Man’s Choice Of Condemned Freedom

It’s true. Men are born in chains, but in life, are condemned to be free. We act according to how right it is, depending on our notion of free will. It is said that God put us on Earth for us to take care of the Garden. While in the Garden, Adam and Eve enjoyed of perfect bliss before their fall from God’s grace. Nevertheless, in Candide the garden symbolizes the life of the characters, who duel with their inability to give a good effect to the gifts God has given them. Cause and effect. God gave us the knowledge to create. Instead of using it for good, we used it for evil: “God did not give them twenty-four pounders or bayonets, yet they have made themselves bayonets and guns to destroy each other” (31). We can either have an optimist or pessimist point of view of our fate. By taking into account this quotation, buoyancy is very hard to attain. It was our choice to eat from the Tree Of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are victims of our free will thus. God put us on the garden to take care of it, but we didn’t.

If we are condemned to be free, it means that in the garden we were never free. If we had stayed in the garden we would’ve never gained knowledge, we became wolves: “Men must have somewhat altered the course of nature; for they were not born wolves, yet they have become wolves” (31). God created us to follow the law of cause and effect. Under this law we would be under his grace, and therefore lack the act of free will. By altering the course of nature, we gain freedom. We were born in chains, but in life were condemned to be free. But this freedom of ours has led us to wage war, kill our benefactors, and become a treacherous race. If we are who we ought to be (an imperfect being), it is quite impossible to believe that God created us. We can make the generalization: God created us. God is perfect. Therefore, we ought to be perfect. The thing is we aren’t. We made of ourselves guns and bayonets to kill each other.

The existence of evil in this world then must be a sign that God is either not entirely good or not all-powerful. But the idea of an imperfect God is incongruous. For Voltaire, the idea that a perfect God has to exist isn’t part of his approach. Hence, he employs satire in order to mock the idea that a world has to be completely good. He ridicules on Candide and Pangloss’ idea of Optimism by making them suffer indignities throughout the novel. These horrors do not serve any evident greater good, but point directly to the cruelty of humanity and the indifference of the natural world. Pangloss struggles to find logic to his arguments: “For it is impossible for things not to be where they are, because everything is for the best” (35). There is a hole present in his logic, and this hole is what Voltaire uses to scorn the ideals of many philosophers in history who’ve never found the knot to the tie. They are just empty words without a meaning. Just as saying: “Man is responsible for his nature and choices” (Sartre). We chose to be free.

Life: A Perpetual Instruction In Cause And Effect

Writing a blog is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of my own life. My life is a constant sequence of events where one cause leads to an effect, which then leads to another cause, and to another effect. And so on. If this is true, then the will is not free. Free will is a phenomenon bound to cause and effect. According to Voltaire’s satirical tone employed, this is the best of all worlds. Since God created the world, and God himself is perfect, then, the world he created must be perfect. Therefore, we don’t have actual choice in this perfect world. We are bound to follow its perfection without changing its route. In this world, “there is no effect without a cause. All things are necessarily connected and arranged for the best. It was my fate to be driven from Lady Cunegonde’s presence (…) Things could not have happened otherwise” (26-27). By taking this though of cause and effect, we surmise that successions in the world are already written and cannot be contradicted.

We normally believe that something happens because it is meant to be. I am the happiest person right now because it is meant to be, I am writing about cause and effect because it is meant to be. But cause and effect cannot live harmoniously with free will. It has to be one or the other. If it is true that cause an effect is the preface to the story of the world, why should we consider free will? Candide doesn’t blame God for everything that happens to him. He blames cause and effect, by the way. We normally blame God for events that we suffer (death’s, loses, victories). Instead, we must think that God created the law of free will and the law of cause and effect, and he himself followed both. We were endowed by Him these laws and we shall choose which to follow. But since we are not perfect, we cannot follow both. We have to choose between free will or cause and effect. The curious thing is we can’t choose, because we already have a cause and effect: God provided the laws, and then we are condemned to follow the effect.

If things couldn’t have happened otherwise, free will is not an option in this world. For Candide, “it was useless to declare his belief in Free Will and say he wanted neither; he had to make his choice” (24). Here there is a big contradiction as he is rejecting the act of free will, but at the same time is making a decision. Candide recalls one of the natural rights Thomas Jefferson mentions in the Declaration of Independence by stating that humans “are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” If God has provided us with the right of life and the pursuit of happiness, we are simultaneously provided with the act of free will. So, did God create these laws for us to follow or for us to choose?

