fact we were best friends. Having a strong mental game is an important part of winning tennis matches, and I trained my mind to think of my competitor as no one else but the enemy.

            Both experiences, although at two different times in my life, support Hardy’s claim in his poem. As in any competitive sport, the goal is to win regardless of who you are playing. As in war, the ultimate goal is to win and carry through your mission whether or not you want to kill the enemy. It is something you must face and deal with but realize that the realities of war are not the realities of life.

            Another interesting point of view that comes out at the end of Hardy’s poem is the closure the soldier gets from thinking about the unforgiving conditions preset in wars. As in my experiences, competing against close friends became easier as I was forced to do it more often. This perhaps was the soldier’s first killing; he did not know how to handle it. However, killing the enemy will get easier for him to do after doing it once.

            Although war and sports are two completely different things, I feel that Hardy’s poem can give meaning to both, creating two situations that are similar in being both “quaint and curious.” The mind must be tricked in both situations in order to “fake” the actual situation at hand. At some point in our lives, we are bound to face such a situation, and our minds, if we allow them to, will rise to the challenge when we face a friendly enemy. When I first read this poem, I thought of the similarities between killing your enemy in war and “killing” your competition in a sport. As an athlete and now as a potential military officer, both meanings bring out past personal experiences as well as possible future decisions and experiences I may encounter. The real question is, is will I be able to handle similar situations in war as I did in sports?

Personal Response to The Man He Killed

                                                                 Kevin Dunn

Thomas Hardy’s The Man He Killed stirs up two quick responses in my mind,  one more personal than the other.  The first is an analysis of the movie Saving Private Ryan in my history class during my junior year of high school and the effect that analysis had on my view of war. The second, adding to my response of the prior but related on a much deeper and personal level, is a story my grandfather had told me about his experience of war, and handling a similar situation as that of the speaker in The Man He Killed.

My junior year History teacher in high school exemplified all you would think of as a “movie buff,” but not as a history teacher.  The class often fell short of expectations and standards set by previous history classes I had had.  However, at the very end of the year, after we had taken the Advance Placement test around which the class was focused, my teacher took an opportunity to teach using his passion: movies.  Familiar academics saw no need for the lesson; we wouldn’t be tested on the material. It was just a chance to teach with a movie and eat up what class time remained for the year. Instead of routine and boring notes and quizzes, my teacher inserted the DVD for the movie and after we had watched the designated scenes the floor opened for discussion. 

The part of this story that came to my mind when reading Thomas Hardy’s poem relates to what my teacher pointed out to the class in the open discussion. He talked about the American sniper in the movie.  Throughout the entire movie, the sniper kills numerous people and earns a reputation as a silent killer in the group, but towards the end of the movie he befriends a German sniper that they capture and lets him go, the German sniper returns and kills the American sniper, the very man that let him go.  My teacher used this example to relate to how the distance of death affects those around.  When the sniper kills people on the other side of the scope they die at a distance and the reality of the situation passes by without the damage that often comes with murder. When death becomes something up close, he acts unlike himself because he sees life instead of a distant figure.

My second and more personal reaction using this example and The Man He Killed brings me to truly think how I would handle killing. It stirs up the question of whether or not I could kill and how I would respond. Personally, I hope I never have to come to test these questions, but ultimately I don’t think I’ll ever know what I would do in the situation of having to kill another human unless I discover first hand.

This example hits close to home, not only because the story belongs to my grandfather, but also because it gives a real example instead of a broad thought of killing. My grandfather fought in World War II after enlisting in the Army after high school to support his mother and younger brother and because of an imminent draft. He became a paratrooper and was deployed to the Pacific. When in the jungle of Papa New Guinea, he encountered a young enemy soldier. My grandfather saw this young man, even a few years younger than he, and considered their strict orders to take no prisoners, but to shoot all enemy troops encountered.

 My grandfather did not kill that young soldier. He stood up for what he thought was right and sent him down the line to be detained as a prisoner because he realized the same thing the speaker began too in the third stanza of The Man He Killed when he states, “Just so – my foe of course he was; that’s clear enough; although.” With that “although” he challenged the reasoning of shooting a man because of the uniform that he wears. Not only did my grandfather make this bold decision, but he made sure the other American soldiers transported the young boy safely.

