Yellowstone cutthroat trout

Discussion 5: Captives When I first read the title of this poem I thought that it could be referring to prisoners of war, taken to captivity by their enemy because in war soldiers that are captured alive are imprisoned by their enemies for their own benefit. In order to place this poem in its context I needed to conduct a little research on the author and his contributions to the First World War. I did this to determine whether the author’s knowledge was intimate or perceptive, so that I would…

The lesson of "Slaughterhouse-Five" is whatever you need it to be. That is the magnificence of the book. In any case, in his usually dull, wry way, Kurt Vonnegut gives us a few conceivable subjects to investigate. One of the subjects identifies with the route in which Mr. Vonnegut displays the human life expectancy. Through his written work, Mr. Vonnegut offers an old conversation starter: Are we experts of our fate, or would we say we are pawns of destiny? The medium through which Mr. Vonnegut…

The Sun Also Rises is Ernest Hemingway's first published novel, released in 1926. The novel displays the effect that the horrors and casualties of World War One had on the character's views on love, justice, religion and morality. The Sun Also Rises follows the characters Brett Ashley, Bill Gorton, and Jake Barnes, two of which greatly exemplify the great affect World War One had on the religious faith of those who it harmed. This shift in their religious and moral views dictates how they cope…

The piece is very tragic, many personifications is used involving children this emphasizing the dread and fear for the refugees, and how soon they will have almost no freedom. The lament "Refugee Blues," was written by W.H. Auden in 1939, in the beginning of World War Two. The word “Refugee” in the title means a person who has to run away from his or her country, due to be treated badly. The word "blues" refers to slow and sad songs that were first sung by African slaves. Each stanza has…

Death, who knew that such a small word could have such a tremendous impact on those around us, on some more than others. Death shows its ugly face in the book Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut wrote about a man named Billy Pilgrim who travels in time, whether he likes it or not. Billy hops through time from when he was in the war to when he was in the zoo on a different planet. With Billy’s time traveling fate, it reveals the true viney fingers that his fear of death really has on…

War Passage Many people who want to hear a story, want to hear the truth, if the truth was told in each story every story would be boring and not worth telling. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien have a similar style of expressing their exaggerated war stories with the contex making things up, they also are similar in a thematic way as Slaughterhouse Five and The Things they Carried both show that one may exaggerate a story to emphasize how important…

On the surface, Slaughter-house Five, by Kurt Vonnegut presents the idea that humans have no free will. Vonnegut uses the lack of free will as a metaphor for the helplessness that people feel faced with situations beyond their control. However, the novel can be reexamined to show the opposite; not only do we have free will, but the choices we make are supremely important. Unexplainable tragedies such as war, disease, and famine appear to be inevitable, engendering an overwhelming sense of…

The Futility of Free Will in Slaughterhouse-Five There are no war heroes in Slaughterhouse-Five. Throughout Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim, the man lost in time, is portrayed as an ignorant soldier wandering about World War II Europe. Other characters such as Paul Lazzaro or Roland Weary are too self-absorbed to understand that they are in war and distract themselves by bullying other soldiers. Even Edgar Derby, who was elected to become the leader for the American…

In the book Slaughterhouse Five, there are many questions that go around, but the main question is who the author of the book? In the book, the author says on a constant basis “That was me. I was there.” I believe the narrator of the book is Kurt Vonnegut. The explanation for this is author mentions his friend Bernard O’Hare at the beginning and the end and rarely in between and when O’Hare’s character would show up when the author would say again “I was there. So was my old war buddy Bernard V.…

Kurt Vonnegut is able to tie together the idea that fate is predetermined with the ideas that life is meaningless, by pointing out that the actions people take in life are inconsequential. Billy Pilgrim sees this in his everyday life, as he travels through time, showing him that all the events in his life are already set, and therefore there is nothing he can do to change what will happen to him. This has its effects on his emotion as he is very distant from his own life, as he sees the events…