Alright so this blog post is going to be a little unordinary. My friends and I randomly started talking about the topic of Tralfamadorians and their perception of time. Eventually we all kind of got into an argument about the existence of time and what time truly means and thought this could be fun to read and comment on. Slaughterhouse Five really got us thinking about time itself and it was a fun argument/discussion. I made a video to show the full conversation and put Rushes by Frank Ocean in the back to make it more enjoyable.
So far into reading this book, I've derived that the main conflict is going to be between the Wallflower Order, representing western society, and Jes Grew, representing black and African culture. Throughout the book, Ishmael Reed likes to prove that African culture deserves recognition and shouldn't be thrown away as "mumbo jumbo". I noticed that Reed takes jabs at western society and I enjoyed some specific lines. One of the first few lines I noticed where Reed makes fun of western society is when he is describing the symptoms of Jes Grew. Up until this point, we know of Jes Grew as a epidemic causing people to dance and feel lively. Soon after we get another description of how Harry (a person 'infected') felt with Reed saying, "he felt like the gut heart and lungs of Africa's interior. He said he felt like the Kongo: "Land of the Panther"." and "he felt like he could dance on a dime". These are just some of the many beauti...
This was truly a meeting of great minds. Although we got a little off topic, this discussion certainly has applications to the existence of time in Slaughterhouse 5. Does time really have meaning without anyone or anything to perceive it? I'm sure Billy himself frequently contemplated the existence of time and its basis in reality.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting concept. I think time does exist and continually move forward. We do not look, act, or think the same way that we did 5 years ago, and 5 years from now we will also look, act, and think differently than we do now. However, I do agree that how we measure time is completely arbitrary. There is no significance to a week being 7 days long. We could change it at any time if we wanted to.
ReplyDeleteThis is the most Tralfamadorian blog post I've ever seen.
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