This simple but amazing action challenges me to think what I would do. Would I obey direct orders or stand in my values in such a challenging situation? I hope for the latter, but who can know the challenge of the influences and elements surrounding you unless your feel fill those shoes? Would I shoot the boy because of my orders or would I see the life in his eyes and doubt my orders, just like the speaker in the poem did, and realize that we share quite similar paths.  We both received a gun and orders to kill. God had blessed us both with a family of some sort. We both lived; how could I take his life? These questions all sprint through my mind upon reading The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy. I attempt to understand the magnitude of the decision my grandfather made that day, and I pray that I would make the same choice.

Everyone responds differently to various works of literature because we all have different experiences in our past. The open discussion in my junior year high school class and my grandfather’s story from his service in World War II build the response that I have when reading The Man He Killed. However, the experiences, which construct the response, change with the literature read as well as with different readers. These examples illustrate why I do not read this poem without wondering what I would do in this scenario, specifically my grandfather’s situation.

“A (not so) Modest Proposal”

                                              Tres Penny 

While not likely found by Googling “most effective pickup lines,” Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” accomplishes that which most men, at sometime or another, aspire to create:  a convincing argument for a woman to cease the “preserve[-ation]” of her erroneously hailed virginity.  I submit that even the most oafish of bar goers should muster all their intellectual power (which will admittedly vary amongst the masses) to commit Marvell’s words to memory.  This, along with a credit card, will ensure that even the most disdainful of suitors goes home not alone.  Such an explicit intention—unlike Robert Herrick’s in “To the Virgins, Make Much of Time”—enables the reader to easily comprehend and likely even relate (taking for granted the presence of common urges) to the speaker’s purpose.  Marvell achieves superiority over Herrick by having the speaker pursue a woman’s virginity with the clear intention of satisfying his own desires; this aim is easier to relate to than that of Herrick’s speaker, who focuses on sparing the woman a wasted youth and beauty for her, not his own, sake. 

Both poems employ rhythmical rhyme, giving a pleasant lyrical sound to the spoken words.  “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” consists of four alternating quatrains, each with two pairs of lines containing one line in iambic tetrameter followed by one line in iambic trimeter.  Although neatly arranged and admirable in that regard, such a pattern—clouded, perhaps, by the constraints of style—lacks the directness offered in “To His Coy Mistress.”  Marvell’s organization, consisting of three verse paragraphs with multiple couplets, contributes to an understanding of his intentions because each paragraph has its distinct purpose:  1. to flatter the target of affection and to ensure her of his sincerity, 2. to reason with her not to waste their fleeting time, 3. to direct her to submit to him.  Conversely, Herrick simply states that there is a “prime” age in life for a woman to marry a man.  Being the most profound and daring statement of the poem, the latter compares weakly to Marvell’s boldness.

Not only does Marvell’s speaker present a logical argument for his mistress to succumb to seduction, but he does so by using the very same romantic idealism that women supposedly seek.  He is not the first to attempt such a feat; men often fall short of masking their ulterior motives underneath poorly-constructed flattery.  Marvell’s speaker, on the other hand, sensitive to eloquent words that connote feelings of love and adoration, fosters within the woman a notion that he would praise her forevermore, if it were only possible.  In a somewhat chivalric statement, placing emotional sentiments above raw, sexual features, he even tells her that he would spend only “two hundred [years] to adore each breast, / But thirty thousand to the rest…the last age should show your heart.”  Through such cajolery, he paradoxically dismisses the idea that he is trying to hastily coax her into sexual submission in the first paragraph by informing her that he would gladly wait for his love to “grow / Vaster than empires and more slow.”  This statement comfortingly assures the woman that she may excuse the speaker’s directness that follows in the subsequent paragraphs.  Herrick’s speaker falls short of this example, as the only attempts at flattery occur in a few indirect references to the subject’s “youth” and “prime.”

Perhaps an even more powerful contrast than above is the difference in pacing between the poems.  Herrick constructs a rhythm that, although soothing, forces the reader into a comfortable pattern that constricts any outward energy.  Marvell, however, brilliantly composes his poem with pace in mind, allowing an increase in energy and speed which opens up new avenues for conception.  The romantic, idealist first paragraph features calm, gentle actions such as “sit down,” “walk, and pass our long love’s day,” and the designation of “hundred[s]” and “thousand[s]” of years to take part in passive actions such as “praise[ing]” and “gaze[ing].”  Then, without warning, the speaker describes hearing “Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near,” in the second paragraph.  Thus, Marvell sets up the transition into the fast-paced final paragraph.  Indeed, such an incontrovertible contrast exists between the first and third paragraph, which uses words that command an immediate action, such as “instant,” “Rather at once,” “[not] languish,” and “run.”

