English Notes
September 12, 2013
Slaughterhouse Five
Chapter 1, Continued
Bottom of Page 5:
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Narrator goes to visit his old war buddy, Bernard O’Hare
He repeats the limerick about Yon Yonson (repetitive—can’t write about war).
Kids see the Hudson River. Narrator describes the fish “big as atomic submarines”—he still uses
war references
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Mary O’Hare prepares dinner—table looked like an operating table (she’s a nurse)
Mary is cold toward the narrator and the narrator wonders why
Mary says O’Hare can’t drink liquor after the war
Images of war: drinking involved, stealing, complete chaos, guy in a wheelbarrow
Mary was angry at the narrator—she says “you were just babies then (in the war)”
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Mary is afraid that the narrator will write about the war as if they were men, not boys, as
soldiers—war made her angry and she partly believes wars were encouraged by books and
movies
“So 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.”
Do books and movies encourage war? Yes, many war books/movies only
show the appealing parts of war (winning, heroism).
Romanticize (something)—to make things look better than they are. Mary
O’Hare fears that the narrator will romanticize war in his writing.
Figures that “romanticize war—Frank Sinatra/John Wayne (Modern day
equivalent in a war movie today would be The Rock, Channing Tatum, Stalone,
Matt Damon, Vin Diesel)
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Billy Pilgrim—crazy, innocent, weak, tall, skinny, awkward (he is the
opposite of what you would see in a war movie). He is the “leading” man in
the book because he is realistic, vulnerable, a kid, ordinary—a “filthy
flamingo”. He is a chaplain’s assistant. Even his last name, pilgrim, suggests
that he is on a holy journey (pilgrimage).
Narrator promises Mary that he will call the novel The Children’s Crusade (since they were only kids at
war). O’Hare and narrator look up what the Children’s Crusade was about. They look up the Crusades
from the middle ages and find out that the crusaders were ignorant, savage and full of hate. Were they
savage people killing others or religious people acting out of honor (romanticized)?
Passage reflects on how war is destructive (at any time). Dresden was destroyed,
rebuilt and destroyed again through war. Whether it is 1213, 1760, 1945, 1969, a
cyclical (repeating) pattern is happening.