Kurt
Pročitah Slaughterhouse-Five, šta reći, genijalna satira, sigurno jedan od najboljih antiratnih romana i štiva općenito, govori o svom besmislu rata, prepun crnog humora i prepoznatljivog Vonnegutovog stila, so it goes
Bilo je to Jevanđelje iz svemira od Kilgora Trauta. Tu se radilo o jednom posetiocu iz svemira, koji je, uzgred rečeno, po obliku bio veoma sličan Tralfamadorcu. Posetilac iz svemira je temeljno proučio hrišćanstvo da bi otkrio, ako može, zašto je hrišćanima tako lako da budu okrutni. Zaključio je da je bar delimični uzrok nevolje – aljkavo pripovedanje u Novom zavetu. Pretpostavljao je da je namera Jevanđelja bila da ljude, pored drugih stvari, uči da budu milosrdni čak i prema najponiženijem među poniženima.
Jevanđelje je, međutim, naukovalo u stvari sledeće:
Pre no što nekoga ubiješ, budi sasvim siguran da nema jake veze. Tako mu je to.
Greška u pričama o Hristu, rekao je posetilac iz svemira, bila je u tome što je Hristos, koji nije delovao baš impozantno, u stvari Sin Najmoćnijeg Bića u Svemiru. Čitaoci su to shvatili, te su, kad bi došli do raspinjanja na krst, prirodno pomislili, Opala – ovog puta su krenuli da linčuju pogrešnog dasu. A ta misao je imala sestru: Postoje pravi ljudi za linčovanje. Koji? Ljudi bez jakih veza. Tako mu je to.
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves…. It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.
It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby.”