Similarly, the connotation of the words within the paragraphs has changed, as well.  The diction in the first paragraph, as previously stated, uses irresistibly tender romanticism to coax the debutante.  Subsequently, the second paragraph grimly forewarns of a “long-preserved virginity,” wasted and consumed by “worms” within the burial “vault.”  Finally, in the third paragraph, the speaker’s sense of urgency steers him away from gentleness and into a ravenous state in which he violently describes their “embrace” as “rough,” “sport[ing],” and “tearing” in a simile relating them to “amorous birds of prey.”  With such beastly words, the speaker fully transforms from a human with deep, caring emotions, to a voracious, wild, animalistic being—completely ignorant of the moral pedestal on which a young woman’s virginity rests.

Meanwhile, Herrick’s composition offers little in the way of contrast from beginning to end.  His utilization of both the passive voice and a passive speaker (after all, he is little more than an observer who offers advice) discourages involvement and, instead, prohibits the reader from actively participating in the work.  As a result, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” is not nearly as compelling, provoking, or applicable as “To His Coy Mistress.”     

Due: 3 March

Audience:  classmates and instructor

Length:  3-4 pages

Expectations:

1) A strong controlling idea that serves as the shaping force of the paper

2) An interesting title 
3) A lively, inviting opening
4) Full development  of the main idea--evidence, explanation, argumentation;
5) A conclusion that is not simply a restating of the opening paragraph;
6) Control the three stylistic matters we have discussed and practiced

a) Restraining use of the "to be" verb

b) Establishing sentence variety (See our exercise (click) and explanation OWL (click)

c) Avoiding wordiness and redundancy (OWL click)

7) Infrequent occurrence of major grammatical problems (click)

Format:

a) 1 inch margins

b) title on first page (no title page)

c) page numbers on bottom, suppressed on first page

Directions:

You can choose from the approach of Assignment #1 (click), only focusing on a poem we have read that is not suggested in that assignment; an approach in Assignment #2 (click) that you have not taken; or one of the following approaches to The Moviegoer:

a)  Analyze one of the following" concerns" in the book:

religion

god

sex

"merde"

war experience

movies

b)  Analyze how one of the following "minor" characters contributes to the work's larger meaning or to the development of a theme related to one of the main characters--Kate or Binx:

Lonnie

Sharon

the Lovell's

Binx's father

Binx's aunt

c)  Analyze the importance of a small episode in clarifying and/or complicating and developing one of the novel's themes.  For instance: 

the scene late in the novel of the black man at the church on Ash Wednesday

a part of Kate and Binx's excursion to Chicago

one of--or several of--Binx's flashback to his war experience

Kate's memory of her accident

Valencia

                                   Sara Faessel

            Critics often say that the best way to ruin a good book is to make a movie about it. In the case of Slaughterhouse Five, a notable change from the novel’s theme of life’s uncontrollability and individuals’ uselessness pictured through Billy Pilgrim’s wife Valencia transgresses into mere comic relief within the movie. Although within both the book and the movie Valencia displays an obsession for food, in the movie her fixation acts as an amusing interference with the plot, while in the book it presents Valencia as yet another character who cannot control some aspect within her life. Valencia in the novel, is a tragic character, as out of control of her life as her “unstuck in time” husband Billy. Without the addition of Valencia’s character supporting the uncontrollability of the plot, the movie Slaughterhouse Five loses part of its drive of the random, fatefulness that surrounds Billy Pilgrim.

            Valencia within the movie displays a comical character that adds a welcome relief to the moviegoer after scenes of major death and destruction. Although usually ignored by Billy while he plays with his dog Spot, every emotion Valencia exhibits is over exaggerated. From hunger to sadness, she does everything to extremes. Valencia is the comic relief, by either being urinated on by the dog or by constantly reiterating her future diet and sexiness, causing the moviegoer to feel less of a human connection with her. Valencia’s often repeated phrase, “Want a little snack,” comes to define her character. Her frantic drive to Billy’s hospital, which includes hitting another car, driving in the wrong lane, careening into a biker group, and eventually a police chase, is so absurd that it causes her death to take on a laughable aspect. Valencia’s farce takes away from the plot of the movie in such a way that the moviegoer feels no regret for Valencia’s death; she is just a dehumanized, cartoonish character within a confusing plot.

