Kurt Vonnegut Ways Of Seeing Summary

In his 1972 work, Ways of Seeing, John Berger writes, “The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.” John Berger’s argument relates to Kurt Vonnegut’s novel because of human life of what this book dispense. This story is essentially about the death of 135,000 German citizens in the bombing of Dresden. In addition, the story also focus on Billy Pilgrim, a man who encounters being unstuck in time, multiple life-modifying struggles, and does not change as each event appears. Therefore, this book is written in random order because that’s how Billy Pilgrim lived his life. Kurt Vonnegut gives us captivating topics to investigate, which relates to critical thinking: time, death, history, perception, objectivity, subjectivity, and war. In the book, there is no past, present, or future. Billy finds himself jumping through different time zones at different ages to where he finds himself viewing the world randomly. Vonnegut writes, “Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in …show more content…
Vonnegut looks at through and through freedom, and disproves it. The easygoing treatment of death shows the vanity of free choice in human life. Billy is forced to relive painful parts of his life through time travel. For example, Edgar Derby his wartime partner, who is executed by Germans for stealing a teapot, while Valencia Pilgrim, his own wife, dies accidently from carbon dioxide poisoning after her car exhaust system is damage by accident. Billy Pilgrim wind up being kidnapped by Tralfamaforians who are similar like the Germans in this novel. The first thing they make him do is take off his clothes and when billy responds with “why” the Tralfamaforians say “There is no why” With this being said, these extraterrestrial do not give billy freewill of his own

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