Billy Pilgrim continues to simply say "so it goes" after every death. At first, this just annoyed me. I believed that Pilgrim was trying to conceal his pain and pretend he wasn't at all bothered by the deaths he witnessed. He seemed apathetic to everything, including his childhood home now being an empty space and the bombing of North Vietnam. However, I soon began to suspect there was a bigger reason behind this. It is soon explained in the novel, that Billy Pilgrim has a prayer on his office wall which says "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." I took this as an explanation for his apathy and saw it as something good. He wasn't trying to pretend he didn't care, he was simply forcing himself not to care because there was nothing he could do about it. I liked this philosophy a lot. If there's nothing to do, one should just accept it and move on, instead of hovering on the situation and never letting go. On the other hand, if there is something to do about it, one should have the strength to act and solve it. I found it inspirational and began to actually admire Billy Pilgrim. However, what followed in the story made me take back my admiration: Pilgrim believes there is nothing to do about the past, the present or the future. Because he sees time as something circular, and believes that everything is happening at the same time, he thinks there is no way to make a change. Therefore, his life is meaningless and routine-like, with (in his opinion) no decisions being made and everything being planned out until the very end.
We are always told that we have the power to make life what we want it to be. This is actually motivational, allowing people to make the best of their lives and change their minds about things many times. However, with this theory, Billy will not even try to change things because - as weird as it may sound - that is already the future's past, so it shouldn't be changed. Since everything is happening at the same time, there is no such thing as past, present, and future. This allows Pilgrim to believe that there is nothing to do about neither of these, and everything should stay the way he already saw it in the future.
I liked your blog post for its many topics, great connections, and reaction you made. Your main focus was the phrase of “so it goes”; I understand it is annoying to read as if Billy doesn’t care of the death of others. Its not that he doesn’t care, instead he has as you wrote, accepted the facts. I felt a strong connection with the movie The Pianist. In the movie there is a short scene where there are a group of soldiers burning corpses. The movies shows them having lunch as they watch the human bonfire. As Billy they have accepted the horrors of war and aren’t bothered with this horrible act. You continued on to relate it with Billy’s prayer in his office. This philosophy is very similar to a rule on Descartes “Discourse on the Method” it goes “Endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world”. I really liked your blog post and also hope to find out to whether the narrator is in a first or third person prospective.
ResponderEliminarWhat I like most about your entries, is that you make so much connections and talk about different things in which I always agree on. I read your blog, so I think that you always excel in all your entries. But a person that hasn't read your entries, and starts reading this one (unless they haven't read the book), they will get bored. So I think that what would make this one perfect, is a hook. Because the rest of your text is complete and very diverse, but a reader that doesn't know you, might not care if you that that the book was in first person.
ResponderEliminarI also have to say that I figured out the same thing when I was reading chapter two, I thought he was an omnipresent narrator. I love how you write Gaby!
Gabriela,
ResponderEliminarI really enjoyed reading your blog because it offers a different point of view from the others that I have read. You identify yourself with Billy Pilgrim because of his attitude towards life. Do you think that the attitude that Billy has reflects Vonnegut?
I noticed that you said that you didn't like it when Billy said: "and so it goes". I disagree with your reasoning, you say that Billy is trying to hide his pain... But is Billy the one narrating the story? If so, why would he feel pain over something that happened/ is happening/ will happen? Time is circular, this means, to my understanding, that the narrator is Vonnegut. Do you agree? Overall, good post. You challenged the reader.