Playing with the Slaughterhouse, W.A 9

Slaughterhouse would not work well as a play, because it is much too thought based and has many complex themes that a play would not do the novel justice. Mainly, the story is based off of what Billy experiences and thinks, and it would be too difficult to express all of Billy's thoughts and feelings through physical speech rather than having them written out in a novel where it's much easier to process and condense all that information. Also, without the thoughts of Billy the story becomes much shorter and much less interesting and would become quite boring very quickly to most members of the audience to the lack of action or momentum in the storyline itself, because what makes the storylines are those thoughts and feelings that Billy is having. There are also lots of tiny details located throughout the novel that would be extremely difficult to show in a play, like when Billy notices the extravagence of the German train car or the small details in the jacket he was handed at the POW camp or even the picture that Weary kept with him... even though that would be a little odd to show to audiecnes. Overall, a playwrit version of Slaughterhouse would be very difficult to make and even if it were done properly, it would be quite uinteresting to watch.

Knit-Picking Pilgrim, W.A 8

Greg asks: Did I... I mean you like the character of Billy Pilgrim?
Well Greg, that is an excellent question, may I say that is an exceedingly intelligent question, your intellect must be of a superior grade and I bet you are both a handsome fellow and exceedingly knowledgable in the field of everything.
On a more serious note, although I very much enjoyed Slaughterhouse 5, I really disliked the character of Billy Pilgrim, not the way he was written in the book, but if I were to know somebody like him, I would very much despise him, otherwise, he worked very well in the context of the novel...  well of course he did, otherwise SH5 would've been terrible.The main aspect I disliked about Billy was the fact that he never changed his situation, or at least attempted to. At all moments during the book, he always knew what was going to happen to him and whether good or bad he never attempted to change it, never even thought about it. When he was going to die, it would've been as simple as asking one of the police officers to escort him or to not have left home that day, but no... he just goes along with what's going to happen. The other trait of Billy's character that made me really dislike him was how much he didn't care about his situation which somewhat goes along with his attempt to not change what was going to happen. Even when he knew he was going to die, he wasn't really sad, he didn't even really care, he just lets events happen without even batting an eyelash. He was also never really grateful for the good things that happened to him, like marrying a wealthy woman who's father set him up with his own job and put him through school. He didn't even care when he was a kid, he did work, but never really looked to here he was going, he was essentially a ghost, emotions just pass right through him. The only time he really feels any emotion is when he's at peace with himself on the cart ride back and that truly was the one time he stopped being a ghost and he was for one instant human again.

Special Billy, W.A 7

Why was Billy so special? Billy was incredibly special and fortunate, but why? He was the only person to have been unstuck in time, he met the Tralfamadorians, he married a woman who had a rich father with connections, he had children, he was president of his club, he survived a plane crash and the war, but what made him have all these great things happen to him. Could it have been because he didn't care about anything that happened or because he knew he couldn't change it. But, he didn't deserve all these great and interesting things to happen to him. He never cared what happened to him or anybody else, he never tried at anything and he never strove for success. He was always too wrapped up in his own thoughts to care what was going on around him and he just let things happen, fortunately for him, good things happened to him and he went through life fairly succesfully and if he were a normal man he would've been happy with what he got. But, he didn't care, he probably would've been just as fine with having become poor because he knew which ever way his life was going he couldn't change it and wouldn't matter whether he cared or not because nothing he did mattered. Maybe that's why Billy's special and that's why special things happened to him, he was the only one to not care enough about his future to the point where he didn't do anything about it... even care.

