All Quiet on the Western Front
- Reaction: Identify a comment made by someone else during the seminar. React to his/her statement.
What really got to me was how we talked about the horses and how we look at a human and when he is in pain it isn’t as bad as a animal in pain. - Changes in Thinking: Explain how the seminar influenced or changed your thinking about this topic or text. How is your thinking now different than it was before the seminar.
Well i had a feeling of not being a fan of the war and the way we talked about the animal instincts and the emotional stress that comes out it just helps me to see that i feel right in thinking that instead of hating myself for thinking that. - Self Evaluation: What were your strengths during this seminar? What are your goals for our next seminar, and how do you plan to achieve them?
My strengths were mostly talking on going off of what other people said rather than what i was saying since i seem not to be able to talk more in depth about what i think about.
Slaughter House 5
Joshua Riding
Seminar Reflection
I would like to react to the quote Claire which was “we have a sense of free will but, at the same time we don’t”. I like this and want to comment on this quote because it is true in this day and age but, at the same time we have this feeling that we do have free will. Also without that feeling of free will we loss all hope such as when people know they are going to die they give up they loss hope and don’t think they can go on. Hope is what keeps it all together hope is what keeps us thinking we have the ability to change something in our life or just our life in general and hope is something really scary to lose.
How do the aliens in the book relate to war, I would say that they relate to war because they are the ones that teach Billy kind of how to think about death which war is all about death and killing to take over an advantage point. Also the aliens talk about free will and how we are the only beings they have seen that talk about free will even though we don’t always have it, this ties into war with how some people were forced to go to war and fight someone else’s war. The aliens seem to know all about the other species and know what will happen at this time but, live knowing every moment they are alive are the moments that count, in war you never know if you are going to die today or the next so you cherish every second of every day. The aliens make you think of all these things if you go to the bigger picture because the aliens can be seen as many things at a time because they are all over the place they have been everywhere they know everything before it happens. The aliens also are connected to the war because of the way that Billy did not see the aliens like he was blindfolded and being asked questions like he was in a camp.
What is the truth that Vonnegut is trying to communicate about war? It seems to be the truth that Vonnegut is trying to that war is glorified like in the first chapter Mary gets angry at Vonnegut for coming to make the story. Vonnegut then tells her that he won’t make this story to glorify war which is why it is such a good book because it doesn’t glorify war in any way I have seen. Also it shows by Mary saying that that war propaganda is bad and gets babies to fight for someone else’s war.
