The Children's Crusade

The novel has a subtitle of The Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death. Vonnegut had promised Mary O'Hare that he would show that the people fighting in these wars were children who were not yet old enough to truly understand the destruction and pain of war. They still had a sense of innocence and Vonnegut tried to portray that for Mary through his character of Billy Pilgrim. Billy had a sense of childlike attitude to everything in the war. It did not seem as if the war had any effect on him until he finally gave up and cried.

Poo-tee-weet?

Before the story started, Vonnegut warned the reader that his novel would begin with "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time" and end with "poo-tee-weet?" In the introduction chapter, Vonnegut said that after such destruction like Dresden the only thing that can be said is by the birds. The end of the novel shows Billy and his war friends finally leaving the destruction of war and Dresden behind. It ends by saying that he could hear the birds saying poo-tee-weet. This is the authors way of leaving the antiwar ideals to the reader to decide. He described the situation and all that could be said was poo-tee-weet.

God grant me the serenity...

This famous prayer reoccurs throughout the novel. This is yet another argument for the novel's major theme of fate. The prayer asks God to give the person the ability to "accept the things [they] cannot change." Vonnegut brings up religion in the book by lessening the effect of Jesus and religion by discussing the views of those on Tralfamadore. He disagrees with the Church's interpreatation of Jesus. Vonnegut uses the ideas of religion to reiterate his ideas on fate.

*****

Vonnegut uses the plot to explain some of his own literary techniques. He groups an idea consisting of a few paragraphs between to sets of stars. The people of Tralfamadore said that they read by looking at main ideas in clusters. I found it interesting that he would connect his own writing style directly with the plot of the book. This further proves the author's support of the Tralfamadore's lifestyle. To the author Tralfamadore seemed to be a Utopia compared to Earth.

Favorite Quote

One of my favorite quotes so far in the novel is "take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber." This quote speaks a lot to me because it says how we must live each moment of our lives to the very fullest. We are unable to change the unfortunate things that happen, but we can learn how to deal with them with a positive attitude. We are bugs in amber because the only thing that matters is that present situation. If one focuses too much on either the past or the future, then they lose track of how to live a happy life in the present. By focusing on pains or even successes in the past, one loses sight of how they should be living thir life in the present.

Fate Vs. Free Will

One of the major themes of the novel is the argument between fate and free will. The novel argues strongly in the side of destiny. The aliens of Tralfamadore said that the "moment simply is... here we are... trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." Destiny leads people to the present location without reason or explanation. This is the struggle of Billy Pilgrim. He is going on the journey of his life over and over again to maybe see or relearn something of importance from his past, present, and future. He cannot change his situation, so he must learn how to deal with the hand he is dealt by destiny. Vonnegut is illustrating this idea of destiny with these visions of Billy's flashes through time.

Adam and Eve

On page 95, Vonnegut makes a biblical allusion to Adam and Eve. He is describing how he wished that war movies would be played backwards. He showed how this would erase all of the death, sadness, and pain caused by war. This reversal would eventually lead to the creation of two perfect people of Adam and Eve. He hoped for a second chance where humanity would learn from its mistakes and try and avoid war in the future. However, I think he alluded to Adam and Eve to demonstrate the natural human flaws every person shares. Humans by nature share in the inevitability of pain and suffering.