Thoughts of Vonnegut W.A 6

I personally think that Vonnegut would very much approve of our class' blogging assignment because it's a new way of evaluating ideas and because it allows for a much more free flow of ideas from students. From the stuff we've learned about Vonnegut it seems more than clear that he's sort of a 'hippy' of the mind. He doesn't believe there should be a rigid structure in expressing one's thoughts and ideas and doesn't care much for all the nuances of language. The blogging project allows us, the students, to freely flow our ideas out of our minds without having the rigid structure of an essay or the straightforward ideas of a test, it allows ourselves to express our opinions in a highly creative way. We don't have to stick to any particular format and we just have to stay within the range of one broad umbrella topic, SH5. Even then, we have free reign over 4 of our posts and can post as many other posts as our mind can come up with. The blogs also bring in a new wave of assessing students that questions the old system, it assesses not our knowledge of what we've learned, but how well we understood and can link it to a variety of other topics. This is a much more fair way of evaluating our knowledge of the course because it means that somebody who may not pick up on the tiniest of details written in the book has a disadvantage over somebody who say remembers every singe word on every single page. This new way of assessing student's learning is something that Vonnegut wouldn't have just approved but would've wholly embraced.

The Good Fight, SH5 W.A 5

Oddly enough, I have already started writing a novel and until recently... due to the hard drive crash of my laptop, had been getting pretty far into it, I almost had Chapter 1 done (doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm like Ayn Rand, one chapter for me is like 200 pages). I entitled it, the Good Fight, and although I am by no means a religious person, the title is taken from a quote in the bible. It takes place in the early 22nd century in the year 2125 in what was the United States, Canada, China and Russia during a global socio-communist revolution. As the globalisation of the world was coming to full fruition, many countries sought to combine forming large supercountries, like the European Union did, except under the ideals of Communism and/or Socialism. Some countries went through a peaceful restructuring like the EU and others went under more violent and bloody revolutions, mainly in the United States. What really caused the 2nd American Revolution was that many corporations felt threatened by the major socialist reforms and put the government in a position to be bought out by these companies which was an event that came to be known as the Great Buyout. Many people were angered by this buyout and turned to the revolutionaries, the Socialist Republic of America (SRA) which had already gained speed over the past decade due to support from the British Commmunist Commonwealth (BritComm) and a succesful open revolution occured. After 5 years of stable governance by the SRA, the remnants of the US government, CIA and supporters of the capitalist regime formed a tight group known as the Free American Army (FAA) which wanted to have the good ol' days of US back just with more control over the corporations and was supported by the Sino Republic (22nd century China). Open violence occured and the FAA wanted either secession or complete dominance over the SRA causing the 2nd American Civil War. So far... all that was extremely condensed backstory. The novel revolves around 2 teams of soldiers, 1 FAA (York Team) and 1 SRA (Wolf Team) stationed in a remote mining town in upstate New York. Each member of each team is based off of my friends and relatives, just because I understand them better, and for my own sake and sanity are currently written as their names in the real world which I will go back and come up with names later... myself being leader of Wolf. After Wolf gets a distress call from York team, they go to investigate the FAA base on the other side of the Valley. They get a chilling warning from an FAA agent who appears out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly. What they find in the base... is the infection, a virus that is similar to that of 28 Days Later... for those of you who don't know what that is... it's essentially a zombie virus. As they recover the York Team members the members of both teams decide that they have to work together to uncover the truth over who released the virus. What they find is a conspiracy bigger than the petty squable between the FAA and SRA and find that the two sides will have to work together in order to prevent the taking over of North America by a foreign superpower. This journey will take them from, their orginal bases to (in no particular order) Montreal, Washington DC, Miami, Boston, NYC, a space station, Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Vladivostok, Beijing and Hong Kong. There are some great romantic tales, dark and cheap humour, inspiring heroic feats, storyline twists and character development and conflict that fill up the novel. The main message I want to instill in the readers of the book is that every single human being on Earth is equal and that we should all work towards the common goal of humanity... progress and the only people we should fight are those opposed to progress, represented by the infection, the dictator of the Sino Republic who blinds his people with catchy and mindless propaganda and CI. That is why I named it the Good Fight, because the characters in the novel are fighting for what they believe is the good fight. This reflects my own personal beliefs, that humanity is great and has so much potential to accomplish great things by learning and striving to understand the mysteries of our universe, you give one man some time and some tools and he can achieve something amazing, but you give a group of men that same time and tools... and the sky is the limit (man is used here as a pronoun, meaning humanity). This is what you guys see me doodling in my notebooks in class all the time, this is what you see me filling up my notebooks with background story, this is what all my thought has been consumed with over the past year and this is why my screen name is Wolf1!

