Being Unstuck in Time in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Being Unstuck in Time in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut The concept of being unstuck in time refers to a person living from one moment in life to another instead of the day-to-day one we live today. The main character of Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim, does just that. He travels through the time line of his life experiencing moments of it in no particular order. In a flash, time travel for Billy happens with no warning to where he will turn up next. On the night of his daughters wedding, Billy is abducted by extra-terrestrials from the planet Tralfamadore. They enlighten him on the concept of being unstuck in time. Their belief is that, When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that†¦show more content†¦Moments in Billys life change instantaneously, not giving Billy a clue to where he will end up next. In one moment, he is sitting in his home typing a letter to the local newspaper about his experience with the Tralfamadorians, a nd in the next he is a lost soldier of World War II running around behind German lines aimlessly without a coat or proper shoes. He then became a child being thrown into a pool by his father and afterwards a forty-one year old man visiting his mother in an old peoples home. In the novel, changes in time are made through transitional statements such as, Billy traveled in time, opened his eyes, found himself staring into the glass eyes of a jade green mechanical owl. p.56 In the movie there is no such thing and different moments in Billys life happen instantaneously. Because scenes are continuous as times change, the movie better displays the authors attempt to capture in the notion of being unstuck in time. On the other hand, the novel does help the audience follow these time changes better by setting it up for the next scene, offering a background of Billys experiences before they begin through these transitional statements. Another difference between the two is the way in which characters are presented. In the novel the audience is introduced to Billys captive mate, Montana Whildhack, as she is first placed into the Tralfamadorian zoo. She is place in the cohabitation with Billy while she is unconscious and is filledShow MoreRelatedStyle Analysis of Kurt Vonnegut on Slaughterhouse Five1623 Words   |  7 Pagesbrilliant piece of literature. One example, for instance, is Kurt Vonnegut who may have been stimulated by the war, thus writing Slaughterhouse Ââ€" Five. Though one may categorize this piece as science fiction or even auto - biographical, it can also be interpreted as an anti Ââ€" war piece. Because Vonnegut is classified as a post modernist, one can take into account all the details, such as the similarities between the main character and Vonnegut, the Tralfamadorians, and the style and themes of the novelRead MoreWhy Does Billy Pilgrim Become Unstuck in Time in Slaughterhouse-Five?710 Words   |  3 PagesIn the book Slaughterhouse-Fiv e the character Billy Pilgrim is a reflection of the author Kurt Vonnegut. He is said to become unstuck in time. But what does the author really mean by â€Å"unstuck in time?† The story begins after the bombing of Dresden, which caused PTSD that is very common in many people after being at war. PTSD is a very common aftermath of war, or even during war. PSTD stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is very common in deployed troops of all ages. It occurs after an eventRead More Post-War Insanity Essay1191 Words   |  5 Pagesflying saucers come from.† Insanity is a major theme in Kurt Vonnegut’s life and in turn his novels tend to be a release for his thoughts of mental illness. Vonnegut’s characters tend to embody him or at least characteristics of himself. His characters generally suffer from mild insanity and therefore hints that Vonnegut himself is possibly mildly insane. In each of his novels there are characters that are highly related to Vonnegut such as Kilgore Trout, Billy Pilgrim, and Eliot RosewaterRead MoreEssay on Kurt Vonnegut’s novels Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five1365 Words   |  6 Pagesdamn cat and no damn cradle,† Vonnegut writes is his appropriately titled book Cat’s Cradle. A cat’s cradle is a string trick we all grew up learning and seeing, and it is just as Vonnegut described, nothing. Everyday we experience things like a cat’s cradle; we experience insignificant objects, feelings, or idols that we base our life on. We base and change our lives off of things with no real significance. Kurt Vonnegut’s novels Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five demonstrate the ineptness of theRead MoreEssay on Slaughter House Five842 Words   |  4 PagesKurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five shows the life of Billy Pilgrim through a twisted tunnel of reality. Pilgrim is raised in Ilium, New York and grows up to become an optometrist but shortly after is draf ted into World War 2. This soldier’s life is not shown as a straight line where you’re born in the beginning and die at the end but rather as a scatter plot of time due to Billy’s time traveling ways. â€Å" Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower andRead MoreSatire in Slaughterhouse Five Essay862 Words   |  4 PagesIn Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut uses satire in the topics of war, aliens, fate and the reasons for life itself. In Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the author uses many literary devices to bring across his point including black humor, irony, wit and sarcasm. He mainly uses satire throughout the book. Satire is a literary device found in works of literature that uses irony and humor to mock social convention, another work of art, or anything its author thinks ridiculous to make a point. VonnegutRead MoreKurt Vonnegut and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder810 Words   |  3 Pages​Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer, born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His parents, Kurt Vonnegut Sr. and Edith Vonnegut, both studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had two older siblings, Bernard and Alice. He attended Cornell University, along with his siblings. He enlisted in the army while at Cornell, and from there the army transferred him over to Carnegie Institute of Technology and then to the University of Tennessee, in which he studied mechanical engineeringRead MoreThe Madness of War1458 Words   |  6 Pageshumanity. Kurt Vonnegut’s experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II inspired his critically hailed novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), in which characters continually search for meaning in the aftermath of mankind’s irrational cruelty (Kurt Vonnegut: 1922-2007 287). Both the main character, Billy Pilgrim, and Vonnegu t have been in Dresden for the firebombing, and that is what motivates their narrative (Klinkowitz 335). In his anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut expressesRead MoreKurt Vonnegut : A Hybrid Of Science Fiction And Satire1716 Words   |  7 PagesLeanne Arata English 11 Mrs. Wheeler 5/8/2016 Kurt Vonnegut The idea of making a work that does not fit into a single category of work is how Kurt Vonnegut has become such a phenomenon. Kurt Vonnegut has a hybrid writing style which allows him to critique human nature and this is evident in his work. A hybrid writer is someone who makes something by combining two different genres to create something new. Vonnegut’s work is a hybrid of science fiction and satire. Satire is an author’s way of sayingRead MoreMany Writers In History Have Written Science Fiction Novels1055 Words   |  5 Pagesfew have been as enduring over time as Kurt Vonnegut s Slaughterhouse-Five. Slaughterhouse-Five is a personal novel which draws upon Vonnegut s experience s as a scout in World War Two, his capture and becoming a prisoner of war, and his witnessing of the fire-bombing of Dresden in February of 1945 (the greatest man-caused massacre in history). The novel is about the life and times of a World War Two veteran named Billy Pilgrim. In Slaught erhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses structure and point of view

Woodlands Community Center Corporation Case Analysis Essay

The Woodland Community Center Cooperation (WCCC) had been established in 1926 by a social worker who thought that Woodland, an East Coast seaport town, would benefit from a variety of social and human services. Alain Yates, the longest serving executive director, was a long standing icon in the organization for many years, and due to a mixture of longevity and assertion, had shaped the organizational culture of the agency during his time of leadership. He had established a culture that didn’t necessarily reward what would be considered the â€Å"norm†; such has hard work and excellence. Instead he rewarded seniority and loyalty to the organization, and above all, loyalty to him. Employees advanced through becoming Yates’ â€Å"pet† employees, and†¦show more content†¦The organizational culture has become one were loyalty and servitude has more value than ability and knowledge. â€Å"The key to employee survival and its attendant rewards was loya lty, not competency† (McShane 539). From this quote, it is clear to see that Alan Yates has created a culture of â€Å"yes† people, loyal to him and unable to correctly serve their client base. Furthermore, the organizational culture is being eroded as â€Å"adaptive† employees leave the company (McShane 467). As stated before, the organizational culture is further weakened by Mr. Yates as more experienced and â€Å"adaptive† employees are alienated and replaced by â€Å"in-crowd† employees. As the experienced employees leave, they erode the company by taking away many of the â€Å"rituals, legends and ceremonies† of the company (McShane 464). As the more experienced employees leave the company, many of the rituals, legends and ceremonies that had made WCCC successful will be lost, as they will be lost in the transition to new employees. The text also describes the three important functions of a strong culture, â€Å"Control system, Social glue and Sense making† (McShane 466). 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Hills Like White Elephants free essay sample

In this essay we will look at Earnest Hemingway’s â€Å"Hills Like White Elephants† as an example of his use of the minimalist technique, what that technique is, and what its overall effect has on the reader. What is minimalism and how did Hemingway use this technique in â€Å"Hills Like White Elephants†? The primary effect of Minimalism in modern prose is to place the control of the work back onto the reader. That is to say, the reader is forced to play an active or participatory role in both the visual and emotional aesthetic of the story. Whereas more vividly detailed works by authors such as Falkner and Joyce paint a picture and color in the details of character and setting for the reader, so that the reader becomes a passive viewer, Hemingway sets out to include the reader by using non-descript language with an extremely sparse use of adverbs and adjectives. In other words, what is not said becomes as important as what is said, and what is said is suggestive of so much more. Hemingway himself articulated this most cleverly when he â€Å"compared his method to the principle of the iceberg: ‘There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows. † (367). Hemingway’s description of the hills in the distance is extremely bare-boned. He gives us so little: â€Å"On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. † (368) He never goes on to say what the other side looked like, leaving that up to the reader’s imagination, memory, and experience. Furthermore, the description he does set up tells only of what was not. â€Å"There was no shade and no trees†¦Ã¢â‚¬  What is a reader to make of this? In a minimalist work, the reader becomes, in a sense, another writer, using clues from the circumstances of the story and then putting them together based on personal experience, memory, and imagination. In this way, the reader is not counting on the writer to give a message or a moral to the story or to guide them into liking or disliking one