Learn Who We Really Are, Live With That Decision

Today I want to write a blog entry about decision taking. In order to achieve my goal I must “consider what leads up to it, and what follows it, and undertake the action in the light of that” (29). In order to develop a good entry I must think about how decisions affect the path we emerge in our lives and how they can’t be changed once taken. Right now I’m taking a decision: I am opening my mind to you noble reader in order to transmit my understanding of these aspect I rely on in this moment. I must focus in order to lead this sentence from being a vague thought into being a leading idea to the next generation of words. But right now I must follow my decision. I believe that in any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. Honestly, the first choice sounds better to me.

All of these thought came through my head, more or less. Striving for something is meaningless, willing for it is not enough. I’ve really tried to make this entry the best one so far, but I can’t. The fate of this whole blog has already been written days, years, or even centuries ago: even before I thought of this idea. In life we must be one person, right now I am your humble blogger doubting about whether or not continue writing about decision making. But “just as a target is not set up to be missed, in the same way nothing bad by nature happens in the world” (27). When bad things happen we usually blame someone else due to our belief of selfishness and our lack of altruism. If it’s not God, then it’s our neighbor, our friend, our parents, or even you my avid reader. Now that my blog is futile, you can blame me for writing such a bad blog. But you will never blame yourselves for starting reading it.

By taking a decision you “must be one person, either good or bad” (29), you cannot pretend being both. Our fate destines us to be either good or bad. This entry’s fate, for example, destined the words I’m writing to be the most incomprehensive thoughts. I never considered what led me up to this. I never undertook the action in the light of that. I remember a couple of hours ago when I immersed myself into blog-writing. I took the wrong decision. I shouldn’t have ever started writing a blog about decision making. Quite honestly, it’s not my specialty. My own nature would never bare the fact of writing a blog about this topic. I have to take a decision there is no life in-between. I’m either good or bad. The hardest thing to learn in life is to decide which bridge to cross and which to burn. I took the one I had burned since the very first word I wrote.

Five Steps To Be A Leader

1. Ignore the standards of leadership.
2. Avoid taking responsibilities.
3. Selfishness is key.
4. Freak out when you have to lead.
5. Don't be original, make life easier.

The Path Between Fate And Free Will

Dear Robert Frost,

Reading your poem made me think about various aspects I contemplate myself in many of my writings. For instance, you described that you “took the one [path] less traveled by, and that has made all the difference” (Frost 19-20). I believe you are referring to the importance of independence, personal freedom, and free will. Your poem seems to illustrate that once one takes a certain road, there is no turning back. We can interpret the road as every decision we make in life. Each decision paves the way into a new road, and depending on these decisions, our fate is defined. But then, by reading the title to your poem I believe that you feel certain curiosity of what might have happened to you if taken the other path. The whole poem centers on the idea of taking choice, which is exactly the part I mostly, disagree with.

In my point of view, Mr. Frost, all events that occur in life are determined by faith. Hence, they are beyond our control but we can accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. Individuals, however, are responsible for their own actions which they can examine and control through strict self-discipline. Suffering arises when trying to control what is uncontrollable, or when neglecting what is within our power. I believe that you must “detach your aversion from everything not up to us, and transfer it to what is against nature among the things that are up to us” (Epictetus 2). Therefore I discard any possibility of complete free will in terms of the course of events in humanity. Being part of the universe, we as humans must care for fellow humans and hence be completely selfless. By reading your poem I sensed an inspiration towards individualism. By taking the path nobody took, you are being selfish and not caring for fellow human beings. But at the same time, by taking this path you demonstrate that humans have free will. Free will is an aspect I consider beyond our control, because in the end our successions after taking either path are determined by fate.

With all due respect,

Epictetus

Did You Know You Are Going To Die?

We might think of death as the end of life, or as the beginning of an afterlife. Some people try to avoid it, others try to find it. At the end of the day, death cannot be nor avoided or found, does it only appear when it has to. I’ve heard people from different religions tell me that suicide is the only sin God never forgives, since life is the only gift God gave you for you to take it away. On the other hand, those who avoid life must be those who fear it. But why fear death? Will it be any more terrible than life itself? As Epictetus describes, “Let death and exile and everything that is terrible appear before your eyes every day, especially death” (21), we shall accept death in order to live accordingly. Maybe we don’t know death well that’s why we neglect it. Should we make it part of our every day in order to value our living?

As I started writing this blog, a question recurred to my mind: When you woke up this morning, did you know you were going to die? That question was asked several times during The Talking Of Pelham 123. Based on a terrorist attack in the middle of a normal day at New York City, the succession of events is everything but predictable or expected. I’m sure that on September 11, 2001 the people of New York and the world wouldn’t expect they would find death in one its meanest expressions. While I write this blog I’m not really sure whether if I’ll encounter death at the end of the road or not. Maybe those people who died never valued life. They were sure that they had their passage bought for death until their late 80’s or 90’s. Well, many people not past the age of 50 died on that day. So it goes. Then, when you woke up this morning did you know you were going to die?

