Response Post

This is a response to julia's blog <http://night0before0eternity.wordpress.com/>

Julia's blog posts were really entertaining, and some of them really grabbed my attention. Here's three posts that I interested me most.
1) Lazarro, the ugly, revengeful man interested in torture.
Although he didn’t appear very much in Billy’s lifestory, he was a prominent figure because of his vengence. He was strong and, in his own way, moral. His show of affection for a dying friend (AKA Weary) was to stay with him in the last moments. He sat with Weary’s head in his lap and listened to his dying moans. That was a great show of loyalty. He keeps true to his words and does not harm anyone until he forewarns them and give them an approximate time. He’s the most honest character in SH5 and I feel like I can trust his words, despite his personality is likely to curse me.
Like I mentioned in one of my posts, Im not crazy about Lazzaro either. But you brought up a good point by saying that he is loyal and that he is true to his words. He is honest but at the same time his personality is very disfavoured. I guess that it is a good thing that he warns people before he kills them, but I really didn't want
him to kill Billy at the end if the novel (as I mentioned before, thant's the only thing I would change about the novel.) I felt that he was a psychopath though and that he had no real reason to kill anyone. He believes that revenge is the sweetest thing and therefore seeks revenge against anyone who shows the slightest disrespect for him. Those people don't deserve to be killed, but that is Lazzaro's excuse for killing people.


2) There were many times when I disliked this book because I couldn’t understand it. Vonnegut seemed like an awful person for writing a story (that I had no connection to whatsoever) and not following the logical process most writers go through. But really, Vonnegut was doing exactly what he preached. He presented the entire plot at the very beginning of the book and told the readers that there would be no surprises in his book.
Vonnegut's focus was to confuse the reader to try and show how war is like. I didn't understand the reason at the beginning either, and that bothered me. But just like you said, Vonnegut mentions that the book is going to be very choitic as there is "nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." But later, I discovered that Vonnegut was merely trying to get his point across. I wouldn't exactly say that I disliked the book (it's a great book), but I didn't enjoy reading it either.


3) First, Billy learned to survive in the war from Weary. This is proven… well, fine it’s not proven. But Weary died and Billy made it all the way to his senior years. Now some students may argue that Billy survived because of his own strength, and look at how he was bullied by American AND German soldiers alike! Although that’s true, I reject the idea that Billy had any strength in him. To me, Billy is a Dementor (the ones from Harry Potter. The ones that suck joy from the air and leave others in despire.) He’s a subspecies in the Dementor class. He sucks intelligence and survival skills from his surrounding. And luck. (Tangent: That sounds like he’s a natural genius, but please go along with my idea.)
It's ironic how the weakling survived the war, while the stronger "hero" living in his own fantasy died. I completly agree that Billy had absolutely no strength in him. The reason he survived the war is pure luck. I also like how you related him to a Dementor as he sucks the survival skills form others. To me, this true, but I don't think he really intented to. He was really accepting of the idea that he was going to die during the war, as he didn't try to survive or save his own life once. He kept asking the "Three Musketeers" if they could leave him alone as he was so tired, death looked very appealing to him. And the way you described Billy did in fact make sound like a natural genius, but just like I said, he acted like a Dementor unintentionally.
It also seems ironic how the person who least mind death was the one who survived.