Billy Joel

Journal Entry #9 September 12, 2014 Topic: My reading since September 2nd Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut – pp.275 (Book finished) Slaughterhouse-Five is an antiwar satire following Billy Pilgrim, a former World War II veteran who has become “unstuck in time.” The novel has a nonlinear narrative, constantly jumping between Billy’s war time, pre-war, and post-war experiences as he lives the events of his life over and over again. The plot mainly focuses around the war and Billy’s…

1. The movie Sunset Boulevard follows a writer, a man named Joe who comes across an old mansion while trying to hide his car which is about to be reclaimed because he is unable to pay his bills. Desperate for a job, he starts to read the script of the old Hollywood star that lives in the mansion, Norma Desmond. Norma was once one of the biggest silent film stars in Hollywood, but once talking pictures got popular and she got older, there was less demand for her work, and she has spent the last…

In “Electric Funeral,” a chapter in I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined), Chuck Klosterman, a best-selling author, analyzes three separate “villains” in today’s society in order to emphasize their impact on others through their actions. In this analysis, Klosterman wrongfully assumes Perez Hilton, a out-of-date blogger, is a “real villain” because of his prejudice against the “first authentically famous blogger.” This incorrect thinking clouds his judgement from…

The films Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, and The Night of the Living Dead, directed by George Romero, both feature female characters in subordinate roles to their male counterparts. Double Indemnity features Walter Neff underestimating his lover Phyllis’s power and continually patronizing her, calling her “baby” almost exclusively. The Night of the Living Dead features Helen, who is constantly put down by her husband who never values her opinion. Both films use elements of…

I think the innocence of both Billy and Amasa is genuine. I also think that for both of them their innocence is bred from ignorance, but for different reasons. Billy is a foundling so most likely, as was the tradition of the time he was raised in a church sponsored orphanage. Due to upbringing he probably was quite naïve when it came to human behaviors. While the text made it clears that Billy was “angelic”, “innocent” and not too bright. I got the impression in a couple lines that Billy’s lack…

Ivanna Guerrero English 2 September 9, 2015 Fate and Free Will in “Slaughterhouse-Five” The novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, is about a war veteran named Billy Pilgrim who goes through war and at the same time goes back and forward in time to a moment in his life. He went from times he was in war, back to when he was an eye doctor, back to war again, then forward to when he was at home writing to the newspaper, back to war again, and so on. He went through hard times in life and…

Within the first chapter of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five the reader learns not only how the novel will begin but also, rather unconventionally, how it will end. In addition, Vonnegut presents a peculiar admission: “All of this happened, more or less” (1). Beginning in this curious manner sets the stage for a novel that demands the reader’s attention to more than just plot lines. By divulging such information regarding the ending and also disclosing that the content is not to be viewed…

Vietnam War. Although Vonnegut began writing Slaughterhouse Five as soon as he arrived home from World War II, it was the time that he allowed himself to write the novel that helped him compose and reflect his post-war ideas through the main character, Billy Pilgrim. If Vonnegut had not taken as long as he did to compose his feelings and write them into the novel, publishing it for the World War II generation, it…

Through the wild episodes of Slaughterhouse-5, Vonnegut follows Billy Pilgrim, a man whose mind has become “unstuck” due to the horrors of war. The semi-autobiographical novel spirals through Billy’s life, creating a dizzying and broad narrative touching on the countless unnamed people through arbitrarily linked segments. A major aspect of the novel is the trauma Billy experiences throughout the war, conveying Vonnegut’s own suffering and allowing the audience to empathise with both. Vonnegut…

in space. You are Billy Pilgrim. In the poem I Do Not, by Michael Palmer, the narrator makes a point of telling you again and again (In English) all the words he doesn’t know, and all the things he cannot say in English. In the book Slaughterhouse Five Billy Pilgrim finds himself unstuck in time, at some point in 1944. He has seen his birth, death, and everything in between, many times. These pieces of writing both relate to what it means to be an outsider, and…