Subjectivity

We've been throwing around this idea in class about Billy's reliability as a narrator. Is is really lying if the things Billy is talking about did happen, just in his head? Just because it didn't happen for us, doesn't mean it didn't for him. And how much does that undermine his credibility? It reminded me a lot of a conversation I had been having with Kathryn about color sensitivity.

It's hard to explain, but essentially the idea is that none of us quite sees the same color. Our eyes are all different-- different shapes, different sizes, and so the light we intake is all going to be slightly different. There are of course scientific ways to determine what a color is, X number of nanometers corresponds to red, and so on. Perhaps this isn't so much of a comment on color, but a comment on the failures of language...

Nonetheless, the idea goes like this: perhaps the colors we all see aren't only slightly different, but drastically different.

As opposed to this...

Something like this.

What if we have all just agreed that some color is called "blue"? Maybe the color of "my blue" is on the complete opposite end of the color wheel from the "blue" that Kathryn is seeing.

Kathryn's "blue"

My "blue"

Is there anything less legitimate about Kathryn's blue than mine? There's no way of proving which one is the actual blue, because if we point to an object and agree "That's blue," then we're both right. We're each seeing our respective blues.

I think that this plays in a lot to what Billy Pilgrim means to us as a character. Just because he is telling us things that seem completely absurd, like UFOs and Tralfamadorian time travel, in his mind he is telling his reality. Just because the description of his blue doesn't perfectly match the blue that we see, it isn't any less real to him. He is telling it how he sees it, and just like with colors, there is no way of being certain that his perception of reality isn't the same reality that we are actually living in. 

The Family Story

I'd like to start off by noting that this is actually the third time in my Uni career reading this book, and two chapters in there's still a lot I could say that would end up being spoilers. Don't get me wrong, it's a great book, but I'm hesitant to respond in-depth yet for the sake of the other half of the class that hasn't graced the pages of Billy Pilgrim's adventures. What I was trying to figure out how to share in class, but never found a place to is in fact a well preserved Bild-family tale. Let us set the stage...

It is 1995, the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. A vigil has been set on the campus of the University of Chicago. In the center is Henry Moore's Nuclear Energy statue, commemorating the Met Lab, a part of the Manhattan Project that did research toward the atomic bomb.

A number of famous anti-war protest leaders have been invited. My grandparents are among the leaders of a Chicago group of activists known as MetroSeniors. It is they who have organized this assembly. Among the leaders is the humanitarian, Kurt Vonnegut. He gives an impassioned speech in some assembly hall on campus, or as impassioned a speech as Vonnegut can give. Word has it that in person he was a bit of a downer. But I think you could grasp that from his books. 

Afterwards, there's a small party at my grandparent's house. The same one that my father grew up in. The one that I stayed in every time I went to Chicago until I was 11. 4819 South Kimbark St. in Hyde Park. Look it up-- it's a beautiful house, though at the moment there are some renovations going on. More of a construction site than a house right now. But I digress. The party. 

Ah, but first there's a bit of information that I've left out. Depending on your version (as we discussed in class today), the title page may differ. There may be a part in the sub-title that says "By Kurt Vonnegut, a fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod [and smoking too much]..." and so on. 

So, the party. It's... well, seniors and middle aged people such as my parents all around a vast dining room table, talking, whatever it is you do at parties. The smoking too much part wasn't an exaggeration. Vonnegut was in fact as close to a chain smoker as you can get without actually being one. So by this point, he's really craving a cig. Pulls one out. Quick as a flash, my grandmother (bless her heart) is there.

"There's no smoking in this house. Take it outside," she says flatly.

Vonnegut looks at her in astonishment. I mean, he is Kurt Vonnegut after all.

"I don't care who you are. No smoking here. The door is right over there if you must."

And that is the story of how my grandmother almost literally kicked Kurt Vonnegut out of her house for trying to smoke. (I believe he did eventually come back in, two or three cigarettes later, but he was nonetheless a bit miffed)