This is it: Mad ^2

After some help I've chosen this blog:

It is often said that a soldier can come back in two ways: in a body bag or a changed man forever. Being a war veteran himself Kurt Vonnegut want to show how war affected him and other veterans, showing how a war is not worth life lost nor the lives changed. Kurt Vonnegut uses the idea of time travel frequently throughout the novel. As the Tralfamadorians would advise "Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones-to stare only at the pretty things as eternity failed to go by" (194) what we must recognize is that Billy had no free will, choosing where to travel to. He may have well be in the Trafamadorian zoo and go right to his childhood. Particularly striking is that with his time traveling he can also see the future. Billy knows exactly what his fate holds for him and yet he does nothing to alter it. Seeing this I want to answer a question frequently asked: Is Billy Pilgrim Crazy? Yes, without a doubt Billy is crazy Kurt Vonnegut not only does he shows us this thought the novel with Billy's actions, but he uses time traveling to prove how war drives people crazy, in this case Billy. As we are reading Slaughter' House-Five we are thinking, "all this happened, more or less" (1). What I'm seeing now at the end of the book is what Kurt Vonnegut real message behind the book, behind all these aliens, and time traveling is what happens to soldiers after they have lived through a war: they become mad.

A Nationalist in the time of Separatism wrote beautiful words describing his nation “I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise; Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man.”(16.322-324) A man looking to unite a nation yelling to those who didn’t want to hear, but still ignored. He expresses with deep love how America is an enormous poem, a country with such diversity in every field (states, people, culture, religion), should be united and not part.

Styles Upon Styles

As I pass the day in Leadership I was constantly thinking and organizing myself to get home and do all of my homework. As I thought of what we had seen in earlier poems in class I calculated how much time I had to spend reading these poems to fully analyze the best way possible, but when I got in front of this computer and started reading I gave thanks to God. As he writes he didn’t get caught up metaphor or symbolism which demands much more time to truly analyze poems to their fullest. “My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs”,(2.15) it can’t get easier than this. His poems are accessible by everyone, of course this is part of his subtle style.

“The parrot was almost a son, a love. He climbed upon her fingers, pecked at her lips, clung to her shawl, and when she rocked her head to and fro like a nurse, the big wings of her cap and the wings of the bird flapped in unison.” This bird made Felicite human, giving her true emotions. Flaubert might have used an animal, something we believe is in some way barbaric, to show how “animal” Felicite was before having Loulou in her life, “All things moved silently, like ghosts. Only one noise penetrated her ears; the parrot's voice.”

Felicite is so under appreciate,earning 100 francs a year, Felicite saved Madame, her children and herself from first oxen’s and then a bull. “‘Don't be afraid,’ cried Felicite; and murmuring a sort of lament she passed her hand over the back of the nearest ox; he turned away and the others followed”, a simple action, the best is yet to come when she confronts a bull. Surly saving Madame, and the children life in a heroic way, ending with: “The bull had driven Felicite up against a fence; the foam from his muzzle flew in her face and in another minute he would have disembowelled her. She had just time to slip between two bars and the huge animal, thwarted, paused.” Incredibly after this heroic act, Felicite didn’t take credit for her actions “and probably never knew that she had been heroic”. This bothered me increasingly because after an act like that she should see how she really is a powerful hearted young women, but her not noticing this, done by Flaubert on purpose shows how brain washed people were by their social standing.

When duty calls we must write after two weeks after doing virtually nothing I am sitting at my desk listening to some music and reading The Sentence Is A Lonely Place Written by Gary Lutz. My last blogs show how lazy I was the week before I left for Armenia, which I offer my apologies because truly they suck.
When I was about to read this essay, I was thinking of how I was going to respond to it. I had no idea. As I read on I started getting trapped into the essay as if I were reading the Twilight Sage. Mr. Lutz has been one of the few that has captivated my attention and imagination to its fullest. Just as he was describing what writing truly is for him: “virtually every sentence had the force and feel of a climax, in which almost every sentence was a vivid extremity of language, an abruption, a definitive inquietude”, and as he said this I identified that this essay of his had that.

Cute

I’ve always asked how a movie of The Crying Lot 49 would be- this is not what I expected. Low budget movie but, a cute one.