Chapter III

• The chapter begins with Winston dreaming of his mother who, alongside his father, was evidently “swallowed up in one of the first great purges of the Fifties.” I wonder why. Were they simply guilty of Thoughtcrime, or were they actual rebels?

• He only remembers his younger sister as a silent, feeble baby with large “watchful eyes”—an opposite image of Big Brother. He looks down at the individual, suspicious and penetrating—while the baby looks upward and outward at the world, an expression of helplessness, innocence, and innate possibility and wonder that Big Brother’s gaze tries so hard to extinguish

• “He was out in the light and air while they were being sucked down to death, and they were down there because he was up here. There was no reproach either in their faces or in their hearts, only the knowledge that they must die in order that he might remain alive, and that this was part of the unavoidable order of things.” A big statement here, but does it reflect reality? Did Winston’s family literally sacrifice themselves for him? Is it a message propagated by the Party to divide the nation, the family, to spread a message that some must suffer so that others may live? Or is it more philosophical, a commentary on the “natural order” at large, the dog-eat-dog world? (29)

• “Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.” A grim portrait, but consistent with the one playing out. Tragedy implies connection and loss. It gives birth to devastation—and devastation invites outrage

  • In a world where the home, romances, and relationships—places wherein we develop our capacities to feel and express—have been invaded by Big Brother, tragedy becomes inconceivable, a relic of a more emotional time. There can be no tragedy when nothing matters. We can read the disappearance of “Mrs.” the same way—an anachronism no longer applying to the times, rendered neutral, its preconditions of marriage and womanhood dismantled, just like the preconditions of privacy, love, and friendship necessary for tragedy

• Winston does not remember how his mother died, but does recall “she had sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable...Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, or deep or complex sorrows.” (30) A couple things going on here:

  • Loyalty, it seems is incompatible with survival, and is something that the Party seeks to destroy. That Winston describes it as “unalterable and private” speaks to its potency: it’s an ideal, a conviction, a part of the mind that the Party, at least in his mother’s case, could not infiltrate. Of course, they opted to simply off his mother instead. That his mother’s act of selflessness has stayed with Winston testifies to the power of memory

  • Erasure of deep emotions—We saw this in Brave New World, too. Oceania eliminates complex emotions through constant surveillance and censorship, the suppression of private life. Emotions that cannot be expressed die out. The World State achieves the same goal through sedation, soma and sex and the feelies, the stimulation of the body which is always chosen over the stimulation of the mind

    • This is evident in our own lives, too—nowhere more than on social media. Can complex political questions or tragedy that were once grappled with in books be conveyed in a fifteen second clip? Songs are shorter. ChatGPT reads and writes for us. Netflix has discussed the need to reiterate the plot multiple times throughout their films, because people are dividing their attention between two screens. Fear, hatred, and pain are pushed by the algorithms because they’re primal emotions—easier to tap into. Reaction, not reflection, dominates our discourse.

      • Obviously these decisions that shape our media environment are economic rather than authoritarian in nature. But are they really so different? Whether by the hands of Party or Tik Tok, the reduction of complexity results in the same thing: the suppression of human nature, the shaping of the individual into a simpler form that more readily serves the interests of others, not himself

• The Golden Country—a counterimage to cold London, an image of nature that’s as important as any we’ve seen in providing an alternative to the present reality, with elm trees whose leaves stir like “women’s hair.” Why does Orwell choose to link nature to women? (30)

• “Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him; indeed, he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture which which she had thrown her clothes aside.” An inversion here of the typical male gaze, considering most men would be far more interested in the body beneath the shirt than the flinging aside of the shirt itself. The removal of one’s clothes, an act of agency and freedom, holds more appeal to Winston than the female body itself

• “With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness but a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to an ancient time.” Perhaps the most important line we’ve read so far, because it speaks not to the annihilation of the individual but the annihilation of the system that degrades him. The key to the Party’s defeat lay in a woman removing her shirt. How? Why is it so potent? What is contained in this gesture that makes it so impactful?

  • Disinhibition

  • Desire

  • Lust

  • Sexuality

  • Pleasure

  • Connection

  • Intimacy

  • Informality

  • Spontaneity

  • Individuality

  • Agency

  • Privacy

    • It’s a relationship between two human being unmediated by the doctrine of the Party, proof of a physical, emotional, and biological reality that it cannot fully suppress. Earlier we discussed the organized hikes, fundraisers, and demonstrations—outputs of human passion that were colonized and thus neutralized by the Party. The girl’s gesture distills those same human impulses to an interaction between man and woman, yet the meaning behind this interaction is harder for the state to eliminate. Sure, they have telescreens in the bedroom, and the Junior Anti-Sex League—which seeks to deny the sexual instinct altogether—but can they ever truly suppress the human need for touch?

• The “Mrs.” and the tragic figure are consigned to history because the institutions that gave birth to them—marriage and the literary world—have been reduced in complexity. The notions of privacy, sacrifice, intimacy, and love necessary for these structures have been eliminated. So too is this gesture of sexual spontaneity described as “ancient”, but I want to push back on that. Sure, the missus was replaced by the comrade; Hamlet replaced by the violent war flick. Yet the fact that Winston dreams of this scenario at all testifies to its irrepressibility; you can replace social structures and literary forms with less radical formations—but how do you replace human desire? Is that the last unconquered territory of the Party?

• We can read it more broadly, too: human connection as the antidote to Big Brother, because the “system of thought” that sustains it relies on our fear of one another: the child, the neighbor, the colleague, the foreigner

• “Winston woke up with Shakespeare on his lips.” Interesting link to Brave New World, considering how in that novel Shakespeare comes to represent notions of truth and beauty that the World State believes to be dangerous in the hands of the people

• “The Physical Jerks would begin in three minutes.” (31) Just as the Party compels shouting in the Two Minutes Hate, and standing at attention during “Oceania, Tis for Thee”, it also compels its members to exercise. Not ideological, but again the imposition of a physical reality. Later, on page 36, Winston is called out specifically by the instructor for not bending low enough. This dispels any notion that Big Brother is not actually not watching everyone all the time, or does not really care about each individual’s adherence to its program

• “When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness.” Disorientation again, this time more about personal remembrance than historical time, yet it speaks to the same effect. If a person can’t orient herself in her own life, if she can’t remember events or incidents or anniversaries, how can she possibly position herself against an entire apparatus? We resist domination because of who we are, because of the life we remember and cherish, but that starts with a sense of self, identity, the passage of time

• “Though London, he felt certain, had always been called London.” Why has London has remained the same? I want to interpret it as the influence and history and personality of London being too strong to erase altogether, though it’s probably something more practical. It’s worth noting that Winston is sure of this, too. What is it about a city’s name that is harder to erase?

• “…he was also suffering under some grief that was deep and unbearable. In his childish way Winston grasped that some terrible thing, something that was beyond forgiveness and could never be remedied, had just happened. Someone whom the old man loved, a little granddaughter perhaps, had been killed.” The tragedy of war, the nightmare of every parent, perhaps the very outcome Winston’s mother sought to avoid when she sacrificed herself to him (33)

• “Since about that time, war had literally been continuous…but to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible.” Continuous war means continuous vigilance, sacrifice, fear. The Enemy at the Gates is an animates the people to accept injustices they otherwise wouldn’t. Recall the Patriot Act.

• Eurasia/Oceania—this is a big concept in the book that you’ve probably seen before. Winston knows the enemy has changed, alliances have shifted, but officially it has not and never has. What is the purpose of this? Is it disorientation again, meant to confuse the people, so they can no longer have any grasp on what is true, and so stop caring? It brings to mind these quotes from Hannah Arendt:

• So is the point of lying about the wars not to make people believe the lie, but to engender confusion, then nihilism, and ultimately the withdrawal of the populace from political life? To not change the truth but dissolve its importance altogether? Could that be the strategy of our current president?

• “The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.” Maybe the wars never end because ending the war would be a concession, and ending the war would reduce the animating, uniting force of the terror that is Goldstein. A war with defined goals can be criticized, a war in which our own survival as a people is threatened cannot. It also seems orchestrated, however—how could this work if Eurasia and Oceania don’t go along with it, or is it all fake?

• “The frightening thing…was that it all might be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture or death.” The collapse of meaning, reality not as truth but as decree. Why is this more terrifying than torture or death?

• “But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.” All we have is written record. If that is corrupted, how can we know anything? If a lie passes into history, and that falsehood, later, goes on to dictate real-world interactions—however big or small—is it not then true? If the government of Massachusetts scrubbed all references to Dunkin’ Donuts and henceforth insisted that it only has ever been Dunkin’ and my kid grows up in a world of Dunkin’ with their scrawny donuts and lives his life believing it always been Dunkin' then isn’t that true to him? Or what of the soldier who goes to war over a lie, who fights for a lie and dies for a lie? What if his death leads to a great victory and the international order is rearranged in accordance with that lie for which he fought? If this belief defines reality, is it not then true? How else can we know truth, if not through the written record?