            Within the novel, Valencia is just as much a victim of fate and just as useless against the horrors of life as her husband Billy. Upon first introduction to Valencia, the reader can clearly note her fixation on comfort in foods and her inability to keep herself away from it: “She was as big as a house because she couldn’t stop eating.” Her marriage to Billy is a sham, set up by her father and motivated by Billy’s drive to become rich: “He [Billy] was rich now. He had been rewarded for marrying a girl [Valencia] that nobody in his right mind would have married. His father-in-law had given him a new Buick Roadmaster, an all electric home, and made him manager of his most prosperous office.” Valencia becomes even more tragic in her powerlessness to control Billy once they are married. Billy drunkenly cheats on his wife at a New Years Eave party— a fateful act Valencia can neither control nor change. As Valencia’s life continues, even her ability to reproduce is taken away from her: “The poor woman didn’t have ovaries or a uterus anymore. They had been removed by a surgeon…” Valencia’s inability to control major events in her life adds to the powerless feeling that is prevalent in the book Slaughterhouse Five.

Valencia’s role within the book Slaughterhouse Five directly mirrors Billy’s encounters in time travel. Just as Valencia displays an inability to control major forces in her life, Billy cannot control when or where he becomes “unstuck” in time and the events that will occur to him in the future. With the addition of comic relief and dehumanizing of Valencia in the movie Slaughterhouse Five, a key element conveying the disorder and uncontrollability of the book is lost.

Is This Just a Bad Dream?

                                                           Kevin Foskett

            Vonnegut said, “I love George Roy Hill and Universal Pictures, who made a flawless translation of my novel Slaughterhouse-Five to the silver screen.  I drool and cackle every time I watch that film, because it is so harmonious with what I felt when I wrote the book” (Film Comment 41).  Judging by the incredibly positive remarks of Vonnegut one would think that, for once, the movie completely and accurately portrayed the book.  While the movie  was generally an accurate portrayal of the book, the film director added some transitions between scenes that I believe undercut the sharpness and randomness of the written description of time travel. 

These transitions suggest that Billy Pilgrim is dreaming or is in a semi-conscious state rather than actually traveling and reliving different moments in his life.  For example, when his plane full of optometrists crashes, Billy time trips back to WWII.  He and the rest of the POWs are told to memorize their new address in the event they were to get lost.  They recite the address over and over again.  At this instant, Billy “travels” back to the downed wreckage of the plane.  The camera follows his rescuers as they find him buried in the snow and mumbling “Slaughterhouse-five, Slaughterhouse-five,” again and again.  This quick jump back and forth between two completely different times accurately depicts the uncontrolled nature of Billy’s time travel.  It also illustrates that Billy was reliving the horror of past events in his mind without actually traveling to another location.  This depiction is contrary to the written description of the time when Billy is physically freezing one minute then transports into another place and time the next.  The movie transition seems more natural and comes as a less abrupt shock to the viewer than does the book description. 

In several instances throughout the movie, Billy’s time travel is spurred by events that relate to one another.  Early in the book his travels are described as random and uncontrollable.  For example, when Billy is traveling with Weary and the two scouts, he stops to lean against a tree. (We’re assuming that Weary is a character and not his physical state?? If it is a physical state then the sentence should be – For example, when Billy is traveling with the two scouts and becomes weary, he stops to lean against a tree.) While he rests, his mind shifts with changing colors from the violet of death, to the red of birth, and finally he relives being thrown into the pool by his father.  The movie provides a clearer correlation between the events in the “present time” and his time travel than does the book.  There is a scene in which Billy is typing a letter to the Ilium newspaper describing his ability to travel through time.  As he is describing an event that he has seen before through his time tripping, he looks up toward the camera and instantly “trips” to that specific place in time.  When he looks up from his letter it is as if he were saying to himself, “Oh yeah, I remember,” before he continues writing. The action of recording his thoughts on paper spurs his mind to “travel” and “relive” that moment in time.  This more closely resembles a daydream than an actual time trip.  Time travel in the movie is keyed by current events.   This contrasts with Vonnegut’s emphasis on the random nature of Billy’s time travel.