character over another. Rather, it mimics reality, forcing the reader to play an active role in filling in the spaces with details, not unlike a filling in the outline of a drawing with color. It can be argued, that this involvement of the reader is at the center of minimalism’s grand effect. Hemingway continues with this impersonal objective narrative style throughout the story. Hemingway never describes the way in which â€Å"the American† or â€Å"the girl† looked; in fact—that’s up to you as the reader to imagine based on the context of the story and based on your own life. We know the American is a man and that the girl is probably not American because he describes her as simply a girl as if in contrast to â€Å"The American. † As a reader, again, this involves you in the writing in that you are expected, in order to engage the story fully, to be able to provide your own details. What did the girl look like? What color is her hair? What did she smell like? How old was she, etc. One specific syntactical example of Hemingway’s minimalism in this story is in the way he used the dialogue tags â€Å"he said† or â€Å"she said, forcing the reader to arrive at the emotion from the actual dialogue. This leads to far greater complexity and depth within the characters. Instead of having a narrator describe these emotions, we see the situation take place as from the perspective of a fly on the wall, with no access to the psyche or emotional state of the characters. Without such access, we as readers involve ourselves, place our own lives and experiences into the story, thereby positing ourselves as part-writer. A byproduct of this is that emotion is removed from the text. Hemingway is not trying to convince the reader to sympathize with a characters emotions, but rather he forces the emotions to come directly from the reader. While minimalism is often explained as a â€Å"bare boned† stylistic approach, the effect, ultimately, is that it’s the reader, not the writer, who puts the flesh on the bones. Thematically, this minimalist technique Hemingway employs here has a similar effect. While one could easily say that this is a story about a man and a woman who are discussing whether or not she woman should have an abortion, Hemingway avoids vague, abstract, and unnecessary words to convey a subtler implication through dialogue. Indeed, one could say that this is a story about miscommunication, about a rift that exists between the two characters, an American who is insensitive and will say just about anything to convince the girl that she ought to have the procedure. Neither of the two characters truly communicates with the other. Both speak, but neither of the two truly listens. When they first receive their drinks, for example, and â€Å"†¦the girl was looking off at the line of hills,† (368) she attempts to reach out to him emotionally through the use of a symbol when she says, â€Å"They look like white elephants. † (368) But the American does not receive this in the way she might have hoped. He simply says, â€Å"I’ve never seen one,† (368) and then he continues to drink his beer. This disconnect between the two is clear and evident. It’s also worth noting that the fact that these two drink throughout their conversation further suggests a move away from understanding and from clarity and honest communication. Hemingway does not ever explicitly use the word â€Å"abortion†, nor does he state that she is â€Å"pregnant†, but this theme is implied. He relies on description and setting to convey a notion of this onerous decision. It is his use of dialogue that makes his minimalist technique most effective in expressing the real moral and importance of this story. For example, Hemingway never tells us that the American is perhaps an insensitive character who tries to manipulate the emotions of the girl, but it is surely implied. For example, on page 369, the American says to her, â€Å"I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in. † And then the girl does not say anything. So the American continues, â€Å"I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural. † There is a clear sense fear of one posits onto the emotional state of the girl who must make a weighty decision here, one which involves both life and death, but the American is willing to make great light of the situation and play the procedure off as something simple and natural. This minimalistic effect through the dialogue allows the reader to come to his or her own conclusions as to the emotional state of the characters, placing him or her, again, at the center of the writing itself. With regards to imagery, the minimalist technique Hemingway employs compounds the sense of emotion in the story. His vivid descriptions of setting, though sparse, force the reader to focus on these components and insert focus on these details more closely for a deeper, more personal understanding. For example, Hemingway uses simple description of setting and elusive imagery. The vague illustration of the hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white (368) forces the reader to question why this detail is given. It invokes images of an expecting mothers rounded stomach. But instead of stating this image, he uses the symbol to suggest this, which, as a reader, one is actively filling in the spaces, drawing up the image its implication him or herself. Another good example of minimalism in imagery in comes on page 368 when the American says â€Å"It’s pretty hot. † Twice the reader is told that its pretty hot (248) and this â€Å"climate† creates a sense of intensity in the conversation between the two. Their heated conversation about whether or not to go through with the abortion puts the girl in the hot seat, so to speak, for her to come to this weighty decision on her own. Making these connections as a reader adds weight to the metaphorical meanings of the story but making it personal. This style of writing necessarily involves the reader in forming his or her own pictures, placing the him or her at the very center of the writing of the story itself, and this is, perhaps, the most striking effect of Hemingway’s minimalism in â€Å"Hills Like White Elephants. †