  • Reminds me of the saying, “History is written by the victors.” How many accounts of history have we grown up believing were tweaked, represented, even fabricated?

• “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” So the idea here is that those in power can exercise control over the past—over the narrative—and in doing so ensure their dominance in the future. Winston rejects this, noting that the past, like his mother’s conception of loyalty, is not alterable and never has been (34)

• Doublethink: “An unending series of victories over your own conscious…to know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever is was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then to promptly forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process to the process itself…” (35)

  • A comprehensive definition here, and I’m wondering how Doublethink has become so widespread. Is it the reality of living under totalitarianism, a defense mechanism against the unbearable, an act of self-preservation? Can you think of any examples of Doublethink in your own life, or in our current political discourse?

• “For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory?”

• “Everything melted into mist.” A short line but telling: you can’t make out anything in the mist, where you are, who is beside you…

• The Party claims to have invented airplanes. This one just made me lol.

• Winston not being able to touch his toes could be read as a metaphor of the Party’s failure to fully master him. However, at him touching his toes at the end of the chapter “for the first time in several years” at the Party’s bidding—after all of his revolutionary thoughts—could be seen as a dark bit of foreshadowing

That completes the notes for chapter three. We’ve covered a lot here: memory, loyalty, desire, truth—and the story has only just begun. Please comment below with any of your observations. They can riff off any of my points or can say something completely new, since I’m sure I overlooked many things.

Our next discussion will be posted on Tuesday, 2/10 for chapters 4-5.

Keep reading.

Steve

• “He didn’t want to smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book when the ink was wet.” It’s not just the act of writing, but having something written—maybe having something to read—that matters, too. Winston wasn’t just venting, getting it off his chest. He was recording it for posterity—staking his place in time—and by doing so imagining a different possible world. Recall how it’s not the written phrase “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” that carries the significance or the death sentence, but the act of writing itself that is revolutionary. Writing is an act of agency and thought; writing is an expression of time, place, experience—in other words, truth (20)

• Mrs. Parsons—“A colourless, crushed looking woman, with wispy hair and a lined face, was standing outside.” Winston experiences relief at the appearance of his neighbor instead of the Thought Police, but her appearance isn’t exactly an encouraging one either. Weathered, drained of color and vitality, she’s a different image of suffering and condemnation. It’s a safe bet her destitution stems at least in part from the state. And she’s only thirty???

• “One had the impression there was dust in the creases of her face.” We clocked this in the first paragraph of the novel, the “swirling dust” that swept into the room after Winston, and it was mentioned on a page later, in the streets, where “little eddies were whirling dust and torn paper into little spirals.” I’m curious about this invasive, inescapable dust. Inside, outside, in the creases of one’s face. It mirrors the state: permeating, suffocating, violating. Nothing is sacred, nowhere is sanctuary, even your own body

• “‘Mrs’ was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party—you were supposed to call everyone ‘comrade’ — but with some women one used it instinctively.”

  • Mrs. proclaims the existence of the past, a world that once existed outside of the Party, where differences in age, gender, and authority still mattered, before these factual realities were replaced by a system in which only one’s fealty to Big Brother matters. Theirs was a world dictated by differences in wisdom, experience, expertise; Big Brother’s world depends on their sameness

  • More importantly, Mrs. indicates marriage and therefore love and love—as an emotion, experience, ideal—is dangerous to the Party. Love, in its purest form, means somebody or something worth dying for. It means belief in something outside the reach of the Party

  • It also has unromantic connotations too: such as an English teacher or a friend’s mom. It’s a call back to a world of a world where a woman had an occupation and a husband, where relationships and identity could exist apart from the ideals of the Party. “Comrade” is neutral and sexless; it reorients the language back toward the Party, toward unity, toward service, wiping the familial nuance clean

• “Victory Mansions were old flats…” Obvious and ironic, but telling, language. First the name “Victory” as we noted earlier alongside the gin and cigarettes: it’s infusing the banal, neutral space of the home with notions of battle, triumph, war, danger. It’s a reminder of the threat. It’s also a straight-up lie—they’re apartments. There must be a certain humiliation in going home each night, seeing the sign as you walk in, knowing stench of cabbage that awaits you beyond the door. The sick thing too is that they are the Victory Mansions—they’re a real thing, talked about, referenced, real homes. Even though their name clashes with the reality, it is simultaneously made into reality, imposed as reality. Winston lives at the Victory Mansions, old flats

  • The dust discussed above is mirrored by the description of the Victory Mansions: flaking plaster, bursting pipes, leaking roofs—more intrusions upon domestic life, into the safe and intimate space of the home, courtesy of the Party. Maybe it’s neglect or maybe it’s by design: it’s hard to get mad at the government when the kitchen is flooded. It’s more just a matter of survival, of getting through it. Does exhaustion replace the outrage? (20)

• On the walls were Scarlet Banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and a full-sized poster of “Big Brother”. Just freaky shit here, clearly. Youth League is obviously giving Hitler Youth, and I’m sure the Spies is something just as depraved. There’s something chilling about uniformed youth groups, Boy Scouts and especially the Girl Scouts with those suspiciously delicious cookies included. Seriously, though—the uniformity, the regimentation, the ideology—it’s probably so chilling because it’s so unnatural. When I picture youth I picture swinging on the playground or going on a slide, something unstructured. These kids, instead, are prepared for battle, first made aware of and then oriented against the ever-present enemy

• “It’s the children,” said Mrs. Parsons, casting a half-apprehensive glance at the door. “They haven’t been out today…” I mean anybody who has a dog is familiar with this language. Coupled with the description of her apartment looking as though it had been “visited by some large violent animal”, the characterization of the children as some bestial, uncontrollable force is clear (21)

• Parsons— “…a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms—one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended.” His enthusiasm, his drudgery, his lack of questions and lack of imagination make him the perfect man for the Party. Orwell seems to identify a segment of the population at large that he blames for the authoritarian embrace. Most don’t resist but Winston and some others at least question; Parsons won’t even do that. Is it a question of survival? Does Parsons simply have too much to lose? Winston doesn’t have a wife and kids so maybe he just doesn’t get it, but maybe that’s too charitable. How can Parsons ignore the suffering that is going on around him?

• The Sports Committee engages in “organizing community hikes, spontaneous demonstrations, saving campaigns, and voluntary activities generally.” Basically everything that could be a result of human passion and organization is coopted by the state, diluted if not destroyed. Big Brother hikes up the mountain and takes in the vista beside you. The “spontaneous” demonstration is organized. No GoFundMe is popping off because of a moving story, or God forbid a sense of injustice that compels the people to empty their pockets. These forms of organization are not motivated by capital; they’re motivated by human empathy, and that is unacceptable to the Party. Here again we also witness that same invasion by the Party into spaces once independent and inspiring: from the community center to the mountain summit

• Parsons is proud to boast how he has attended the Community Center every day for the past four years, and reeks always of sweat, “a sort of unconscious testimony to the strenuousness of his life.” He lives mentally for the party, but his commitment—and the true effects of it—are belied by his own body. I can think of one big American analogue that showcases a similar disconnect, the workaholic father or mother who sacrifices his or her physical health, mental well-being, and valuable family time to their career, making a living while wasting away. Broad strokes here obviously but the parallels are there: the sweat, the drudgery, the inability to imagine a different set of circumstances, because these are the circumstances under which we’ve achieved comfort and security for our own families. We accept these conditions as just because we survive in them, even if others don’t. Just like Parsons…

• The stench of sweat lingers behind Parsons even after he’s gone, another way the program of the Party seeps into, defiles, and defines reality in subtle ways

• “There was a trampling of boots…Up with your hands!” An obvious link of the children with the military, yet another example of the state colonizing the most intimate, private spaces—even childhood—restructuring their burgeoning, fluid, innocent reality into something rigid and under siege, a world defined by authority, threat, obedience; a world of right and wrong, good and evil, the police and the policed

• “‘Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!’ chanted the little girl.” A bleak portrait for sure, and one with contemporary echoes. On a 2024 podcast, the late media personality Charlie Kirk stated with regards to children and public executions that “at a certain age it’s an initiation.” The co-hosts of the show suggested ages twelve and sixteen. So not quite “bring your six-year-old to the hanging” discourse but definitely flirting with those same ideas. What do we make of this?

