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.
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.
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