Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade

Last weekend I made a goal to finish this book before we headed to our Super Bowl party. I wasn't far away from finishing and I thought I would just sit down and knock it out. I think that it makes a week that I finished it and for those of you who knew me in high school, that is a pretty crazy feat. I never read in high school and looking back now it really was because I wasn't a good reader. My mom tells me all the time that she explains to parents of her students that hate to read that her son was the same way and then he went on a mission and came home and hasn't stopped reading. That is mostly true, Becky says that it was because of her that I read all the time. When I was living in Twin with Marc, Becky was working at Barnes and Noble and she would get "strips" (books that they would strip the cover off and send back to the publisher and they would throw the books out) and bring them over to read before she tossed them out. She brought a book over that I don't even know the title because it didn't have a cover. I really got into that book and couldn't put it down. It was a really good book but I did want to impress Becky at the time as well. Becky takes credit for that and I am fine with that. I do think that both of them are right though. I really learned to read better while I was on my mission. I was able to concentrate and focus on a book. By Becky bring that book over it got me started on reading after my mission and that has been a great thing too. I hate when I don't have something to read now and that is why I have read Fahrenheit 451 three times.

A friend of mine turned me on to Kurt Vonnegut and said that I should read this one first. He said that they were all pretty crazy but that since I was reading a lot of political type books that I should start here and move on with some of the others. Although you wouldn't know it while reading this book, it is an anti-war book. The book is about Billy Pilgrim and his time in World War II and the bombing of Dresden, Germany February 13th 1945. Kurt Vonnegut does so well writing about this because he was a prisoner of war in Dresden at the time of the bombing. Billy seems to flash through time from his youth to his old age. He claims that he was abducted by aliens and taken to their planet, Tralfamadore, where he is put on display in a bio-dome similar to a zoo. You learn about Billy and his life jumping around through different time periods and dimensions but the one constant is Billy's time in Dresden and the horrible atrocities that took place there. Near the end of the book Billy is in the hospital after a plane crash and he meets a Harvard history professor, Rumfoord, who is writing a book about WWII bombings and sky battles. He can't stand Billy and thinks that he would be better off dead. One night this professor is talking about Dresden and how he needed to write about it from the Air Forces stand point to help people understand. Billy spoke up and told Rumfoord that he was there. It took some time to convince Rumfoord that Billy was there but he finally came around. The bombing of Dresden was a horrible act on the allies part. It killed more people then Hiroshima, and Dresden didn't have any war related armaments.

A couple of things that I have been contemplating over the last week has been a couple of excerpts from the book that I will conclude with. I do think that this book may be a little crazy for some but it is a great book. I did love it and the more I think about it the better it gets. I don't know what I am on to next but a friend of mine (Chris Percy) said that he had a hard time with The Fountainhead and I have thought I may want to start it. My parents might be happy since it is the Republican bible and I know that they would rather me read more conservative books rather than the liberal anti-war books that I have been reading.

Excerpt from Slaughterhouse-Five

"You were just babies in the war--like the ones upstairs!"

I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.

"But you're not going to write it that way, are you"

"I-I don't know," I said

"Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne of some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs."

So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.

"...I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it 'The Children's Crusade.'"

Discussion between Rumfoord and Billy while they are in the hospital.

"It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden.

"I know," said Billy.

"That's war."

"I know. I'm not complaining."

"It must have been hell on the ground."

"It was," said Billy Pilgrim.

"Pity the men who had to do it."

"I do."

"you must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground."

"It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore."