A question that sprung upon me during the very beginning of me reading Slaughterhouse-five was why Vonnegut chooses to dedicate his whole first chapter to explain why he wrote the book instead of jumping right into it. In the first twenty-two pages he tells us that almost everything were going to read is true and talks a great deal about his post war life. I thought this was an interesting way to start off a book and with it brought a lot of other questions for me. I began to wonder if Vonnegut didn't write the book this way would it change the way I interpreted it? Also, did Vonnegut want us to only view Slaughterhouse-five a certain way so that's why he did the first chapter like that? What do you think? Personally, I think that if an author takes the time out to explain why he wrote the book in the first actual chapter and not on the back of the book or in a preface it is to assure that the readers will see it and not just skip passed it. For him to want us to read it so bad makes me think that he wanted us to interpret the book in the way that he saw fit. I find this interesting because other than the first chapter the remainder of the book reminds me of 1984 in the sense that its left up to you how to perceive things. On the first line of the book it says, "All this did happened, more or less", why do you think Vonnegut wanted us to know that not all of what he wrote is true? However he made sure to let us know that most of the war parts are true, do you think this was for a particular reason? To me this book has a lot of meaning in almost every line and seems that almost everything Vonnegut does is for a particular reason, what do you think his reasoning is?
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Vonnegut's interesting choice
A question that sprung upon me during the very beginning of me reading Slaughterhouse-five was why Vonnegut chooses to dedicate his whole first chapter to explain why he wrote the book instead of jumping right into it. In the first twenty-two pages he tells us that almost everything were going to read is true and talks a great deal about his post war life. I thought this was an interesting way to start off a book and with it brought a lot of other questions for me. I began to wonder if Vonnegut didn't write the book this way would it change the way I interpreted it? Also, did Vonnegut want us to only view Slaughterhouse-five a certain way so that's why he did the first chapter like that? What do you think? Personally, I think that if an author takes the time out to explain why he wrote the book in the first actual chapter and not on the back of the book or in a preface it is to assure that the readers will see it and not just skip passed it. For him to want us to read it so bad makes me think that he wanted us to interpret the book in the way that he saw fit. I find this interesting because other than the first chapter the remainder of the book reminds me of 1984 in the sense that its left up to you how to perceive things. On the first line of the book it says, "All this did happened, more or less", why do you think Vonnegut wanted us to know that not all of what he wrote is true? However he made sure to let us know that most of the war parts are true, do you think this was for a particular reason? To me this book has a lot of meaning in almost every line and seems that almost everything Vonnegut does is for a particular reason, what do you think his reasoning is?
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I think this book had so many confusing meanings to it that were definitely there for a reason in Vonneguts mind. I think I would have interpreted the book differently if it was not written like this. I think he also put the first chapter there so it would not be skipped and so it could fully be explained. It had meaning, he wanted us to know that it wasn't all true because some was from his mind after facing all this post war stress. The war parts could have been because he wanted us to know that he really experienced that, it was not something crazy made up. It all seemed to have a bigger meaning
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