It is an unfortunate fact that a movie can not capture every aspect of a book.  While this movie, according to the author, very closely simulated the feeling and message of the book, it did deviate in several small but significant ways.  Many of Billy’s time trips in the movie were linked by a common theme or action.  This connection of events minimized the random character of Billy’s time travel as written.  The movie also included transitions between scenes that suggested Billy’s time travels were more mental reflections than actual, abrupt jumps through time.   

Billy Pilgrim’s Ever-Yet-Never Midnight Striking Clock

                                                                                     Josh Westlund

             Dong!  With that, the twelfth strike of the clock bell, the magic given to Cinderella by her fairy godmother runs out and her night on the town is over.  Now she must return to catering to her overbearing sisters.  In another time and place, Billy Pilgrim finds himself lounging in a geodesic dome on an inhospitable planet with a beautiful young actress, learning about time from the aliens who brought them there.  Next thing he knows, Billy Pilgrim once again hears the gun shots, bombs, and moans of the dying.  He too has left a happy moment in his life and has now returned to World War II.  In Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim often acts out the part of Cinderella in the “real world.”  Like the fairy tale beauty, Billy has his life changed by an other-worldly being, is identified by his unique footwear, and has his seemingly pleasant situation suddenly altered by the time.

            As most small children can tell you, Cinderella is visited and helped by a fairy godmother, who changes her life forever.  Similarly, Billy Pilgrim encounters the Tralfamadorians, aliens who can see “‘all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains’” (34).  While Billy is able to time travel without the aid of the Tralfamadorians, Billy, especially his idea of time and life, is changed after his encounters with the aliens, paralleling to Cinderella’s life altering encounter with her fairy godmother.  As he writes after his plane crashes in Vermont:

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die.  He is still very much alive in the past…  All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist…  Now when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is “So it goes.” (33-34)

As a result of learning from the Tralfamadorians, Billy does not warn anyone of the imminent plane crash because “he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so” and he predicts his own death and encourages others to laugh with him (196).  As the fairy godmother did for Cinderella, the extra-worldly creatures altered the way that Billy saw and interpreted time and life. 

              Another important similarity between Billy Pilgrim and Cinderella is the use of footwear to identify them.  Early on in the War, Billy has nothing but “cheap, low-cut civilian shoes” that make him “bob up-and-down, up-and-down” (41).  His bobbing makes him easily noticed as he and three others trudge behind German lines.  Later, Billy finds new boots, painted silver and left over from the British production of Cinderella.  He takes them, tries them on, and they “fit perfectly.  Billy Pilgrim was Cinderella” (185).  Like Cinderella, Billy is living between harsh conditions and luxury.  In order for each character to get from those harsh times, special footwear is needed.  For Billy, his “glass slippers” are essential to keeping him warm and healthy so that he may survive the war.

            On that night while wearing her glass slippers, Cinderella captures the focus of attention at the ball.  The only thing that can ruin her night is the strike of midnight on the clock, which returns her appearance back into that of a poor country girl. Billy Pilgrim goes through similar highs and lows in his own time traveling.  One of the first times Billy travels through time, he begins when he “was receiving a standing ovation from the Lions Club.  He had just been elected President” (63).  With all eyes on him, Billy finds himself in a moment of royalty, much like Cinderella.  Unfortunately for him, in the next moment “he was back in the bed of the frozen creek again.  Roland Weary was about to beat the living shit out of him” (63).  The moment he was enjoying suddenly changed to the horrors of being back in World War II, like Cinderella hearing the strike of midnight, necessitating her return to the cruelty that was her home.

            Vonnegut does not include the parallels between Cinderella and Billy Pilgrim to make Slaughterhouse-Five a fairy tale that highlights the protagonist’s courage and accomplishments or his lift from obscurity to honor or significance.  Instead, the similarities between the two characters are used to show the difference between the fantasy world Cinderella is set in and the real world that World War II took place in.  In Cinderella, all the hardships she endures disappear when the Prince marries her.  Cinderella is able to forgive her stepsisters, who had been cruel to her for so long, and all live “happily ever after.”  Billy Pilgrim does not have this option of “forgive and forget.”  As he “has come unstuck in time,” Billy can not escape the horrors of the war or the aftermath of Dresden (29).  He is doomed to witness Dresden looking “like the moon now, nothing but minerals… Everybody in the neighborhood was dead” forever, either when he time travels or when he the “Febs” remind him of the guards in the slaughterhouse the night Dresden was bombed (227).  Slaughterhouse-Five is not meant to “‘pretend [Vonnegut and the other soldiers] were men instead babies,’” by glamorizing war, but instead to show the stark realities of the destruction that man can do to fellow man.

