Unclimactic War

There is no question that the goal of the Slaughterhouse-Five is for it to act as an anti-war novel. The narrator himself promises that it will be when he is talking to Mary in chapter one. He makes his promise by saying, "I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne" (Vonnegut 19). What he is saying is that the story isn't going to be about the "glory" of war but instead about the inherent truth. But that raises the question is it possible to write an anti-war book? That question has to be asked because of so many movies and novels that show war as a glorious thing.
But despite that, Vonnegut definitely succeeds in making Slaughterhouse-Five an anti-war novel. To do so he uses several techniques that make the novel incredibly anti-climactic and makes the reader feel uninvolved. He does this by making Billy Pilgrim the epitome of a horrible soldier. He writes it so that Billy is seen as a joke, often because he acts like one. He picks out the most ridiculous jacket, he puts on silver boots from a play and even gets asked if he is trying to make a joke. When combined with the way Billy acts disconnected from everything around him, for example, smiling at the weirdest times, the war-like scenes in the war don't seem exciting. An example of this is the scene where the two scout gets shot. While there is action going on, the tone of the book and the straightforward way it was narrated was able to make the scene not interesting in terms of action.
Another strategy he uses is irony. The book is absolutely full of irony and most of it is built around the same idea: those that are ready for the war and want to live, tend to die, while Billy who is not prepared whatsoever and makes no discernable attempts to stay alive continues to live. Once again a perfect example is the scene when the two scout gets shot. The two scouts who know what they are doing get shot and die but Billy somehow makes it out alive. What this does is show that war isn't a chance to prove yourself at all. You can prepare all you want but when it comes done to it the nature of war is so brutal that it doesn't matter.
Another thing Vonnegut does is using soldiers that don't match the stereotype used in typical war movies and books. Instead he follows up on his promise to Mary and portrays the soldiers as children and other people who don't want to be there. By making the soldiers in the war children like Roland Weary and Werner Gluck, or farmers like the soldiers that found Billy and Roland, or teachers like Edgar Derby, Vonnegut creates absolutely no character that would be played by Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. This shows that wars weren't actually entirely fought by people who were seeking honor and glory and instead shows the hard truth.

The Sun Also Rises Through Reed Glasses

In class, we talked about what we thought the world would look like today if we thought about it in the context of the atonists and Jes Grew. We talked about how the Black Lives Matter movement could be seen as the black empowerment part of Jes Grew. We also talked about how academia had become much more atonist. Overall, I thought that the discussion was very interesting. But something during the not so brief recap of the entire known history of Jes Grew caught my attention. Reed writes,  "When he heard of this, old Set ordered the murder of the Bulls and being a particularly mean cuss, ordered that they be tortured 1st. (This led to the sport that the American writer Ernest Hemingway took such delight in)" (Reed 167). This, of course, reminded me of The Sun Also Rises and made me wonder what it would look like if I thought about it in the context of Mumbo Jumbo. As I was skimming through the book to help refresh my memory I noticed how atonist the book seemed so it made sense that Reed referenced it. For example, there is the romanticization of the Basques. But thinking about history in the context of Mumbo Jumbo, The Sun Also Rises could have been an Atonist novel similar to how Harding could have been an Atonist puppet even though his slogan, "a return to normalcy", wasn't in reference to Jes Grew.
Since the overall plot of The Sun Also Rises is clearly Atonist, I decided to try to look at some of the main characters and judge where I think they would land on a scale from Hinckle Von Vamptom to Papa Labas. I started with Jake and decided he would land towards Hinckle Von Vampton simply because he is quite racist and homophobic and is one of the biggest fans of the bullfighting . For example, he makes fun of an African- American's speech and is called an aficionado. As for Bill he is around the same as Jake but is a little more outwardly so. Then there is Brett. Unlike the other two, she isn't racist or homophobic. She even defends some people from Jakes at times and seems involved in the culture in France. However, she doesn't really respect the culture in Spain. As such she is more towards the upper-middle of the scale. As for Cohn, I don't really know where he would fit because his role in the novel was mostly related to Brett.