What is a quote from Kurt Vonnegut?
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
What is the quote so it goes from?
Unlike many of these quotes, the repeated refrain from Vonnegut’s classic Slaughterhouse-Five isn’t notable for its unique wording so much as for how much emotion—and dismissal of emotion—it packs into three simple, world-weary words that simultaneously accept and dismiss everything.
What does Vonnegut mean by so it goes?
Netti Vonnegut’s parents were German. Translated literally into German, “So it goes” is “So geht’s” – and that is a very, very, common phrase to comment fatalistically on things one can’t change or can’t prevent to happen. “That’s life”.
How wide is it how deep is it how much is mine to keep?
“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” “All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations.
What is the significance of so it goes in Slaughterhouse-Five?
Billy appreciates the simplicity of the Tralfamadorian response to death, and every time he encounters a dead person, he “simply shrug[s]” and says “so it goes.” The repetition of this phrase also illustrates how war desensitizes people to death, since with each passive mention of “so it goes,” the narrator is subtly …
What is the plot of Slaughterhouse-Five?
Slaughterhouse-Five is an account of Billy Pilgrim’s capture and incarceration by the Germans during the last years of World War II, and scattered throughout the narrative are episodes from Billy’s life both before and after the war, and from his travels to the planet Tralfamadore (Trawl-fahm-uh-door).
Why is Slaughterhouse-Five also called the Children’s Crusade?
What is the Children’s Crusade? Slaughterhouse-Five’s subtitle “The Children’s Crusade” refers to the youthfulness of the soldiers who fought in World War II. Writing in his own voice at the beginning of the novel, Vonnegut describes how he visited Bernard V.
Why does Vonnegut insert himself in Slaughterhouse-Five?
In addition to being the narrator, Vonnegut is present within the text as the narrative’s central character in the first and last chapters. He appears in the text on three occasions to remind us that, although he is now above the novel’s actions and is reflecting on the past events, he was once part of the action.
Is Mother Night a true story?
The novel takes the form of the fictional memoirs of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American, who moved to Germany in 1923 at age 11, and later became a well-known playwright and Nazi propagandist.
Are we who we pretend to be?
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Read more quotes from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.