Once I read about a man name Morris Schwartz who thought the only way to learning how to live was by learning how to die. When we achieve this then we are able to read the second part of what Epictetus thought: “You will never have anything contemptible in your thoughts or crave anything excessively” (21). By learning how to die, or accepting death as an everyday character, we will value life. We will learn how to live. When this happens, we won’t need to crave life or death excessively. By not needing more life or more death than what we have, we will be able to act our part well in this play of life. You don’t need explanations of why you are acting that way. You are just grateful to know there aren’t despicable aspects in your relationship between life and death. So, when you woke up this morning did you know you were going to die? I would say yes.

Acting Accordingly To His Belief

We live as puppets: controlled by a Higher Being up there who is telling us what to do and what to not do. Even though people tell me “life is like a box of chocolates”, all the events I lived and I’m about to live, are already known for Him. Like a narrator in a story. He knows how the central figure will develop, who is going to win, and who is going to die. We follow his steps without knowing, we are all part of his comedy. “Remember that you are an actor in a play, which is as the playwright wants it to be: short if he wants it short, long if he wants it long” (17). We are only the actors in the play. Our opinions don’t count in this comedy we are being part of. Defying destiny is one of as many mistakes as we can make. What’s written is a fact, and therefore it can’t be changed. Oedipus once tried to change his destiny. The oracle said he would eventually kill his father and marry his mother. He thought he had erased his fate, just as the man who thought he had conquered death.

He believed he could make life longer, opposite to the man who though he could make life shorter. The playwright wouldn’t want us to alter his plan for the comedy. I’ve heard of many people, many alchemists who’ve tried to make a supposed elixir of life in order to become immortal. A renamed Nicholas Flamel was famous of achieving such goal and it is said he is still seen walking through the streets and alleys at Paris nowadays. But I don’t understand why he would avoid death. Is death really that horrible? Maybe it’s better to “let death and exile and everything that is terrible appear before your eyes every day, especially death; and you will never have anything compatible in your thoughts or crave anything excessively” (21). Those aspects of the play we consider terrible are just part of the comedy itself. Perhaps the playwright wants us to fear and pity the death. That leads us to crave life excessively. We become obsessed with life and feel we will become nothing without it. Unfortunately, life and death are completely interdependent in this comedy. There is no light without the dark. If there wouldn’t be life, we would never die.

What happens if the play we are acting on contradicts our meaning of life? We are unable to change the path were its heading, but still we have to live it accordingly. Thinking about it made me remember of Freud saying, “He does not believe that does not live according to his belief”. I should have finished this blog by now, I guess. I’ve lost the path my blog was heading, so excuse me for the irrelevance of quoting Sigmund Freud. I didn’t decide it to happen. The playwright did. Blame the playwright, not me. Due to him this blog shall end sooner or later. There are no more words to say about it. He wants it to end now and I shall obey. One last word: don’t fear death, pity the living: they are all part of this comedy.

Living As It Happens

In my dream, there was this man who kept telling me, “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” He had a big hat and a shaggy beard, but was so tall that the clouds covered his face. He kept telling that to me and I responded without me wanting to respond. My words came out of my mouth without my voice control, they just sang their way to his ears. I thought I was being unintelligent by saying these words that lacked coherence, but to my surprise, he loved them. “Wonderful words continue like this and life will go well to you, my dear boy.” How could these be wonderful words? I never thought of them, they just came out of my mouth, without my will.

Then another voice captured my attention. It was an older man, I guessed, but it was indeed a wise voice I heard. This man was shorter but was so old I couldn’t recognize. Maybe he wasn’t from my time, or from the times I use to know about. He wore a long white dress that covered much of his body, bald head, and a longer beard than the man I’d heard before. He had a white beard, wise words, and prolonged thoughts (that’s for sure). He told me, “Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well” (8). His words were different to those of the tall man, but I found certain similarity in their meaning. Both were referring to life itself, and how it’s better to live it without having control over it. It reminded me of a friend of mine, Billy Pilgrim, who had no self-control over the life he lived. He always told me about some aliens he met that always told him that humans shouldn’t have free will, because we live a life of predestined events.