  • I think Kirk was obviously trying to invoke a sense of justice, righteousness, moral order that is passed down from generation to generation and keeps us strong, secure, safe from threats, a rite of passage into the world of law and order. It reminds me of Bran watching his father execute the deserter in the first episode of Game of Thrones

  • But does anyone here feel like a public execution is something his or her kid needs to witness, or that their own childhood suffered as a result of not attending enough beheadings? This strikes me as an idea that benefits the state at the expense of the child, an argument rooted in ideology rather than psychology. And we can see how it benefits the state. It normalizes violence to the child; it stokes fear, reminding him of the enemy at the gates; it introduces him to the intoxicating effects of the mob; it solidifies his understanding of good and evil; most importantly it feels good to watch. I went to a Providence Bruins game when I was thirteen during which four different fights broke out. My best friend and I screamed like maniacs every time the players dropped the gloves, foaming at the mouth for a clean knockout of the opposing player whose name we didn’t even know

  • The point is the child is a malleable and energetic creature, and the Party seeks to capitalize on that malleability and energy through ritualized violence, through spectacle, which in turn propagates their ideology of absolute good and evil, the righteousness of the Party. It feels good so it must be good. Seeing the war criminal or pedophile executed at the age in which one cannot comprehend war crimes or pedophilia doesn’t develop character—it distorts development and ultimately indoctrinates

• Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were sentenced. Once a month, a popular spectacle. I mean that’s kind of a lot of war crimes right? If they are actually combatants, is each and every one of them really that bloodthirsty? What if they say war crimes only to elicit the strongest possible reaction, what if they say war crimes so that when I doubt that statement’s validity, they can accuse me of defending war crimes, which is indefensible, because they’re war crimes? Note the line of “child rapists” often applied to immigrants in this country by the administration. It’s a tactic used to shut down discussion. You can’t possibly be defending a child rapist, can you?

• “Something hit him in the back of neck.” There it is again, the strike in the back that Winston thought about, the one you don’t see coming, played out in miniature. Could be foreshadowing, but the repetition is notable enough: that unceremonious ending that can come at any moment. That the boy, like the Party, strikes Winston from behind testifies to their mechanisms of terror; no justice, no climax, no final words—just erasure (24)

• Winston witnesses “helpless fright” on Mrs. Parsons face, and acknowledges that “Another year, two years, and they would be watching her for unorthodoxy.”—A fundamental rupture of the parent-child relationship. The child causes many emotions in the parent—joy, frustration, anger—but usually not fear. In Orwell’s world this isn’t a case of a single bad child, either, but all children. We bemoan the absent parent as a big part of our societal ills, but just imagine if every parent wasn’t just careless but actively afraid of their children. The family as we know it would cease to function, the building blocks of a healthy society would be decimated. It’s mind-blowing to me that Oceania is even functioning at all given this complete reversal of power dynamics, but maybe that’s because the youngest generation hasn’t grown up yet—some of the people, like Winston, still remember (24)

• The children organizations turned them into “ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party…It was all sort of a glorious game to them.” Children have energy, emotions, that need to be directed somewhere. And it seems the Party provides the outlet. Intrigue, teamwork, allies and enemies—it really is a game to them, and it’s a game that provides a structure in which to grow. It’s an introduction to tribe, and tribe is potent. Any of us who have played team sports or follow professional sports knows understands the intoxicating effects of tribe. You hate the Yankees and you love the Red Sox. Your team allows you to win, your team allows you to survive (24)

• “Winston had never been able to feel sure…whether O’Brien was a friend or an enemy. Not did it even seem to matter greatly. There was a link of understanding between them more important than affectation or partisanship.” What matters more to Winston is a shared understanding of the world, and he sees that recognition of truth in O’Brien. He may be an enemy, he may reject Winston’s view of the world, but he at least understands how it works, and that matters a lot in a world where so many others don’t

• “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.” I want to have an optimistic reading of this, that he means a place of freedom, enlightenment, beauty—a world without Big Brother

• “And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty.” Big big big. The people are given the bad news about the chocolate ration directly after the news of a military victory—measured in casualties, not territory, by the way—which is clearly by design, positioning the ration reduction as an act of patriotism, an act of sacrifice for the greater good, a necessary step in the never-ending battle of good versus evil. We’re familiar with this in the United States, although it’s a bit more subtle: there’s no money for an extension of healthcare subsidies, but a Venezuelan intervention is certainly on the table!

  • You can see the language games here, too. Those who critiqued the drug boat bombings and subsequent removal of Maduro did not have their assertions of illegality engaged with; they were instead cast as defenders of both dictators and drug trafficking, and who could defend that?

• “The telescreen—perhaps to celebrate the victory-, perhaps to frown the memory of the lost chocolate—crashed into “Oceania, ‘tis for thee.” You were supposed to stand at attention.” Military victory—> Bad news—> Military celebration. Talk about whiplash. Notice how the Party compels the person, as it does with the exercise, to adhere to its program physically, to enact reality

“About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London at present”—With all the talk of war I’ve been wondering what level of threat Winston actually faces, and it’s certainly not nothing. But it’s also convenient, isn’t it? Indiscriminate bombs that could land on the sidewalk next to you on your way home from work. It keeps you on your toes; it keeps you wary. It may not be you today, but it could be you tomorrow

• The assertion of a world in which diversity, connection, and truth matter. Why does Winston choose to highlight uniformity and solitude as the defining characteristics of the age, when so much else is wrong?

• “The principles of Ingsoc: Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past.” Just want to note this here because it’s laying out the most important critical components of the Party’s power—we’ll wait to analyze further (26)

• “The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.” Winton is alienated not just by the world but by the very course of history, living in a place literally plucked out of time. Again we come across that inability to situate oneself in history, that disorientation: the past has no impact or relevance, and the future is dark

• “Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except a few cubic centimeters inside your skull.” The impossibility of refuge, the destruction of interiority—no doubt the Party seeks to destroy those few remaining cubic centimeters, too

• “And in front of him there lay not death but annihilation.” The diary would be reduced to ashes and himself to vapor. Only the Thought Police would have read what he had written, before they wiped it out of existence and out of memory.” Death can have meaning because death being remembered; vaporization, annihilation—not just ceasing to exist, but never having existed—cannot

• “It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.” We want to think the human heritage prevails because of people who speak out, who protest, who speak up in the name of liberty as we are all taught is our foremost duty—but this isn’t Winston’s perspective. He believes more in carrying on the human heritage silently. But can you? Just above he admitted only the Thought Police would read his words, but had Winston spoken out, had he shared his words and thoughts with a single other, isn’t that more impactful? I wonder if he actually believes this or if it’s a convenient way for him to keep his head down, a defense mechanism that convinces him he’s fighting injustice when really he is just trying to survive (27)

• Thoughtcrime does not entail death; thoughtcrime IS death. We discussed this in the first post, how this concept functions as a projection of inevitability and omniscience on behalf of the Party. How true it is remains to be seen

• “Now that he had recognized himself as a dead it became to stay alive as long as possible.” The will to survive remains even in the face of damnation

That’s all I got for now but I hope it helps provide some insight. It was a lot of concepts and ideas to work through, and many things are still developing, but the main themes and arguments should become clearer as we continue reading, and the discussion should become a bit more streamlined as the world comes into focus. As always, drop a comment below about whatever stood out to you the most.

Keep reading.

Steve

I had to break this one up because silly little me did not realize just how much content there is in chapter one. Pretty much every major concept was introduced and this thing would be monstrous if I included three more chapters, so this post will only be for discussion one. The remaining discussion for chapters 2-4 will follow on Sunday.

So yeah, there is a lot here. Concepts, world-building, character, setting. I read 1984 a decade ago and don’t really remember any details with regards to character and plot, only how it ends, so I’m going into this with a fresh perspective. Let’s get into it.

Chapter 1

• “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” The first line of a book is just as important as the last. This isn’t giving us much, but it is giving us one resonant image: a world with light, but with no warmth

• Our first image of the protagonist, Winston Smith, is of him huddling against the “vile wind” as he approaches his apartment complex, immediately positioning him as a character embattled by external forces. The “gritty dust” that enters the door behind him suggests something permeating, inescapable, that seeps into every crack

• Instead of choosing a dreary, rainy day to begin the story, Orwell employs a starker image: cold, windy, harsh conditions belied by the brightness seen through the window. Could this be telling us something about appearance, deception?

• “The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats.” The interior, material conditions of this world assault the senses just like the biting wind (1)

• “It depicted an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man about forty-five, with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features…It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.”

  • You’ve heard his name. You’ve watched the show. You may even be familiar with the Kanye West track. Big Motherfucking Brother, in the flesh—or at least on a poster. Now, finally, we can see what the hype is all about. What does his introduction reveal? (1-2)

  • He appears first as an image, not as a character, and his face is large, imposing, suggestive of a cult of personality. We’ve got to question at this point if he’s even real, or just some mustachioed mascot cooked up by the real powers-that-be

  • He’s forty-five, which is the perfect age. Smack between 30 and 60. Young enough to still be vigorous and vigilant, old enough to possess wisdom and experience

  • He’s “ruggedly handsome”—Of course he’s hot It’s human nature to trust the hot ones, to tolerate them a bit more—at least more so than if Big Brother were some scrawny, chinless millennial staring down from the wall. “Rugged” is doing some work here, too. He’s masculine, sturdy, strong

  • The eyes that follow you wherever you go, coupled with the caption, reveal a world where the individual—at least in public—is always under the watchful eyes of the state. As the Joads, Billy Pilgrim, and the Savage had their freedoms restricted and obliterated at the hands of political and economic systems so too do we find Winston at the mercy of one. Here, power seems to be exercised through surveillance. But how exactly does it work?

• The telescreen is listing off figures related to the “production of pig iron”. Its volume can be turned down, but never muted. This is a deep violation of one’s privacy, a person’s right to solitude and silence. Why, out of all the propaganda the state could be broadcasting into the home, are they flexing the production of some good related to steel? My instinct is that the citizens have been sold a narrative that ties their own well-being to economic growth, even if this growth is completely detached from them and does nothing to fix the hallways that smell of cabbage. The official narrative of abundance and production is already clashing with the reality on the ground

• INGSOC—don’t know what this is yet, but it’s definitely going to matter

• “It was the police patrol, snooping into peoples’ windows. The patrols did not matter, however, Only the Thought Police mattered.” The police peeking into the windows of homes from helicopters further develops the surveillance state, but the narrator subverts such a notion by suggesting that they don’t actually matter, only the Thought Police matter. The helicopters are only for show. Does this suggest that the government is more concerned with policing the mind than in policing movement? Why might that be? How can that be?

• Not only is private life bombarded continuously with streams of information; private life is done away with altogether: “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” (3)

• The Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape.” A symbol of omniscience, purity, and grandeur—monumental and looming—a glaring and telling contrast to the gloomy city it overlooks

• On London, chief city of Airstrip One: “Were there always those vistas of rotting nineteenth century houses, their sides shored up with balks of timber…” Interesting inversion, here. In America and I’m sure in London, too, old, historic houses and neighborhoods are celebrated and preserved, valued for their architecture and insight into the age, yet in this London these homes have fallen into destitution, garden walls and all. It hints at a society in which the past is disregarded and neglected, considered irrelevant, unworthy of reverence or even remembrance

• Winston looks at the bombed sites and can’t remember if London was always like this with its “sordid colonies of wooden dwellings.” The bombs falling signaled a shift from one world to the next, a before and an after. Winston cannot imagine the world as it once was. Was is he too young to remember, has he forgotten, or was he made to forget? (3)

• “The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue, in Newspeak—was startlingly different than any other object in sight.” So they have their own language, Newspeak, which is a bastardization, truncation of the English language. If we look at this single example here of “Minitrue” it does a couple of notable things. One, it rolls off the tongue, sounds almost childish, and therefore more innocuous and unthreatening. Two, it clips the words “Ministry” and “Truth”. The former is a component of the administrative about which people may express discontent; the latter refers to broader, fundamental ideals about reality itself. What is the point of these nicknames?

• The three slogans of the party. You’ve probably seen these all over the internet, too. I’m just going to take a stab at each, but we’ll have to keep these in mind as we read. Slogans are big.

  • War is Peace—my guess here is that this relates to the idea that only constant war or at least preparation for it can create lasting peace, because only superior firepower can bring the security needed for peace. The drone strikes in the Middle East us millennials grew up are one example. Maybe they were effective, maybe they took out some bad guys, but all I know is sitting on the bus on the way to seventh grade, I felt safer knowing that at that very moment a Predator drone was gliding above the Hindu Kush. But was I?

  • Freedom is Slavery—this is a tricky one because it can be read so many different ways and I’m not really sure which direction to go. Maybe it’s something about human beings being slaves to their own impulses and emotions, even when living in a “free” society, and so not really being free at all? That feels half-baked, but it’s all I got for now

  • Ignorance is Strength—there may be more to this but I’d give I feel like it’s more surface level than the others. Ignorance is strength because it does not allow for doubt, and doubt destabilizes eve the strongest minds

• Or maybe there is no underlying philosophy or symbolism to the slogans at all. Maybe it’s simply an exercise in control. They force the party members to speak absurdities, to speak untruths, to speak to an unreality in order to assert their dominance over the individual

• On page 4, Winston gives a break down of the 4 ministries:

  • Ministry of Truth/Minitrue—Concerns itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. Where Winston works, but we don’t know much about his job yet

  • Ministry of Peace/Minipax—Concerns itself with war. In line with the slogan “War is Peace”, and we’ll stick to that interpretation for now. The Ministry of Peace conducting the business of war is no contradiction, because peace can only be maintained through constant war

  • Ministry of Plenty/Miniplenty —Responsible for economic affairs, its name not a neutral descriptor but a word invoking abundance and excess, even though we already know razor blades are a scarce commodity

  • Ministry of Love/Miniluv—Concerns itself with law and order. It’s the most frightening one all, a place with no windows. Why would the place of law and order be called the Ministry of Love? Is it because this law and order is carried out in the name of love, safety, and family? Is it because Big Brother loves us and wants us to be safe? Or could it be something different altogether? (4)

• Victory gin — reminds me of soma, something to take the edge off, to make the intolerable slightly more tolerable: “The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful” (5)

• So there are the Victory apartments, Victory gin, and Victory Cigarettes. Daily things donning the name of triumph, reminding the tenant and the drinker and the smoker of the ongoing, never-ending battle. Something to think about next time you drink a Sour Monkey which is 9.5% by the way

• Winston can avoid the eyes of the telescreen by sitting in the alcove that probably “intended to hold bookshelves.” Though the bookshelves are no longer there but that the space still provides Winston an “escape” as a book might have once once is notable—the power of knowledge reaching into the present and propagating itself, however indirectly and different

• “Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising possession.” The crime is not the act of writing, nor is the crime what you write. The crime is possessing something to write in at all—to even begin to think about writing. Why does the crime begin with a purchase and not putting pen to paper?

• On the diary: “This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp.” Legality is an old, cumbersome concept that only gets in the way, and it makes sense why the government operates under this “lawless” system instead. The law is neutral, the law is sacred, the law is a product of history, the law gives power to the individual. It’s more convenient for Big Brother to have no laws at all—for no concept of legality or justice to even exist—so that questions of fundamental rights can never even enter the heads of the citizenry, and even if they did the people lack the language to fight back (6)

• “To mark the paper was the decisive act.” I feel like this is a double commentary on the real-world danger that writing in the diary invites, and also on the decision of Winston (and man) to commit to the recording of history in the face of devastation, an expression of hope that one day things will be better and that lessons will be learned from those who suffered through terrible times. He thinks it himself: he is writing “for the future, for the unborn.” It’s an act of hope, an assertion of a different way of life, and that’s dangerous

• April 4th, 1984— Winston’s uncertainty surrounding the date—and the impossibility of pinning a date down within a year or two—further illustrates his country as a place disconnected from time and history. Dates mark anniversaries; dates mark marriages and massacres. By muddling time the state is able to disorient its people, providing no account of the past from which the people can orient themselves toward the present and future, and simultaneously affording it no meaning

• Yet Winston expresses doubt about this: “Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.” He’s alone in his struggle, isolated by the people around him, and those of the future who he doesn’t think will understand. I don’t agree that his predicament will be meaningless to the future, however (7)

• Doublethink—We know this is important, but I don’t think this passage is really giving us much here. Let’s keep an eye on this one

• Winston writes about the flicks he saw last night, all about wars, violent scenes that seem to function as propaganda. He watches a ship of refugees being bombed in the Mediterranean, “ a middleaged woman” and a “little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts and the woman putting her arms around him and comforting him” and then goes on to describe the bomb that the helicopter launches at them, and a “wonderful shot” of a child’s arm flying through the air. At this the Party members in the audience cheer. Whoever the enemy is, they seem to have been completely dehumanized in the eyes of the Party, and the Party members completely desensitized to violence. These films seem intended to stoke fear, tribalism, and nationalism—keeping the people whipped up against invaders

• The only person who objects in the audience is a “prole” who insists the severed arm is too much for children in the audience.“Nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never—”, Winston writes. I feel like prole has to refer to proletariat here, the working class who apparently live totally different lives from the members of the Party, and with different values too. Why is this woman offended while the Party members cheer? What distinguishes her from the Party member?

• It’s worth noting that writing down this memory triggers another one for Winston. Is that why the act of writing will get you killed? Retrieving one memory, however harmless, can lead to another memory, and that one might be at odds with the narrative of the present day. Or maybe it has nothing to do with contradictory facts at all and only imagination, because if you can imagine at all, you can imagine a different world, you can question (9)

• The Girl from the Fiction Department—she’s 27, with flowing hair and athletic movements, a symbol of womanhood and vitality. The scarlet sash of the Junior Anti-Sex League that brings out the “shapeliness of her hips” is an ironic detail, one that points to the control of the Party over the body, the denial biological and human reality

  • Winston dislikes her, “because of the atmosphere of hockey fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed to carry about with her.” Her image is sanitary, surface-level, curated by the party and lacking depth

  • “He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.” What’s the explanation? Does the Party give the women a sense of meaning and belonging, does it give them power over their neighbors that they otherwise wouldn’t have? Is Winston’s perception even correct?

• O’Brien— a member of the Inner Party, who gives off a “civilized” and noble air that seems from an older, different time, like the ink pen and London homes. Winston sees intelligence in O’Brien’s face: “He had the appearance of being a person that you could talk to…”

  • So basically we have to characters introduced here who are polar opposites in Winston’s mind: one could be Thought Police and the other could be a rebel. Obviously we should be skeptical of initial impressions, but these two characters are probably going to be important (10)

• The Two Minutes Hate features Emmanuel Goldstein, “the enemy of the people”, whose appearance on the screen elicits hisses and cries of disgust from the audience

  • Goldstein was a former party member, “almost on a level with Big Brother himself.” He is the principal figure in the Two Minutes Hate, “the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity” and all crimes against the Party spring from his teachings

  • He’s a convenient figure. The antithesis of Big Brother, the ugly, not ruggedly-handsome foil to him, against which Big Brother only becomes more meaningful, necessary, and heroic

  • He’s alive somewhere and “hatching conspiracies” but he seems to function more as the personification of the citizenry’s fears, whatever those may be. There’s no reference to some any specific plot or suspected plot

  • That all crimes stem from his teachings is significant, too. A person who commits a crime does not do so out of her own volition, and a sense of right and wrong—she does Goldstein’s spell. It allows the party to deny the human agency that is so dangerous to them. No sane, civilized person would rebel on their own—they must be corrupted by some sinister force

• Winston’s diaphragm constricts at the Jewish face of Goldstein and his sheeplike qualities, yet he recognizes Goldstein’s attacks on the Party were “so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken by it.” Winston seems to recognize that Goldstein’s main appeal is emotional—why is this unsettling to him?

• Goldstein denounces the Party, promotes freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly—certainly ideals we as Americans are familiar with. I’m surprised to see these ideals vilified so directly by the Party, and curious about how they’re able to pull that off (12)

• “Behind his head on the telecreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army—row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar.” The most potent image of the invader we’ve seen thus far—not the one who invades the home through the telescreen but the one who comes across the border, the one who does not look like us or feel like us, who comes wave after wave, threatening our way of life. There’s no evidence yet that Winston or other citizens in London have ever truly been endangered by these “hordes”, but the image is enough to invoke terror

• Though the external enemy flip-flips from Eurasia to Eastasia (more on that later), Goldstein’s is always the foremost enemy, a stand-in for chaos and violence that deflects attention and criticism away from the party, to an external enemy that we can all stand against. Goldstein is hated, everyday the people are reminded of his threat, “yet his influence never seemed to grow less.” Hmmmm. (13)

• In the final minute Winston joins in the Two Minutes Hate fully, because its impossible to not get caught up in the “hidden ecstasy, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces with a sledge hammer…” He succumbs to the mob mentality, the “electric current” that flows through the group, deep-rooted emotions unleashed by images of the enemy of the screen—the death and destruction they threaten to unleash

• “And yet the rage one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like a blowlamp.” Winston channels his rage first at Big Brother and then his counterpart, Goldstein, inhabiting two clashing perspectives. He is first angry at the Big Brother and the Thought Police and their lies, and feels for Goldstein who stands for truth. But then he sees the truth as the Party sees it. He adores Big Brother, who “seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia” and sees in Goldstein only evil, civilization-ending intention. That Winston can inhabit both mindsets attests to the malleability of man, how he can be equally motivated by both truth and fear depending on the circumstances, and that emotion can and does override truth

• Winston then transfers his hate the girl and imagines doing violent things to her. “He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so”…because of the “odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.” Why does the scarlet sash enrage Winston so much? Is he really just mad he’ll never hit? Or is it something deeper, a more universal disgust at the inversion of the world, the unnatural state of a society that represses and denies sexuality and youth and in doing so suppresses beauty, connection, and meaning?

• Goldstein literally turns into a sheep at the end of the hate: dehumanization of the enemy, a tale as old as time. The submachine gun roars out from the screen so realistically that the people in the front seats jump, a reminder that they are in danger, that this chaos can come for them and kill them at any moment. Then the face dissolves into that of Big Brother, and the people are saved again (15)

• The B-B chanting shit is weird, and Winston acknowledges it as such: “he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this subhuman chanting of B-B! always filled him with horror.” Why does Winston find the chanting more unnerving than the rage? Is it the religious connotation, the elevation of Big Brother into a Christlike figure, a savior? Or is it the simple subjugation of it, the groveling of one human being before another, the tossing away of logic and rationality and independence in the name of meaning and security

• The eye-contact with O’Brien is a big moment, though it may be in Winston’s head. He imagines O’Brien as understanding: “‘I am with you’, O’Brien seemed to be saying to him… ‘I am on your side!’” This reminds me of high school, sitting in the cafeteria and making eye contact with your crush sitting two tables over. It was probably incidental, it probably means nothing, yet the mind clings to the most hopeful, exhilarating, delusional speculation: you’ve spoken to her twice in two years, yet she knows how you feel, and she feels it too. Such undeniable eye contact never amounted to the passionate make out sessions I was sure it would, but I’m hoping it turns out different for Winston

• “And then the flash of intelligence was gone, and O’Brien’s face was as inscrutable as everybody’s else’s.” I’m curious about the trust Winston seems to be placing in a person’s appearance intelligence. I agree that you can often see intelligence in one’s face. But is it a given that all intelligent people are opposed to the Party? One would like to think… (17)

• DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER—I mean pretty on the nose here. The repetition and capitalization suggests an almost frantic rage, driven by Winston’s clarity, his sense of humanity and justice. He’s starting at this point, though, and given the fact there’s two hundred pages remaining, he’s definitely gonna get in some deep shit

• “Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed—would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime could not be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” Thoughts, not actions, are what will get you disappeared. It’s every strongman’s dream. Yet I wonder how much of this is psychological warfare versus real technical ability—how much of it is just about establishing an image of omniscience and inevitability which serves the same purpose: the suppression of critical thought

• “People simply disappeared, always during the night.” A horror that appears in the history books time and time again, the unaccountable secret police indispensable to every authoritarian regime, inspiring fear and suppressing dissent. Orwell was no doubt responding to the great horrors of the 21st century that he witnessed unfold in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union

• “Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.” Simple imprisonment or execution is not enough; the thought criminal must be erased. It prevents him from being used as a martyr, and maintains the narrative of a in full support of Big Brother. It also serves as a threat to the wannabe rebel, too. He cannot be motivated by glory or martyrdom; he instead will pass into nonexistence, which in some abstract way is a fate more terrifying than a bullet to the back of the head. His physical presence, even his corpse, is eviscerated. Dying is scary, erasure is scarier. We like to think that we’ll leave a mark, at least for a little while

• they’ll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck. The italics and lack of punctuation and capitalization give insight into Winston’s frenzied state of mind. He sees the world clearly and he knows that with this clarity comes danger—and not a glorious, heroic death but one you don’t even see coming, an end without ceremony, reflection, or meaning. Yet that can’t stop him from writing the truth. Despite all we’ve seen so far, the terrifying mechanisms in place to keep the people in line, Winston’s mind is still free. But how many others are free? And does it even matter?

And that brings us to the end of chapter one. An absolute shit ton of things to dig into going forward, but I think we’ve laid the groundwork for some effective (and hopefully shorter) analysis going forward.

As always, drop your comments below. There is a lot up to interpretation to this and I want to know what you guys think, whatever stood out to you the most. I will do my best to respond to all comments promptly to hopefully facilitate some real discussion so please, don’t be shy.

As for the next post, Chapters 2-4 will be posted on Sunday, 1/11.

Chapters 5-7 will be posted on Thursday, 1/15, which will bring us to around page 80.

Keep reading.

Steve

The reboot of The Great American Book Club will begin with George Orwell’s 1984. I didn’t do a vote for this one but future titles will continue to be voted on. I decided to restart with 1984 because I haven’t read it in a decade and it seems like the perfect book for these interesting times in which we live. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has seen comparisons everywhere between the present day reality and Orwell’s dystopia, from the language used by politicians to the Flock cameras that record our highways. These allusions are easy to recognize but it’s always important to do the work ourselves, and so I think revisiting Orwell’s classic will be the perfect place to start. I’m curious how deep we can go.

Our first reading assignment for 1984 will be for chapters 1-4 and will be posted on Thursday, 1/8. It’s 48 pages in my edition. As always, any and all observations about plot or character or theme are welcome in the comment section below each post. I’ll be posting my own set of notes which can be read before, after, or during the reading. Your comments can go off one my points, answer one of the questions I pose, or ignore my interpretation altogether. You can also not comment at all. The main goal is to get people reading.

If reading more is one of your goals for the new year, please consider reading with us! It’s low stakes and requires no actual meeting. If your family or friends may be interested in joining, please spread the word! The time between reads is the best time I have to promote.

That’s all I got for now! I’m excited to be kicking this back off, and I don’t plan on stopping again, so if 1984 isn’t for you, stay tuned for our next read. If you do plan on participating, secure your copy and get reading! It’s better than scrolling.

Steve

In the meantime, I’ve been working on a second project that I’m thrilled to share: The Chains of Christmas, authored by my Christmas-hating alter-ego Christopher Crumb, an Ivy League professor of cultural studies who despises the holiday and everything it represents. Elf on the Shelf, Rudolph, mistletoe, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”, Christmas trees—Professor Crumb sees the horror and unfreedom in all of it, and has plenty to say. I have three articles up right now with more coming throughout December. You can find the project here.