Memories W.A. 4

I was sweating... nervous as if I was about to give a speech to every single person I ever knew… which… is exactly what I was about to do. I was becoming a man… the past two years had been culminating into this moment, this three hour ceremony to celebrate my entrance into my people's community as a fully responsible man in charge of his destiny. As the rabbi continued speaking to all my friends and relatives, I looked over at my best friend Alex, who grinned at me and gave me a thumbs up. I'd like to say that made me feel better… but it didn't although it did make me a tad bit happier. I looked over at Ellana who had not long before me had her Bat-Muitzvah, she whispered, "Breathe." to me and then I realized I forgot to breathe and took a long deep breath and some of the pressure in my chest was alleviated. All of a sudden the rabbi called on me and my legs turned into wet noodles and I couldn't get out of my chair. I was looking around the room, for any escape... and then my gaze crossed my father's. The look on his face... was so amazing... he was proud of what I was about to do... it instilled me with a confidence I'd never felt before and I regained my strength, got out of the chair and walked up to the podium. To my surprise I felt a hand on my back and turned around.
"Greg, the Crystal Ball drops in like 5 minutes, c'mon.". We quit Halo: Reach and turned off the XBOX, it was awesome to be going into the New Year, which, was in my opinion the most important holiday of them all, with my best friends Nick and Alex. We ran up the stairs and already saw my parents and their friends gathered around the TV, champagne glasses in hand. My dad handed us each a glass and said, "To a fantastic New Year boys." The ball started to drop and every single person in the Eastern Time Zone started counting down from 10..9..8..7..6..5..4.
"3..2..1", and with that great countdown from my parents, sister and friends, I blew out the candles and was all of a sudden 16. "I don't care how old I am, I need my birthday wish." I said and laughed. The cake was passed around and delightfully devoured by the whole company. We went downstairs and started playing Halo 3 again as we had been for the past 4 hours... the nerds we were... and still are. "Nick, Jordan's behind you." I said. "Like it matters I've got the sword." he said as the virtual blade of energy passed cleanly through the thick titanium armour and sliced through the augmeneted bone, tissue and muscle of the artificial Spartan supersoldier. "That's what you get double barrel!" a joke that had passed from my birthday of the previous year. All of a sudden I heard Filip yell from in the backyard, "Hey Greg, wanna shoot some bottles and cans with the airsoft guns." "Sure!" I yelled back. I passed my controller to William and ran over to where Filip, Alex and Zach we're playing around with the M16, the Sniper and the AK47. I picked up the sniper, aimed down the scope and sighted to the top of the pillar where the cans were supposed to be set up, but... all of them were down. "Why the hell aren't the targets set up?". "That's why we asked you to come out here." Alex said as an innocent smile crossed his face. I gave him a very rude gesture involving my hand and finger and ran over to the pillar to reset the cans and bottles. As I was setting up the cans, I was oblivious... completely unaware of events that were set in motion. Danielle, Alex's girlfriend of 6 months came out of the house and picked up the M16. Alex was showing her the ins and outs of the electric rifle. As I turned around and started running back, I saw Danielle point at me and yell, "Look, it's Greg!". She brought the rifle up towards me and unloaded fully automatic rifle with a full magazine of .20 g BBs into me. I turned around and felt the first shots hit me in the side and then in the back, I felt my legs give out from under me and as I fell to the ground I yelled, "What the @*%$! You stupid #$^@$!". The last thing I saw before I passed out from the pain was Alex and Filip running towards me while Danielle laughed.
As I awoke, there was a stinging pain in my arm and I felt a warm liquid pouring down the length of it and soaking my dirty fatigues. I got up and felt a weight around my neck, it was the strap of my rifle. I got up and looked around, I was in the downtown of a ruined city with shots ringing all around me. I looked at my watch it read, 3:20 PM, August 24, 2125... the year of the Great Revolution. We were the heroes... and it was time to get to work.