Then a third voice appeared out of the blue. He told me, “Happiness is not to do what we love, but to love what we do.” That was the phrase I mostly identified with. Many times it has happened that I only find happiness in the things I love to do. But if I were really to be happy, I should love the things I do. I asked him, “How can I love the things I do?” He didn’t respond. He wasn’t there. Maybe I knew the answer to this question. In the end, I should let things happen the way they’re happening. Maybe God has already written a destiny for me. Or as my friend Billy thought that we are all machines who just live the moment without a reason, without a why. I was living this moment without an explicit reason of why it was happening. It just happened. As I started questioning my reason of being here I saw the dead corpses of the people who had talked to me. That high man whose face was covered by clouds was Abraham Lincoln, the other one was Epictetus, and this last one was Jean Paul Sartre. All gone and dead, but at the same time, living and talking to me.

The Book About The Book About The War

As I read the book, I thought about time, the narrator, Billy Pilgrim, his meaning of life, the stories within the story, and so on. I kept writing blogs about these different ideas that rushed my mind as I read, “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future” (Vonnegut 60), or “The truth of it startled him. It would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim – and for me, too” (Vonnegut 121). But even the most obvious aspect that the book contemplates, never dared to cross my mind. What’s this book about? This book is about a book about war. Therefore, the book itself is about war.

Even though Vonnegut states that there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Or, in other words, that war is not interesting. I myself find war a very interesting event in human history. How many books have there been about World War II? How many times have we read about the Holocaust, the Ghettos, and the Nazis in the last couple of decades? Indeed, war is interesting. “That’s the attractive thing about war. Absolutely everybody gets a little something” (Vonnegut 111). You might think here Vonnegut is being rude by referring to war as “attractive”. I believe that he is being quite satirical by employing irony and hyperbole. First of all, war is everything but attractive. Honestly, I don’t find corpses, blood, or guns attractive. On the other hand, not everybody gets what they want. You might end a war without a home, without a family, or even without yourself. So, are you getting a “little something”?

I decided to leave war for my last blog because I believed that it was definitely the central figure of the book’s structure and proceedings. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut not only discards the usual climax structure, but also demonstrates that war itself has no climax. If the book is about war, and war has no climax, then the book cannot have climax either. That might explain the idea of Billy being “unstuck in time”. In order to make the book about the book about the war, a greater resemblance of war itself, Vonnegut dismisses the climax in order for the reader to feel the reading of the book as a soldier feels in a battlefield of war. When we finish the book we have nothing to say, just as when a war finishes there is nothing to say about it. “One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-tee-weet?”” (Vonnegut 215). As the story finishes the way Vonnegut planted ten chapters before, the reader has nothing to say about it. It just happens, there is no why.

There is no why in the story. The events just happen. Sometimes we ask ourselves, why did World War II happen? Why did it happen? Some people say because Hitler wanted to clean the human race from Jews amongst other ethnicities and religions. Others say that it had to happen due to the constant unrest happening in Europe due to totalitarianism. These are just vague explanations. Seventy years have passed since the war started and yet we have to find the why. Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why” (Vonnegut 77). Throughout the book events happened without a reason. We might think of many reasons why Vonnegut might have chosen Billy to be unstuck in time. But we will never find the true reason of why. So, if there is nothing intelligent to say about war, why did he write a book?

Why We Feel?

People sometimes tell me I have a heart of stone. I can’t deny, nor can I accept. Tears refuse streaming out of my eyes when a friend leaves, a person dies, or a bad moment in my life happens. We can’t control our feelings, they just are. Human beings are often differed from other animals due to their ability to feel. “I could carve a better man out of a banana” (Vonnegut 184). Billy was never the most sentimental man, nor was the words of this book the most introspective. By lacking the ability to feel, or to control his feelings, Billy is considered inhuman. We see Billy on a vegetable state now, but maybe he always was on a vegetable state. As far as we know, he was never human, he possessed qualities a normal being could or would ever imagine. He never cherished love towards his life, nor his wife, son, or daughter. He never felt, and therefore he never was. Humans are known for feeling, and when we no longer feel, we stop being.

The only moment we stop feeling is when we die. But we have to die. Billy’s death is more ambiguous than what it sounds. We know he died on a baseball park just before giving a speech on February 13, 1976. I thought he had really died, but then the book would’ve finished two chapters ago. The book is about Billy Pilgrim, and if he is dead, then the book wouldn’t exist. But that’s one of the many things the book can’t explain. “When Billy saw the conditions of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn’t cried about anything else in the war” (Vonnegut 197). He cried and he didn’t know why. Most of the times we cry because the moment we live resembles a past experience: a sad moment that automatically reappears from the ashes of our memory. But Billy will not only remember the past when he cries. His memories will restructure his present and future as well.

