war plays no favorites
To me, it seems that only the "fittest and smartest" can survive through the toughest times, in this case, war. That's why I thought this book was so interesting because Billy is in no way shape or form one of the fittest or aggressive. He's the polar opposite and someone I would not expect to make it through the first week of battles. I guess this is the irony that Vonnegut portrays mixed with dark humor here and there.
You would expect Weary and the two scouts to survive the war more than Billy. They have the right mindset about war and are eager to show the Germans "their power" if they have any. It's pure dark humor how Vonnegut decides to kill both the scouts right in front of Weary and Billy. The two scouts decided to leave Weary and Billy because the latter couldn't keep up and were better off dying. The next thing you know, the scouts die while in hiding, not even while heroically fighting the Germans.
War doesn't play favorites, it kills whoever and whenever it wants to. That's just the nature of war.
Similar to how the scouts left Weary and Billy, Weary despises Billy and thinks Billy is no better than the dead. He probably only stays next to Billy because he needs someone who listens to his ego rants and because Billy takes everything in. Vonnegut plays a cruel joke once again when Weary dies from gangrene. He describes Weary's death as such a trivial moment of time, it completely contradicts the image of Weary that he believes he should portray.
Billy is one of the few that survives through everything. Is it luck? Billy definitely survived without necessarily "cheating" death by sacrificing others before him, but he did cheat death on multiple accounts. What does Vonnegut want to portray through this character who doesn't believe in anything and mindlessly wonders around?
What I got from this book was that war doesn't stop for anyone, Billy survived out of pure chance and pure chance only. All this aggression and the false front weren't necessary; perhaps it was better that Billy was a little slow and dumb because he didn't have to think too much about the horrors and trauma that men went through. It's so ironic to think that being slow and dumb may have benefited Billy in some kind of way, but even then, he had traumas hidden deep inside of him that he didn't realize until many years later.
You would expect Weary and the two scouts to survive the war more than Billy. They have the right mindset about war and are eager to show the Germans "their power" if they have any. It's pure dark humor how Vonnegut decides to kill both the scouts right in front of Weary and Billy. The two scouts decided to leave Weary and Billy because the latter couldn't keep up and were better off dying. The next thing you know, the scouts die while in hiding, not even while heroically fighting the Germans.
War doesn't play favorites, it kills whoever and whenever it wants to. That's just the nature of war.
Similar to how the scouts left Weary and Billy, Weary despises Billy and thinks Billy is no better than the dead. He probably only stays next to Billy because he needs someone who listens to his ego rants and because Billy takes everything in. Vonnegut plays a cruel joke once again when Weary dies from gangrene. He describes Weary's death as such a trivial moment of time, it completely contradicts the image of Weary that he believes he should portray.
Billy is one of the few that survives through everything. Is it luck? Billy definitely survived without necessarily "cheating" death by sacrificing others before him, but he did cheat death on multiple accounts. What does Vonnegut want to portray through this character who doesn't believe in anything and mindlessly wonders around?
What I got from this book was that war doesn't stop for anyone, Billy survived out of pure chance and pure chance only. All this aggression and the false front weren't necessary; perhaps it was better that Billy was a little slow and dumb because he didn't have to think too much about the horrors and trauma that men went through. It's so ironic to think that being slow and dumb may have benefited Billy in some kind of way, but even then, he had traumas hidden deep inside of him that he didn't realize until many years later.
I agree wit your post on the fact that it's kinda funny that out of all people Billy survived the longest. However, Billy actually doesn't survive. He actually dies to a sniper later on (at least according to his little time traveling). In chapter 10, Vonnegut includes a short mention the assassination of MLK and Kennedy to help us understand that it doesn't matter how fit you are, how well regarded you are, etc. you will die the same death. War doesn't let you show your own individual fitness and characteristic. Therefore, there cannot be the test for the survival for the fittest.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good point--at least in terms of his future-predicting time-travel perspective, Billy's death does close the loop of "revenge" on behalf of Roland Weary, decades after the war ends. So he doesn't *technically* "survive" the war in this sense--not just because he eventually dies (so it goes) but because he dies as a direct result of his experiences in the war. There's still a great deal of irony around this particular version of a "war casualty," though, as he's killed by an *American* ex-soldier as "revenge" for a ludicrous charge that Billy is responsible for Weary's death, and he's killed during peacetime in America. These ironies are related to the irony of Billy and the other prisoners hiding out from *American* bombs in the slaughterhouse basement in Dresden.
DeleteI think that the arbitrary nature of war is Vonnegut's main theme of the book. Dresden, which had been little to do with the war and was kind of just minding its own business, was horrifically destroyed in a firebombing intended to kill everyone there. Meanwhile, the british soldiers in the german POW camp were having a great time thanks to their 10x rations and friendly guards. There is no correlation between a characters bravery or skill and their outcome at the end of the war.
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