Billy Pilgrim Research Paper

"Death may be the greatest of all human blessings."The above title comes from the well known philosopher Socrates, and in fact he is right. Since the dawn of humanity, there has constantly been death, destruction, catastrophe, and horror. Because if it weren 't for these things, would more humans exist today? More generations of more people? The human method of resurrecting and gaining even more power to become stronger as a race? Whether it 's within our cultures or societies we know of this method very well. The hope that keeps us advancing from the worst of times into the better. It 's the hope within death that new life will come and people will gain to be better that makes it the greatest of all human blessings. Hence, in such a book where …show more content…
First, he rarely ever makes mention of the Dresden bombings. He is always content with his wealthy life as an Optometrist, the situation in Vietnam, other stories involving the Holocaust, and other deaths such as the ones of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. This shows that life does go on a the process of renewal exists and hope still lies in humanity as it progresses into the future, whether it is in good or death. As Wayne D. McGinnis wrote in The Arbitrary Cycle of Slaughterhouse-Five: A Relation of Form to Theme, "The poignancy and force of Slaughterhouse-Five derive largely from an attitude about art and life that Vonnegut ap¬parently says two things: "No art is possible without a dance with death" and "the truth is death."" As Vonnegut makes his book into a form of art from the bombing of Dresden, it is done by making a concept of death. Going back to how death itself is what progresses renewal and hope in the …show more content…
Two of which are the moonscape and the bird in the end of chapter 10. The moonscape is always mentioned to cover all of Dresden after the fire bombings. As Billy Pilgrim emerges from the meat locker beneath a slaughterhouse into the moonscape of incinerated Dresden. In all horror and death around him, the moonscape exists as a massive image above him in beauty and escape. It exists as hope, possibly as a symbol of astronomy as new moon 's come and go with new phases. The moon here is a key emphasis as to what it does. As it has been said the moon might affect what 's here on Earth due to gravitational tides that not only affect water, but the ways humans act amongst themselves; and that with each new phase and changing of the moon, change occurs possibly on the Earth, along with the rotation of the solar system as life goes on, the future comes, and renewal is embraced along with hope. The bird in the end also serves as a symbol. It serves to live a new day and sing again in a peaceful way, implying that life will continue and hope does exist in the worst of places. Even Dresden where the bird 's song, "Poo-tee-weet?" signifies the pointlessness of war and how all this human destruction was done for nothing and progressed