He always felt the same: “It was all right. Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that in Tralfamadore” (Vonnegut 198). Billy lived in a constant denial of his state of being. He denied feeling sad, denied that he hated life and found no meaning in living it. Still, he was unable to stop tears from streaming down his face. Tralfamadorians believed that Billy had to “concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones” (Vonnegut 195), which shows once again how feelings play a vital role on Billy’s life. He never identified with feeling love or friendship. The only thing he identified in the world was that “he was there”. He knows he existed because he was present, but never felt like it. Now I’m writing words, but I don’t feel like it. I shall stop now.

Concealing The Undisclosed

I thought that secrets were made to be found with time. Certainly, that’s not the case as Billy Pilgrim is unable to find an explanation to a feeling he finds within himself. I thought that secrets could only be held within three people if two of them were dead. But then, how can we know we have a secret if we don’t even know what it is? I once heard, “Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one”. We never knew of such thing as a secret until this chapter of the book. By being ignorant of that aspect of Billy, we never felt the curiosity to find out about it. Here, Billy Pilgrim reveals to us he has a secret, and therefore it’s no longer a secret. He failed hiding the fact he possessed one. “He had supposed for years that he had no secrets from himself. Here was a proof that he had a great big secret somewhere inside, and he could not imagine what it was” (Vonnegut 173). Even he was ignorant of such secret. By not knowing it, the secret was never a secret. Why? Because as soon as it came to existence, it was revealed that there was a secret, making it a secret no more.

Once they asked me, “Where do vanished objects go?” I never knew the answer to this question. If you know it, please tell me. The secret is, for the sake of the argument, the vanished object. When it is revealed, where does it go? I once thought about it for a long time and said, “To non existence, it stops being”. But then my answer crashed with basic reason. It cannot stop existing for the same reason that matter or energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Words just don’t appear in this text. They are feelings, which become a thought, that become an idea that becomes a letter that becomes a word, which later becomes another idea. Billy’s secret didn’t appear in the middle of page 173 of the book. It was present always, but it was non existence. In that page it started being. That song he heard ignited that doubt, which became a secret all of us know about it but none of us know what it is. By not knowing then, is it still a secret. Once again, the words came back to my mind: “Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one”.

Finding The Lost

“Just think how happy you would be if you lost everything you have right now, and then got it back again”, he kept telling me. I couldn’t really think of such thing, since when it’s lost, is gone forever. Maybe life will lead me back to the lost, or maybe I will find a way through it. But when I’m lost myself, how can I get it back?

“Just think how happy you would be if you lost everything you have right now, and then got it back again”, he kept telling me.

I thought about it once, twice, but I was lost in my own thoughts. Considered Dante for a moment, and the fact of him being lost in life’s journey: “When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray” (Dante, I. 1-3). He was lost, as well as I am right now. Lost in my mind, not knowing what to write about in order for you to find me and enlighten my path. I’ve lost everything I have right now: my ideas, my “path that does not stray”, you, and me myself. And he kept me saying the same thing: “Just think how happy you would be if you lost everything you have right now, and then got it back again.”

If I could just travel in time, to about twenty minutes ago when I lost myself, maybe I would be writing better words for you. But I’m lost, and I cannot find the link to the letter, nor the letter to the word. “What if we are lost in time? We cannot find time can we?” I asked him, thinking of nothing more intelligent to say. Those words reminded me of a character I had once heard enouncing a speech at a baseball park. He said he was going to die, or something like that. I remember him saying, “It is high time I was dead...many years ago…If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I’ve said” (Vonnegut 142). He was indeed correct, he died minutes later.

“Space is where you are, time is when you are. If you lose time, you lose interest”, he told me, but not really answering my question. Time’s intangible, and therefore cannot be found again. But as it seems, this guy I’m talking to you about, found time after losing it. His name was Billy Pilgrim, he was “unstuck in time”, according to another friend of mine. He said that Billy’s life was meaningless, since he was lost in it.

But Billy was lost as well. Then, did he ever find it again? “He didn’t know where he was…he whispered to him his address: “Schlachthof-funf [Slaughterhouse-five]” (Vonnegut 156). He was lost and he found in Slaughterhouse-five a home. Maybe he was used to it in war, to identify this place as his only home. Pretty ironic due to the fact a slaughterhouse can be everything but a home. In it you will never find the warmth and cherish the love of a home. But in Billy’s case, he never found that home in his life. He would never tell the difference between dreams and reality. For him it was the same thing: meaningless memories. His life is all a memory, since every part of it he already lived it, and therefore remembers it. He died, we all know that. But did he ever find that aspect of life that he lost?

“Just think how happy you would be if you lost everything you have right now, and then got it back again”, he told me once more.