If you’ve enjoyed my writing about literature and want to see what else I can do, please check it out. If you’re just here for the books, stay tuned for the launch of 1984.

As always, thanks for reading and subscribing. I would end this by saying Merry Christmas, but Professor Crumb would take off my head.

See you guys soon.

Initial thoughts

Like many millennials, the Harry Potter books were what first spurred my love of reading. Some of my favorite parts were the endings when Harry, fresh off his clash with Voldemort and his minions, would sit down with Dumbledore, who would go on to explain everything that Harry and myself had been dying to know. I loved those final scenes because they clarified everything, but looking back now they do strike me as a bit clumsy, a bit too expositional. Admittedly these final chapters with Mond reminded me of those conversations, and though it’s not my preferred type of conclusion, the content, as always, is worth unpacking.

Chapter 16

• “So you don’t much like civilization, Mr. Savage.” Language is twisted to serve the World State’s aims, disguising a world of twins popping soma with a word that invokes innovation, progress, and human flourishing

• It’s striking that John was intent on lying to the Controller, but is inspired to tell the truth by the “good-humoured intelligence of the Controller’s face.” Mond isn’t exactly a caricature of evil. In fact, his words suggest that he isn’t surprised at all by John’s rebellion, and maybe even respects it

• Bernard is “horrified.” “To be labeled as a friend of a man who said that he didn’t like civilization—said it openly and, of all people, to the Controller—it was terrible.” Didn’t he just claim to be John’s friend two pages ago? Now he’s shrinking in front of the Controller. Charmin Soft. (218)

• The Savage admits, “There are some very nice things. All that music in the air, for instance…” That John singles out music as the most redeeming quality of the World State is yet another testament to its power, which we’ve seen across all three reads so far, and witnessed earlier in the novel when Lenina “liked the drums” of the Malpais ritual. The resonance of a sick beat is something that cannot be fully suppressed (218)

• Mond responds quoting The Tempest: “Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears and sometimes voices.” Love the fact that Mond knows and quote Shakespeare off the cuff. Honestly wouldn’t hate having him on the bar trivia team (218)

• “But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx. Which I’m afraid you can’t do.” Rules for thee, not for me. (219)

• Shakespeare is prohibited because it’s old: “We haven’t any use for old things here.” Banning books is a familiar game, and we know why it’s done. But why the disregard for old things altogether? Is it because “old things” are inconvenient, that they remind us of a world that no longer exists, because they provide an account of the past that clashes with the vision of the future, perhaps a past rooted in compassion and connection instead of consumption?

• “…we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.” Obstacle Golf, the feelies, the scent organ—these new things have replaced the artistic expression of the past, and with it the peoples’ ability to find meaning in history

  • Let’s dive a little deeper, only because this antihistorical posture is being adopted by our own government this very moment, and it’s important to question why

  • An Executive Order from March 27 titled, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” takes aim at the Smithsonian Institution—the quintessential steward of the “old”—for “an exhibit representing that ‘[s]ocieties including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.’” This critique of the Smithsonian is one aspect of the EO’s larger mission which purports to stop the “revisionist” movement in the United States in which “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” Slavery, anyone? Segregation? Women’s suffrage? We learn this shit in high school.

  • I know the parallel between Shakespeare and the Smithsonian isn’t perfect here, but the outcome is the same. The Smithsonian is the curator of the “old”, and history is the path to truth. When truth disrupts narrative and comfort—in this case, the claim that the United States has only ever advanced liberty—the old is cast as dangerous

• John invokes Othello—to which Mond responds “they couldn’t understand it”, just as Helmholtz couldn’t understand Romeo and Juliet. “You can’t make tragedies without social instability.” It’s not so much that art is banned, but that certain forms of art have become obsolete, as the conditions that give rise to them no longer exist (219)

• “But that’s the price we pay for stability. You have to choose between happiness and high art.” This is the central idea behind The Great American Book Club, which was inspired by Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman argued that the introduction of the television fundamentally changed how human beings processed information and that literacy was its main casualty. The internet has been an even more dramatic extension of that. It’s not just about the dopamine hits. The content is dictated by the form, and the shift from television to internet has made it so content is no longer about entertaining but instead maintaining attention. The sports highlights, manosphere mantras, and shaking asses are served to us on a silver platter, bludgeoning our attention spans with whatever makes us feel good, so that when we do finally pick up Brave New World, we can’t even get past the first few pages. The algorithm is the soma, and it distorts our brains at the cost of real thought and feeling

• Mond touts the feelies and the scent organ to John, and their “agreeable sensations to the audience.” John replies, “But they’re…they’re told by an idiot.” It’s a callback to the Macbeth line we quoted in full in Discussion III, and we only need look at that quote again to identify the meaning behind John’s claim: “told by an idiot…signifying nothing.”

• “And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortunate, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt.” Nothing to really add here, speaks for itself (221)

• John brings it back to the Twins. Mond states “‘…they’re the foundation…the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course’…the gesticulating hand implied space and the onrush of the irresistible machine.” The erasure of identity and individuality in the name of stability, stability for the sake of production and profit (222)

  • In The Grapes of Wrath the Joads were sacrificed to the tractor, in Slaughterhouse-Five, innocents were sacrificed to the war, and here in the Brave New World, the individual is sacrificed to the production line. The machine dehumanizes man in the name of progress—progress never seems to mean progress for everybody

• “A society of Alphas couldn’t fail to be unstable and miserable.” A sentiment prevalent throughout our society—not everybody can be Bezos, some have to be the drivers, the baristas, the janitors. But should the driver have to work two jobs while Bezos sails on his yacht? At what point does this Alpha mentality become an excuse for disenfranchisement? It’s worth stating that even in a dystopia, food and housing for the lowest-caste is a guarantee

• “Only an epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices…for him they’re not sacrifices; they’re the line of least resistance.” In the World State these occupations are determined by genetics—in ours, they’re largely determined by class. And there are many in our society who are perfectly content with “low-grade” work. But what about the person who isn’t? Is it moral to engineer Epsilons so they don’t mind making “Epsilon sacrifices?” Is it moral to credit a person’s shitty job to their character, if they never had access to education or opportunity that would give them more?

• The World State has recognized the instability inherent in new inventions—which is why the prefer to keep “a third of the population on the land.” This brings to mind job displacement due to AI, and we already saw this same dynamic play out a hundred years ago in The Grapes of Wrath, when the tractor replaced the farmers. Our society, though, has no apparent plans to “keep the population on the land,” so what happens then? We’ve got Waymos and chatbot customer service agents and one person working the self-checkout line while seven registers sit empty. New jobs aren’t going to magically appear. The mom who did decently working the register at Walmart a decade ago is now out of a job, and the Walton family now pockets her paycheck. What happens to her?

  • Mond claims that “Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.” Yet this is a fact lost on our society. Technology never requires justification. When this technology disrupts everyone’s jobs from the Walmart cashier to the once-indispensable software engineer, I can’t imagine anything more subversive than that

• “The words galvanized Bernard into violent and unseemly activity. Send me to an island…you can’t send me. I haven’t done anything. It was the others. I swear it was the others.” Yeah fuck this guy. People like him are exactly how the Nazis amassed power, not even kidding. Alcohol in his blood-surrogate-having-ass

• The island as a place with “interesting” people—people “too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life…Every one, in a word, who’s any one.” The islands are a place where individualism flourishes…even Mond says the punishment is actually a reward. Kind of a happy ending for Helmholtz at least, considering rebellion such as his in our own earthly regimes would likely end in imprisonment or execution

• “Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness…mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t.” We have to keep in mind through all of this that the World State’s idea of stability is not stability for the sake of peace and safety, but profit. Those interested in truth and beauty naturally won’t be satisfied with working the production line, and that’s why comfort and happiness have been adopted as the defining values

• “What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?..People were ready to have even their appetites controlled even then. Anything for a quiet life.” Human agency is depicted a casualty of war, not just the individual but the collective. It speaks to the human impulse to avoid suffering, often at the cost of humanity—at first that of others, but ultimately our own (228)

• “Happiness has got to be paid for. You’re paying for it, Mr Watson—paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.” Truth and beauty are incompatible with happiness because they inspire us to question, and questioning leads to discontent and even rebellion.

• “That’s how I paid. By choosing to serve happiness. Other people’s—not mine.” Mond’s own backstory draws him as another example of “sacrifice”—one whose agency and individualism is reduced by the machine for the good of the community, just like the man in Malpais sacrificed for the rain. He’s the oppressor, but also something of a tragic figure—his complicated depiction shows that even the men at the top can be victims of the same structural forces, swept up into systems by perverse economic incentives they’re powerless to change

• Helmholtz accepts his exile, even going so far as to choose a poor climate in the interest in writing. Mond respects it and I get the reasoning but I probably would have chosen Bermuda. Reminds me of a quote from another Huxley book I’ve never read, Antic Hay, but once quoted in my AIM status when my crush started dating someone else:

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

Chapter 17

• Art and science are described in the previous chapter as the price of happiness, but there’s another cost: religion.