Billy’s Pilgrimage from Dresden to Delirious

                                                                                                                       Rory O’Donnell

             Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five focuses on Billy Pilgrim and the effect the American firebombing on the German city of Dresden in World War II has on him. Vonnegut himself was an infantryman POW who witnessed the Dresden massacre. Vonnegut emphasizes the effect of Dresden by creating two very different lives for his main character Billy Pilgrim; one life before and during the firebombing and another life after Dresden. An obvious contrast emerges between the young, inexperienced Billy before the Dresden firebombing and the irrational, insane Billy after the war ends. It is through Billy that Vonnegut expresses his disdain and scorn for war. Vonnegut’s theories of the drastic effects war has on all soldiers, including himself, are brought about in subtle yet clever ways.

Billy Pilgrim served as an American chaplain’s assistant in World War II. After witnessing first-hand the firebombing of Dresden, Billy questions why he survived among the thousands who died. This guilt causes his struggle throughout the rest of his life. After the war, Billy spent time in a mental hospital where his roommate introduces him to literature by Kilgore Trout, a science-fiction novelist who writes about time travel and his experiences on Traflamadore, an alien planet. A few years later, Billy survives a plane crash despite severe injuries, and spends a few months in a hospital. Immediately after his release, Billy first goes public about his own abduction by Traflamadorians and becoming “unstuck in time.” After piecing these events together in chronological order, one can only conclude that Billy simply imagines his abduction by Traflamadorians and his 4^th dimensional experiences. Trout himself questions Billy’s time travel as he knows the Traflamadorians and their philosophies exist only in his books. Vonnegut himself states “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.” This curious announcement establishes credibility for the Dresden bombing but not for anything that happened afterwards. By saying he was there, Vonnegut further establishes credibility for the Dresden firebombing. From the contrast between reality and fantasy, a cause and effect relationship rises between the Dresden bombing and Billy’s imagination. Billy creates a world in which he can escape his guilt. He believes the Traflamadore philosophy that when people die, it is not so bad because they are still living at other moments in their lives. Therefore, in this new dimension, life and death are meaningless and Billy is free of guilt. Billy’s experience at Dresden led to his “abduction” by Traflamadorians and becoming “unstuck in time.”

            Billy’s time travel serves a greater purpose for the novel though. A subtle yet significant pattern exists in his becoming “unstuck in time”. Each time Billy would travel in time to the future, he would immediately go from the future to a point in the war. One minute he would be speaking to a crowd just before his death, and the next he was cowering in a bomb shelter as Dresden is destroyed. This recurring return to the war establishes an obvious connection between his war experiences, mostly in Dresden, and Billy’s mental instability. Showing that throughout the rest of his life he could not escape the horrors of World War II, Billy traveled forward in time, he still ended up going back to the war. Even in his success as a wealthy optometrist, husband, and father, Billy could never get past his experiences in Dresden. 

Billy’s failure to get past his Dresden experience also results in his immaturity. To Vonnegut, war is a “Children’s Crusade” and soldiers never grow up. Vonnegut describes himself as a “foolish virgin in the war, right at the end of childhood." Signifying his youth and “foolish virginity,” Billy is baby-faced, innocent, uncoordinated and “gawky.” The name “Billy” rather than “Bill” or “William” indicates our character is more of a boy than a man. At first glance, Billy seems to have grown up and succeeded in his adult life. Even in his success as a wealthy optometrist, husband, and father though, Billy could never get past his experiences in Dresden. This struggle forces Billy to remain distant from his family. One evening, after walking in on his son, Billy realizes how unfamiliar to each other they really are. His optometry success comes only a result of his father-in-law’s help and Billy is unsure and nervous when he accepts his title as president. He remains too war-torn to appreciate his success either with his family or his career. The exposure to the Dresden massacre freezes Billy’s maturity and forever leaves him a “child crusader.”

In conclusion, the largest effect of the Dresden bombing on Billy Pilgrim was that he lost his mind. One cannot blame Billy though, as “All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?” This inquisitive, nonsensical phrase is repeated at the end of the novel, signifying that all that was left after Dresden was an unanswered nonsensical question. Much like Billy needed the 4th dimension to answer the question, Kurt Vonnegut needed to write Slaughterhouse-Five.