An Introduction to Vonnegut: My First Real Post

So here it is. 11:05, the day the first real blog entry is due. Yep, I feel right at home. After all, this is an AP class.

For those who don't know anything about Slaughterhouse-Five, the premise is that this guy, Billy Pilgrim, suddenly becomes "unstuck in time."

When I first read that, I thought it was a fascinating interpretation of the idea. Being "unstuck" is so much different from time traveling. Traveling gives several implications: that it is controlled, that it is intentional, and that it is between two predetermined points. Becoming "unstuck in time," on the other hand, opens up a world of possibilities. Firstly, since it is a negative of being "stuck in time", it implies that everyone else is "stuck." And being "unstuck" opens up so many possibilities. It is freely moving between every moment of one's life.

But that brings up several issues that I think will be important to the book. How much of our life value is based on linearity? What significance do cause and effect have when one is free to move about time? I could propose to the woman I love one day and wake up a twelve year old boy the next. Unless, of course, I proposed to the girl I loved when I was a twelve year old boy...

And then other matters arise. What does death mean? I see it as being a closed door. You are still free to move about all of the rooms you've currently explored in the house, but that door, the future, will forever be closed.

One passage stood out to me in particular:

"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.

Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future."

Time travel without being able to change time. It is, essentially, just seeing the 4th dimension; a constant stream of who one is, from birth to death. But, while the past and the future are things to expect to be unchangable, the surprising mention is that Billy cannot change the present.

And so now I am left wondering how Vonnegut views time. Are our lives linear and predetermined, with the only difference being that some people live it from birth to death and others live it in a random order? It remind me of a book I planned to read, The Time Traveler's Wife, with a similar premise about a man who randomly moves throughout time.

Regardless, I think that this idea of fate will play a major role in the story, particularly when one considers that the context is the firebombing of Dresden (which, for those who don't know, killed more people than Hiroshima). Any moment of significant death or mass death in a story always brings to mind the possibility of preventing it. I really love these moments when moral and ethical philosophy meet theoretical science fiction. It makes me giddy. =D

I could keep talking for hours, but I think my post is already quite long, and I'm not sure how much it will really help me out in the long run, but it was fun to write.

And now it's 11:25. A linear progression from beginning of blog to end. Because, after all, I'm just stuck in time.