Strategic bombing during World War II

to recreate a historical event through music? Daniel Bukvich attempts this very feat in his piece Symphony No.1(In Memoriam, Dresden, 1945). This piece of music has been the topic of many discussions in the musical world, and I’m sure that it would be a hot topic in the philosophy world as well. In particular, I think that Aristotle and Leo Tolstoy would have a lot to say about this piece. Aristotle’s definition of art focuses on humans’ ability to mimic real life and create a spectacle that…

Slaughterhouse Five, or the Children's Crusade: a Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut is a science-fiction, anti-war novel that tracks the life of Billy Pilgrim who has become “unstuck in time” and his experiences such as: his time as a hapless soldier to the firebombing of Dresden; his time on the planet Tralfamadore where he was displayed naked in a zoo; and even his own death. These events, rejecting a conventional narrative, are presented in a fragmentary fashion. It is within this novel…

THE U.S. ARMY IN WORLD WAR I On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson tended to Congress, requesting a revelation of war against Germany. A little more than two months prior, on January 31, the German government had reported its resumption of "unhindered submarine fighting." With the declaration, German U-pontoons would without cautioning endeavor to sink all boats going to or from British or French ports. Under the new procedure, U-vessels had sunk three American trader ships with a…

(Hemingway). The Book Thief and Slaughterhouse Five have many similarities, but also differences throughout the books. Death is present in each book and talked about throughout, in The Book Thief, Death is the narrator and takes us through time as the war is going on. Slaughterhouse Five is very different, death is something Billy, the main character, does not show feelings towards, he is able to move on very quickly from deaths. In Slaughterhouse Five and The Book Thief, death is shown and…

World War II was a horrific ordeal. Many people, innocent people, died during this war. There are many war survivors that believe that warfare is horrid and they share how the war affected them firsthand. Many of the survivors of the firebombing of Dresden lent their testimonies of what happened hoping that it would gain public awareness so people could see the tragedies of war. In Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut he tells a story about the effects war can have on a person by telling a…

SUBJECT Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, illustrates the events of the Dresden bombing through the life of Billy Pilgrim. Throughout the novel Billy Pilgrim has no control over time and constantly travels to different points of his life. Billy Pilgrim was born in Illium, New York and pursued a career in optometry. After graduating high school Billy was drafted into the army during World War II. In the war Billy meets up with three men, one of them named Roland Weary. These men decide to…

might be asking, what is the truth? As most people would agree it is that humankind is predestined to their fate, or maybe that war is a terrible and brutal thing. Without truths, there would be no way for Kurt Vonnegut, the writer of this essay, to make it into an anti war novel. The truths of the book give the essence of Vonnegut’s meaning, whether it be during the awful war or just in the main character, Billy, who’s unforgiving flashbacks take place when a moment of discomfort comes into…

Charles McCarthy, the chairperson of the school board, is completely in the wrong by supporting the idea of burning the novel is okay. This opens the idea that Vonnegut could have compared his World War II experiences to what was going on at the time around the world. Around the ages of World Wars I and II, the censorship and burning of books was a highly…

Kurt Vonnegut had delivered quite a few commencement speeches during his time. One in particular, at Rice University, contains a multitude of rhetorical strategies that exemplified the quintessential speech genre. Vonnegut used this genre’s conventions in order to convey his overarching message to the new graduates, as they leave the university. His message to the new generation was to reflect back on their own lives, pause, and consider, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” In other words,…

protagonist Billy Pilgrim, and his experiences in World War II and his adventures as a result of being “unstuck in time.” Billy being exposed to the idea of no free will through time travel and an alien species, discovers that “among the things [he] could not change were the past, the present, and the future” (Vonnegut, pg 60). In Slaughterhouse-Five, a lack of belief in free will causes Billy Pilgrim’s passive listlessness and the atrocity of World War II known as the Firebombing of Dresden. In…