Poo-tee-weet

This past month we finished and discussed Slaughterhouse Five.  One of the manor points of discussion was how Kurt Vonnegut intended for Slaughterhouse Five to be an “anti-war” novel.  I think that most people could agree that he did intend for this book to serve a purpose, other than to tell a story about aliens. The main topic that I wanted to touch on was how Vonnegut made the chirping of the bird so symbolic, adding to Vonnegut’s loss of words over the disaster at Dresden. 

“Poo-tee-weet” was one of the only things that Billy heard after the bombing and this is significant in two ways.  Number one, as we said in class, this signifies how there is nothing intelligent to say about war, because war is pointless.  There is nothing to say about war because it is unnecessary. Number two, it is hard to talk about something so terrible and it was hard for Vonnegut to write about something that was so traumatic for him.  It amazes me how Vonnegut was able to say so much, yet so little about war through a single chirp. I believe that it is obvious that Slaughterhouse Five was intended to be an anti war novel. I also wanted to talk about how Vonnegut reacted to war, how society glorifies war, and my personal opinion on the matter. 

Vonnegut experienced the war first hand. He was there and he saw the destruction with his own eyes.  I think that more people need to see and understand the true destruction that war brings.  In the movies we see the buff actors that play heroic soldiers that save the world. The media never shows us the scrawny boy that scarified his life. I think that war is glorified to the point that many Americans like the thought of it when actually war is the “Children’s Crusade” that was discussed in the first chapter.  I wish that more people could see that harm that war has on the whole world.  It is my firm belief that war should be avoided at all cost, especially when it involves the murder of innocent people.