• The Savage’s idea of God is linked to “solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death…” It’s an idea of God far removed from any concepts of sin or guilt or religion—a more natural idea informed by his contemplation of isolation and darkness and being

• Not going to lie, I had to read the wall of text across pages 232-233 like three different times. Cardinal Newman argues that it is not fear of death that makes men turn to religion as they age, but because the “passions grow calm”. Less distracted, Man sees God clearly. Mond argues that since the World State has engineered it so that engaging in these passions is possible right up to the very end, God and religious sentiment have become “superflous”

• “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness.” God, like tragedy, is rendered obsolete—because what He offers—comfort, stimulation, salvation, community—is no longer relevant to the human experience

• The gods are just and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us…the Savage reverts to Shakespeare to invoke divine judgment, but is shot down by Mond. The Edmund from King Lear was punished by the gods, but “where would Edmund be nowadays? Sitting in a pneumatic chair, with his arm around a girl’s waist…”

  • Is he being punished? John argues that he is in fact “degraded by pleasant vices”, and this is the question of our time. We, too, sit in the pneumatic chair, pleasant vices a tap or a scroll away. Is this a reward? Is this degrading? Is it all just a little too easy?

• “Providence takes its cue from men.” This line tracks with the language of the World State in which Ford has replaced God. It elevates man above God, positioning man as the driver of history and peoples. A Providence taking its cue from an industrial fails to be Providence at all—as true Providence extends its promise to all

• Soma— “Christianity without tears” —just like it’s alcohol without the hangover. Yet these things—drugs, religion, alcohol—are not vices because of their physical effects but because of how they can warp our perception, detach us from the world around us (238)

• John quotes Othello: “If after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blow til they have wakened death.” The storm, the “inclemency”, gives way to new clarity, new contentment, a peace and appreciation not possible in a world with no storms

• I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin (240)

  “Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” There was a long silence.

  “I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.

• The Savage lays claim to the human condition, and finally rejects the dehumanization of the World State. That’s the whole ballgame right there.

Chapter 18

• “I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then, I ate my own wickedness.” Dramatic line from John, here. I thought it was Shakespeare at first, but it’s his own. Is this a commentary on John himself as a failed consumer? He went to the feelies, he wanted to consummate his relationship with Lenina, yet ultimately could not assimilate into the society; its composition was toxic to him (241)

• “There was a silence. In spite of their sadness—because of it, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another—the three young men were happy.” — Sadness is no longer expressed as symptom of illness but as a symptom of love. Moreover, this might be the only time in the whole text the word “happy” denotes something real and not manufactured (242)

• That the Controller refuses the Savage the island exile because he “wanted to go on with the experiment” is cold—the scientific dogma of the World State is apparently insurmountable, despite Mond’s evident humanity

• “So long as I can be alone,” John says, a final rejection of Community (243)

• Savage chooses the air-lighthouse that was utilized before the “upline” was moved, which left the skies above it “silent and deserted.” The air-lighthouse mirrors our own: once a symbol of illumination, now abandonment. It’s worth noting that, like John, our own society still values these structures because of their beauty and isolation—their value transcends their contribution to industry

• “Flowers and a landscape were the only attractions here. And so, as there was no good reason for coming, nobody came.” Just as the people can’t contemplate literature or God, nor can they appreciate the beauty of nature. This is by design, indicated in the early pages, but this passage serves as a bleak reminder of what is lost in utopia. It’s like living a half hour from Yellowstone, but going to Dave and Buster’s every August afternoon instead. Not the existence I would choose

  • I don’t think it’s explicitly mentioned but these people must not care about the beach, either, right? I mean the sun and the sand probably still feel good, but the crashing waves, the blue sky, the boats on the horizon—they must not care at all. Not to mention the stimulation of the sun and sand is probably produced a million-fold in some feelie. What a sad, sad world—where even the beach has lost its luster

• “From time to time he stretched out his arms as though he were on the Cross…” John did this in chapter 8, and it caught our attention. John is a Christ figure who bears the sins of man, a sacrifice for the greater good

• From his lighthouse, John can see the skyscrapers of Guildford, the “modest little village” of Puttenham, and, beyond, stretches and stretches of beautiful woods. This lighthouse’s location symbolizes John’s position as a man separated from all worlds. There’s he towering city to which he was brought, the untouched stunning nature for which he longs, and the “modest village”—which I read as a sort of middle-ground, a symbol of normalcy, not quite Malpais, not quite London, but a slice of the old world, a place that reaps the benefits of industry without succumbing to it entirely (245)

• John making the bow is a callback to him working the clay back on page 134, again driving home the significance of craft, a pointed contrast to the impersonality of industry (247)

• “…when he realized with a start that he was singing—singing!” Singing is not just an act of solidarity or protest but an act of hope. John feels guilty about singing, about forgetting the twins and Linda for a moment, but shows this also shows healing and a humanity that both the twins and Linda were denied

• The Savage kicking the reporter is not depicted as an act of struggle but as a “sensation”, resulting in even more newspapers flocking to the island. It’s the same dynamic at play that had Helmholtz laughing at Romeo and Juliet

• “Poor Linda whom he had sworn to remember. But it was Lenina who still haunted him.” Why is John haunted by Lenina more than his mother? Is it because Linda was doomed the moment she popped her first gramme of soma, but Lenina, despite living under such repressive conditions, had indicated a desire for something deeper? Linda always remained a slave to her conditioning despite her time away from London. Yet Lenina had shown flashes of hope, humanity, a desire for true connection. Maybe John understands he fumbled that one but just can’t articulate it (252)

• Bonaparte is a big-game photographer who films the Savage, resulting in a feelie—The Savage of Surrey—and an influx of tourists to John’s lighthouse. Suffering is commodified, John’s inner conflict turned into content

  • One real-world parallel this calls to mind is American influencer Logan Paul’s 2018 visit to Aokigahara, a forest in Japan known for its suicides, where he filmed himself coming across a dead body. In the intro, Paul stated, “This is not clickbait. This is the most real vlog I’ve ever posted to this channel…Now with that said: Buckle the fuck up, because you’re never gonna see a video like this again.” Could easily see a Tik Toker saying the same thing, before he turns the camera onto the Savage flogging himself and screams

• “And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.” Here’s that Macbeth soliloquy again, and here it seems to speak to John’s own mindset, about his mother. While above it was used to reject the meaningless words of the World State’s emphasis on sensation, here it seems to speak to John’s nihilism (254)

• “In a few minutes there were dozens of them…laughing, clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape) peanuts…” Reminds me an awful lot of Billy Pilgrim in the zoo on Tralfamadore. Both John and Billy are alienated and dehumanized by their respective plights—reduced to spectacle instead of treated with empathy (We know that Tralfamadore is metaphorical, and illustrates Billy’s alienation as someone suffering from PTSD in post-war America—a society that fails to even comprehend his struggle)

• “We—want—the—whip!” The crowd yells at the Savage. I’m certain this has a double-meaning. One, it speaks to the crowds’ desire for entertainment, spectacle—they want to witness the freakish commodity advertised to them on screen in person. But it also speaks to their own psychology—the argument made throughout the novel that people want and even need suffering and pain in order to be fully human. In clamoring for John’s entertaining stunt, they’re also clamoring for their own liberation, for the capacity to feel—though they don’t know it

• Lenina shows up with the crowd. She tries to say something to John—maybe it was “I love you”—but is drowned out by the crowd. It’s another example of her inability to communicate with John, the insurmountable barrier between them as products of two different worlds, this time symbolized quite literally by being lost in the clamor of her own chanting countrymen

• “Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled won her cheeks.” Lenina displays true sadness, true emotion, true longing. She finally separates herself from the masses, she seeks to connect, her arc is complete—yet she is misunderstood and met with the whip. What a tragedy.

• John’s whipping of Lenina sends the crowd into a “orgy of atonement”—in which they strike each other and sing and dance, spurred by John’s whipping of Lenina. John succumbs to this “long-drawn frenzy of sensuality.” He’s finally consumed by the Community, the very system he’s tried so hard to reject; he falls victim to the same human impulses the World State manipulates so menacingly. That this whole orgy was triggered by his rejection of Lenina—who represented hope and change and choice—is all the more twisted

• That John hangs himself is no surprise. It’s his final assertion of agency against a system that he could not fully overcome, a refusal to succumb entirely to the hollow existence and society from which he cannot fully escape. John’s suicide, though devastating, is the natural tragic conclusion to his arc. It’s an act of nihilism but an also an act of resistance. It’s a sad, sad ending, and warning about a world that replaces truth and beauty with happiness and comfort

And that concludes our discussion of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Although written nearly a hundred years ago, it’s perhaps our most relevant read yet. The smartphone is the soma of our time, and its emphasis on comfort, sensation, and spectacle has profoundly altered ourselves, our communities, and our relationships with others. I won’t rehash the relevant themes that Huxley at times beat us over the head with, but will instead end on this note: we must continue to pursue truth and beauty, because when we lose sight of those two things, we lose sight our our humanity.