“Stand still. The trees ahead and bush beside you are not lost”, I finally responded. I had found my way back to the path of my life, and hence, the end of my writing.

The Difference Of Similar Meanings

We can write two different texts, both with the same idea, but the words we employ to develop that thought are what establish the main differences between both. I can write a paper about sports directed to a friend, a teacher, a colleague, or my own boss. Even though they are all about sports, I cannot simply refer to all of them in the same way. Similarly, words like “lots” and “many” that are simply identical in usage, and used in the same place, can change the whole essence of the sentence. The huge, wide difference is that there is no difference. I can say “there are many people”, or “there are lots of people”, I am transmitting the same message, but which one’s better? Both are correctly employed, but they don’t coexist peacefully for the same audience. In my opinion, “lots” falls into the more improper/familiar register, while “many” is a more formal way of referring the sentence. The words mean the same, just as when I say “lend me five dollars”, or “lend me five bucks”. We use both in our lives, but not at the same time, and not to the same people.

The Middle Of Our Memories

When we know how it is going to finish, we feel impotency towards the fact we don’t know how the events build up in order to achieve that ending. I know this blog will finish in “war”, but nevertheless I don’t really know how I’m going to engage the words in order to finish talking about war. War? Well, the book is about a war itself, it’s not that difficult then to include war in the context of this words I keep writing to entertain you. When we enter a war we don’t know if we are going to live to tell the tale, at the moment we feel our cold feet in the middle of the night we certainly don’t want to live to tell the tale, we prefer to die. “So Billy experiences death for a while. It is simply violet light and a hum. There isn’t anybody else there. Not even Billy Pilgrim is there” (Vonnegut 143). What happens after death? Can we still tell our tale? Can this words I’m telling you keep existing even though I die just at the moment I write this word? This book continued being even after Billy’s death. And Billy continued being after his death, due to the book.

By knowing we are going to die we start to value life, in a way. Morals in life tell us to bielve that we will only learn how to live when we learn how to die. Billy Pilgrim, although he accepted death more than anyone, never learned how to die. Therefore, he never learned how to live, which explains the meaningless life he experiences. He describes that there is nobody on death. Hence, death is nonexistent, unutterable. We don’t feel death, although Billy knows when he will die, he doesn’t feel it, he just says “Farewell, hello, farewell, hello” (Vonnegut 142), and travels back to the middle of his life. In his life farewells are just hellos, or endings are just beginnings. As the proverb states, “every story has an ending, but in life endings are just beginnings”. In Billy’s life, the end just leads to a new beginning, which leads us to believe that he is trapped in the readiness of this cycle between endings and beginnings. This leads us to believe that the middle of Billy’s life is its real end. And what is the middle of his life? The massacre of Dresden in 1945.

He recalls the past through memories, since he is not actually traveling through time. He is still existent on the present, or the future, before, during, and after his time travel. In memories, we constantly remember our past, and try to reflect on it in order to live our present. Billy, on the other hand, “with his memories of the future, knew that the city would be smashed to smithereens and burned” (Vonnegut 150). When we remember our future, yes that sounds a bit awkward to say, we are foreshadowing the events. But foreshadowing isn’t really the case here because since the very beginning we know how this will “end”, or maybe just begin. The middle is the ending of the story itself. Billy finds cohesion with his death, as well as his birth, but never understands the meaning of being part of a war which leaves nothing intelligent to talk about. For many of us war is to “abandon all hope”, but for Billy war means nothing, just knowing that the beautiful city of Dresden will collapse days later. Besides that, there are only futile words about it. After all, there is nothing intelligent to say about a war.

Me, Myself, And I

Jose Maria was gambling through the letters and sentences while Billy Pilgrim traveled in time constantly. Pages grew eternal as time’s cycle started and ended, and I was beginning to feel the perplexity of who was talking to me. I thought of Billy as a prisoner of war, who saw Dresden fall in the hands of massacre, while Jose Maria shrugged the deaths and followed the chapter, dying. “So it goes” (Vonnegut 91). The narrator constantly interfered in Billy Pilgrim’s life stream as a dead person appeared. It happened, it couldn’t be prevented. It just happened. And as he read the book, it also just happened. Confused about who was talking to him, Jose Maria kept reading while the same question meddled in his mind: who is the narrator of this story? It could be Billy Pilgrim, or it could be the man himself, he who wrote the book, Kurt Vonnegut. Billy Pilgrim lived the amber of the moment, but Vonnegut also lived during World War II. He was also trapped in that cage of war.

