Life through a Tralfamadorian’s eye.

In the book Slaughter House-Five on page twenty-six, the author talks about alien creatures from a distant planet called Tralfamador. In the book a character maned Billy tells a newspaper about the Tralfamadorinas. According to Billy they can see in four dimensions instead of just three like humans. This allows them to view the universe in a unique way. They are able to view any point in time just like the present. As a result when someone on Tralfamador dies they just shrug and say “so it goes”. To them the person is not dead only in bad shape at that particular time. Since they can just view any point in time death is of no consequence to them.
What if we could view life in this way? Well, we would always be able to see our loved ones, and never have to be separated from them. If a particular point in our life was special we could relive it as often as we wanted. However, this could also have a dark side. If we were able to just go back to any time we wanted, life would lose all its value. For example murder would no longer be considered a crime because the person would only be in bad shape, not dead. Also people would no longer have the desire to better themselves beyond a certain point because they could relive that point in time over and over. Life, the way the Tralfamadorian's view it, would would not fit our way of life.
In light of this I do not think that Billy’s mission to educate the public would be beneficial to society since it would become numb to reality. It would become counterproductive. It almost seems like we would be high on drugs. We would be in our own little worlds totally unaware of the world, since we would be pleasing ourselves with visions of better times. While this view has its upsides it also has its downfalls. In light of this, I do not think that Billy’s mission to educate society would be helpful. This view would most likely hurt society more than it helped.

A quote by Mary O’Hare on War

"You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs" (Slaughter-House-Five, p. 14).

What Mary O’Hare is trying to say here is that wars are fought by men who are many times only eighteen. This in her mind is too young an age for them to be fighting and killing others like themselves. She also believes that the movies cause people to become pro war. However this is not true. I have not seen too many war movies in my life, at least not recently. One war movie I do remember seeing is Glory and it definitely does not promote war.
Glory is set during the civil war. It shows how our nation was torn in civil war. In this war the people who fought were really children. In some cases brother fought against brother. Families were split apart by the war. It was not a particularly gory movie but there was a lot of killing in it. Such dramatic scenes as people being shot or blown to bits by mortars certainly do not promote war.
In contrast, I believe that the films of the past such as in the 1930's would have been more pro war than today’s movies. One reason is because of the technological advances between then and now. Today movie makers have all types of special effects equipment at their disposal which they did not have back in the 30's. This allows today’s film makers to more realistically portray war. Also back then the idea of a movie was still relatively new and would have been very popular perhaps even more so than today. It is for this reason that movies back then might have been used to promote war. Other than Glory I have not watched many other war films, besides bits and pieces. From what I have seen all the other films seem to be against war because of the brutal scenes they protray.

MY Thoughts on Hunting

A few days ago, for speech class, our class had to unscramble a speech outline for an assignment. The outline dealt with the idea of film-hunting as a sport or rather an alternative to actually hunting. This particular outline made the sport of hunting look bad.
One section of the outline said that not all hunters were killers. This made me think. What do people really think hunting is all about? Do they really know? Too often when people think about hunting they think of the hunter mercilessly killing deer or some other animal. However an ethical hunter will take only what he or she can use. Furthermore, the "kill" is only a small part of the whole experience of a hunt.
Being out in nature is the best part. Here you can have a chance to spend time with family and friends. Being out in the woods lets you get away form the chaos of everyday life and be able to relax. You see many spectacles you can not find anywhere else, like a sunset that lights up the leaves of the trees in late fall. You can see squirrels chasing each other jumping from tree to tree. The whole of what one experiences on a hunt is what makes hunting what it is, not just the kill. In fact many hunts do not end with an animal being shot, but rather hunters just go out to enjoy the surroundings.
While my words may not convince you that hunting is a good activity, hopefully you can realize that not all hunters are bad. Also the outline I read was right. There are other ways to hunt, such as with a camera or camcorder. So if you are at all interested in the sport do not let a few misconceptions deter you from trying it.

A little bit of truth form emily dickenson

Fame is a fickle food (1659) by Emily Dickenson

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.
Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer's Corn –
Men eat of it and die.

From the web address: http://poets.org/page.php/prmID/86


This poem is well written because it is short and to the point. It takes some thinking but the point is easy to get. In her poem Emily Dickinson tries to warn the reader that fame and fortune will not bring happiness. The poem is timeless in that the lesson within the poem applies to all generations. Fame has always been one of man’s goals. People think that all they have to do is become popular and own fancy things to be truly happy. Here in her poem, Emily says that fame is so worthless that not even the crows will touch it. Instead of chasing someone else’s dreams we should chase our own. It is then that we will be truly happy.
Also the last line in the poem tells of what can happen if a person becomes too concerned with acheiveing fame and fortune. The line in the poem says "Men eat of it and die". I believe this means that when people chase after fame they in a sense lose themselves. They become so engrossed with finding their time in the sun that they neglect the things in life which make a person truly happy. When you think about it this way those people are in a sense dead. After all life is not worth living if you can not enjoy it.

Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump
David Bottoms

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride
to the dump in carloads
to turn our headlights across the wasted field,
freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.
Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie still
like dead beer cans.
Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow
into garbage, hide in old truck tires,
rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds,
or else drag themselves on forelegs across our beams of light
toward the darkness at the edge of the dump.
It's the light they believe kills.
We drink and load again, let them crawl
for all they're worth into the darkness we're headed for.



I believe the poem by David Bottoms speaks of ignorance. Too often in our day and age people are concerned only with themselves. As a result they do not know what is happening outside their own little world. To look at it on a bigger scale, Americans could be considered ignorant. We live in a land of wealth and prosperity, and are blind to the pains of the world around us. The ignorant take our wealth for granted and may think: how could there be any suffering in the world when everything is fine here. Just hiding from the truth alone will get us nowhere.
In this poem there is some symbolism dealing with ignorance and fear. The lines "It’s the light they believe kills" and "Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow into garbage" by (Bottoms lines 12 and 7-8) symbolize the point that people can be very afraid and ignorant. In this case the rats symbolize people. The light in this case is our ignorance. The shot is the reality that there is suffering outside our world. Like the rats we try to hide from the fact by running from it, or occupying ourselves so we forget about it.