I felt pity about his confusion. He kept underlining important parts of the text, hoping to answer that question I’d asked myself. Maybe the answer was in that “Fourth Dimension”, invisible to my eyes and to his too. I kept thinking if the story was true or only “the beginning of Billy’s miseries in the metaphor” (Vonnegut 115). He asked himself, ‘a metaphor of what?’, but was only caught into ore confusion, more questions, and the answers remained unknown for all of them. Maybe that’s our fate, to live a list of moments without meaning, without answers and just say to ourselves “That’s life” (Vonnegut 115), trying to be indifferent towards that why of the existence of the moment. We cannot do anything about it, we just live it, are part of it, and don’t have the authority to question our free will in it. I felt like when I watch a movie for the second time. Alredy knowing what’s going to happen, we hope that it happens differently so the main character’s fate goes the way we want it to go. But this doesn’t happen: it’s already predestined to be. That’s life.

But still the question came through his mind, and I felt sorry for his confusion. The differences and similarities between Billy Pilgrim and the supposed narrator were each time more ambiguous to me. Who was who? Billy Pilgrim couldn’t be the narrator because the story wasn’t simply narrated in the first person purely. There was another guy present in this amber of the moment: “The truth of it startled him. It would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim-and for me too” (Vonnegut 121). That was clear. There was more than one person within the amber of the moment we were all living. Not only Billy Pilgrim, but an unknown narrator who referred to himself as “me”, but in the amber I’m also present, and Jose Maria too. The writer’s unknown, his time, and his position in this story. There’s a third person omnipresent who knows everything that’s happening from the massacre at Dresden to the aspect of Billy being “unstuck in time”. He is all knowing. He knows the beginning, middle, and end for the story which leads to Billy’s impossibility to change any aspect of his life, and therefore mine. This person is still present within the text, “That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book” (Vonnegut 125). Indeed, there’s the author, the narrator, the creator of Billy’s universe. I felt he was relieved about the fact he had answered one of his questions, but still more popped into my mind. Felt apologetic about reading this chapter. That was me, the author of this blog.

Why To Choose How To Will

We constantly defy our fate, we constantly believe our life is unfair and fall unconsciously in the question of “Why me?” (Vonnegut 76). Why are we here? Humanity forms in a stream around this revolving question. We are here for a reason, but if that reason is inexistent hence we are here against our will of existence. The fact we are going to die is already known even years before it happens. It is already arranged and we are locked into that destiny that we can’t defy. The crossroads of life occur as many moments happen simultaneously under a fourth dimension invisible for us. Therefore, we are living a life of pre structured moments, a life that has already been lived. We are just venturing through a circle that has no beginning, and no ends.

By thinking of life as a linear progression, we believe on the idea of free will as a line can change its direction when we take a decision or a new event is introduced on its path. But, when life is cyclical, as according to Tralfamadorians, the circle of life is already printed on our fate and our only will is to accept its destiny. “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why” (Vonnegut 77). By living a life without a meaning, without a reason, we forget our existence. Billy Pilgrim finds no interest in life and “had forgotten why, but a reminder soon came” (Vonnegut 78). He finds himself in the misery of his own fate. Why is he a prisoner of war? Why does he weep without reason? Why can’t he sleep normally? The question recurs in his life constantly and he never finds an exact answer. He forgets why he’s living and therefore ignores the fact that death is the worst fate of humanity.

By living in the “amber of this moment” we are living trapped as bugs. No free will in our dictionary, we are just were we had to be at the moment. We try to explain why things happen. How we can achieve some moments and avoid other (like death for example). But as long as we try, “all time is all time. It does not change” (Vonnegut 86). The structure of our life doesn’t owe us explanations or warnings about what happened or what’s about to occur. It simply happens. By living in our linear progression of events we believe on free will. We consider the possibility of changing the direction of our line. “Only on Earth is there any talk of free will” (Vonnegut 86). According to Tralfamadorians, destiny is structured way beyond our control. Hence, every moment is lived accordingly, and immune towards the act of free will. We try eternally to change what we cannot change, disregarding the possibility of death. But when it happens, death, we are gone, against our free will. So it goes.

Finding In Death Life’s Lost Essence

Writing an anti-war book, as explained in the previous chapter, is as ineffective as writing an anti-glacier. Commonly, death is seen as a feared and discriminated character, which is feared by everyone but Billy Pilgrim. “Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes’” (Vonnegut, 27). This shrug appears in the context of the story every time the narrator mentions a death, which on most of the cases is pretty ironic: Billy being the only survivor of a plane crash, his father’s hunting accident, and his wife’s accidental poisoning of carbon monoxide, which lead us back to believe that writing an anti-war book is as ineffective as stopping death. But curiously, Billy is the only one who survives all the failed attempts death has on him. Death to him is not the end of the path, because his life is not a path as those of every human being. When he “dies”, he transports into another moment of his life, passing through death and prebirth: living again.

Billy’s perception of time makes the reader already know the beginning, middle, and end of his story. Hence, the book’s and Billy’s path is not linear, but irregular because it doesn’t follow the traditional sketch of living our lives heading towards death. He constantly dies, making him “unplottable” on the author’s outline about the events of the story. “One end of the wallpaper was the beginning of the story, and the other end was the end, and then there was all that middle part, which was the middle… and the yellow line stopped because the character represented by the yellow line was dead. And so on” (Vonnegut, 5). Supposing Billy’s line is yellow, it would be “unplottable” because his death is his birth and his end is just his beginning. Due to the fact of Billy being “unstuck” in time, the reader has no real notion of the past, present, or future, and consequently no beginning, or end. By “dying”, Billy becomes omniscient of the events occurring to him at the present while he dives into his memories and foreshadows.

Since the reader is sensing the story through Billy Pilgrim’s experience, the reader gets to see death as the most tragic part of war itself. As Billy lives all these deaths throughout the chapter, death becomes directly related to war. Death is death and war is war, which leads us to believe that, ironically enough, war and peace are interdependent: there cannot be war without peace and peace without war. Similarly, the story’s protagonist Billy is depicted as an antiwar hero due to the fact there is a war. There are no heroes without villains, and even the most horrific and beautiful aspects of war are useless in the presence of death, leading us to the same ending: the eternal singing of birds.

The story of Billy in War can be represented through the method of sink-or-swim: “His father was going to throw Billy into the deep end, and Billy was going to damn well swim… he lost consciousness… sensed that somebody was rescuing him. Billy resented that” (Vonnegut, 44). Billy prefers sinking to swimming, because when you sink you lose consciousness and then its gone. When you sink you die and don’t have to strive to continue life’s rough path, as it is swimming. Billy’s indignity as a soldier and the horrible events that constantly swing into his life make him accept death, and not fear it, making the reader believe that in live there are far worst things that death: “You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping” (Epic Of Gilgamesh). Maybe Billy found in death that little thing he never found in life.

The Consistent Free Will

Sometimes we pray, we wish, or we pledge for our lives to improve. We ask that guy up there for a better destiny, to forgive us for our actions, etc. While we live our consequential stream of events in life, were the result of one event affects directly on the next, we believe that any wrong decision can completely change our fate. Our fate is to find the meaning of our life, to keep that hope alive, but when life’s meaningless the whole point of prayer and destiny is another story. Billy Pilgrim loses the meaning and understanding of his life as events are inconsequential items in a long stream of memories. His past, present, and future are indifferent to one another, which leads to his inability to change his destiny as his circle of life is already written. “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future” (Vonnegut 60). Billy lives a cyclical life on a world where everyone believes that time moves in a single linear progress. Humanity doesn’t know the difference between things they can change and things they can’t.

Living in a world were destiny is already predestined, Billy Pilgrim feels “unenthusiastic” about living. He feels indifferent towards the events occurring in his life, because he is living a life that he doesn’t understand. Acts totally apathetic towards the events he faces, the past he already lived, and the future he is waiting to live. Feels alone in this world, because he is living a Tralfamadorian life in a world of “human beings”, and finds in prayer that spirit guide. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference” (Vonnegut 60). Serenity, courage, and wisdom. These three words play similar words on this prayer. He wants to identify that difference between what he can change and what he can’t. By asking for serenity, Billy Pilgrim is submitting himself into apathy or the absence of emotion towards his life. Asking for courage is directly connected to his indifference towards death, which he welcomes openly due to the fact he lives a life that doesn’t have a meaning. But by gaining wisdom he is gaining fear, and losing serenity. When he knows the difference he will fear what he can do and can’t, hence enter into a loop of misunderstanding.

This loop is the cycle he lives in his life. As he closes his eyes, he seals his understanding to the world. He changes moments, and travels to another moment which he might understand, but he only engages into more confusion. Acting for a reason he was ignorant of, “Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping” (Vonnegut 61), weeping for that missing aspect in his life, that one he cannot find even in the deepest of his past, present, or future. At the end of his life, his understanding won’t be greater, but instead he will keep revolving in that circle that has no beginning or end. “Where have all the years gone?” (Vonnegut 57). He has lived a life without choice. He cannot change anything because even if he tries, destiny is written and can’t be changed. Ask Oedipus, whose actions were useless against destiny. Then, are we living a life at free will?