I want to thank everyone who stuck with it throughout this long read of Brave New World. I thought Slaughterhouse-Five was difficult to write about because of the chronology, but something about Huxley’s on-the-nose style made some of this even more difficult to write about without falling into paraphrase. Still, though, its relevance is stunning, and everybody should read it.

Our next two read have already been announced, Huckleberry Finn and James, back-to-back, which should be a lot of fun. Our first discussion post for that is slated for this coming Sunday, so I hope I’ll see you there.

Thanks for reading.

Steve

Chapter 13

• Lenina, still down over John’s rejection, turns down Henry Foster’s invitation to the feelies. “You’re not feeling ill, are you?” This is yet another assertion of the theme running through the novel: sadness as abnormal, the inconceivability of mental anguish, negative emotions not as products of troubled minds but ailing bodies. It’s the same treatment Linda gets—a refusal to consider the traumatic circumstances of her return to the World State, her abnormality not chalked up to deep personal struggle but to “senility” (186)

• I’m intrigued by the “few remaining infectious diseases” Henry thinks Lenina might have. Their existence seems at odds with the advanced science and engineering of the World State. You’re telling me Covid is still endemic?? I’m tempted to read it as a metaphor for ideas, a metaphor from freedom: no matter how advanced the science, how tight the control, there still exists chaotic forces that slip through their grasp, spreading amongst the population

• “‘My Ford’, she wondered, ‘have I given this one its sleeping sickness injection, or haven’t I?’” Lenina’s sadness leads to a crack in the system, a breakdown of the efficiency and consistency so important to the World State. This is a direct parallel to chapter 10, in which the crowd’s laughter at the Director’s humiliation results in sperm being spilled. Emotions, whether good or bad, lead to instability

• Huxley confirms it a paragraph later: “Twenty-two years, eight months, and four days from that moment, a promising young Alpha-Minus administrator at Mwanza-Mwanza was to die of trypanosomiasis—the first case for over half a century.” Pain, suffering, dying young of a disease that nobody’s had for 50 years—all because Lenina had a crush. Kind of an argument for the World State’s ideology, is it not? I guess it depends on how you look at it. Is this young administrator’s tragic end simply the sacrifice for Lenina’s own burgeoning humanity? Would it be better if Lenina hadn’t changed, if she never experienced emotions that interfered with her job, and he went on to live his whole, fulfilling sixty years of administration and soma? (187)

• Lenina shows up to John’s crib to finally seduce him and he starts quoting The Tempest like the pretentious motherfucker he is. “So perfect and so peerless are created of every creature’s best,” he tells her, emphasizing her individuality, her uniqueness, but at the same time idealizing her in a way that’s not rooted in reality. It’s like your buddy from high school who falls in love with the cheerleader who smiled at him once

• It also speaks to John’s inability to perceive Lenina in a way that isn’t informed by this sort of literary romanticism. Shakespeare gives him insight into the world, but it also distorts his perception. As an outsider to both Malpais and the World State, he’s unable to move about the world in a way that is truly natural, truly his own, so he must rely on literature to make sense of it all

• This is further evidenced by John’s desire to “show that I was worthy of you…to do something first.” He positions is himself as a hero, needing to accomplish the heroic deed in order to earn the love of the heroine. While Lenina’s world diminishes the significance of sex and romance, John’s elevates it to an absurd degree. And even though Lenina isn’t treating John like just another conquest, even though she actually likes him—and that is usually enough in our own, actual society—he’s unable to understand it on those terms. Lenina’s conception of intimacy was distorted by “community”, while John’s is distorted by Shakespeare

• John tells Lenina he should bring her the skin of a mountain lion to prove his worth. She tells him, “There aren’t any lions in England.” He responds, “And even if there were, people would kill them out of helicopters, I suppose, with poison gas or something.” Here is the reassertion of a theme we tracked toward the beginning: nature as a casualty of industrialization, consumption, and sport—nature given no intrinsic value or significance. John understands that even the mountain lion—a badass animal which incidentally fucked me up in Red Dead a few weeks ago—means nothing in this world sedation and extraction (190)

• “Answer me this question, do you really like me, or don’t you?” This is really what it comes down to, and the answer is obviously yes, and God is this the most convoluted case of will-they-won’t-they ever (191)

• John responds to this query with, “I love you more than anything in the world.” And though there is no question that John is immensely attracted to her, I’m still going to press [x] to Doubt. I just don’t believe that John has any concept of what love actually is—he can only frame his relationship with Lenina through the rituals of Malpais or the words of Shakespeare, not his actual connection with her as a human being (192)

• “‘Then why on earth didn’t you say so?’ She cried, and so intense was her exasperation that she drove her sharp nails into the skin of his wrist.” A subtle reinforcement of the book’s overarching theme, that passion leads to pain

• Lenina’s embrace makes John think of Three Weeks in a Helicopter—probably because the sensory stimulation is so similar. Yet it gives him the wrong impression—that Lenina, like the heroine of three weeks in a helicopter—was made for the streets. Stories matter, but they can teach us the wrong things

• “‘Hug me til you drug me, honey.’ She too had poetry at her command.” Both Lenina and John’s poetry, stories from their respective worlds, are insufficient to communicate what they actually want and feel, because what they want and feel is something real, not something idealized, dramatized or romanticized on the page or screen. They do not have a shared language—culturally at least (193)

• “Impudent strumpet!” John nearly resorts to violence like he did with Pope. John’s status as an outsider in both Malpais and in the World State distorts his perception of sex—he can only see it as wholly sacred or wholly meaningless. He’s unable to understand that Lenina isn’t following the same old tired “everybody belongs to everybody” mantra, but is actually expressing agency and emotion and acting in spite of her conditioning. It’s a tragic misunderstanding

• “Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination.” Soma, the allure of sedation, described by Shakespeare. Brave New World is the futuristic, dystopian riff on old, old human impulses (195)

Chapter 14

• Upon arriving at the hospital John spots a convoy of “gaily-coloured” hearses—more inversion, something sad and bleak turned colorful, happy—that’s how it is in the Brave New World

• “Linda was dying in company—in company and with all the modern conveniences…Television was left on, a running tap, from morning till night.” I’m struck by the detail of the television, probably more so than Huxley intended, because the televisions in hospitals always struck me as one of the bleakest details of it all. Tiny, poor picture quality, always some syndicated stuff on that you try to half-heartedly watch to distract yourself from the grim reality taking place in the same room. That’s not to say that HBO and Game of Thrones would make it any better, especially the last season. The point is that dying with all the modern conveniences is still dying, and everybody knows that (198)

• The nurse is surprised by John’s turmoil. She’s not accustomed to this kind of thing in visitors. (Not that there were many visitors anyhow: or any reason why there should be many visitors.) She asks him, “You’re not feeling ill, are you?” —> We discussed this above, the reframing of genuine suffering into a product of external forces, something physical, not philosophical. I’m also wondering, though, who are the visitors? Is it he Alphas, who recognize the significance of death, the loss of their friends, but don’t act like John in the interest of decorum?

• “Faces still fresh and unwithered (for senility galloped so hard that it had no time to age the cheeks, only the heart and brain) turned as they passed. Their progress was followed by the blank, incurious eyes of second infancy.” Senility as “second infancy"—chilling stuff (199)

• “How beautiful her singing had been! And those childish rhymes, how magically strange and mysterious!” These nonsensical World State songs hold meaning for John not because of their meaning but because of their association with his mother—John even looks back on “Elementary Instructions for Beta Workers in the Embryo Store” with fondness. It’s another example of inversion, this time in the opposite direction, and it’s interesting to view in light of John’s interpretation of Shakespeare that led him to reject Lenina. Language captures a lot, but it doesn’t capture everything

• “…that beautiful, beautiful Other Place, whose memory, as of a heaven, a paradise of goodness and loveliness, he kept whole and intact, undefiled by contact with the reality of this real London, these actual civilized men and women.” A callback to that beginning epigraph, that idea of “utopia”, and what is lost in it. We're given another answer: one’s own mother. “Goodness and loveliness” do exist in London—they’re just drug-induced (201)

• The “maggoty” twins being death-conditioned, swarming the ward and calling Linda fat and ugly, might be the most dystopian touch of the whole book. I mean screaming kids running around the brewery is enough to set me off—if they showed up at my mother’s deathbed I’d probably put them through a wall (202)

• John tries to recapture the memories of his mother after confronting the twins, only to be met with “a hateful insurrection of jealousies and ugliness and miseries.” Pope, Linda drunk and asleep, the spilled mescal…painful memories overcome the pleasant ones. It’s clear this turn was brought about by the twins’ appearance, but why? (203)

• “…the appalling present, that awful reality—but sublime, but significant, but desperately important precisely because of the imminence of that which made them so fearful.” Almost a spiritual argument here—that there’s sublimity in loss (204)

• Linda finally recognizes John, but only as an “intruder into that paradisal Malpais where she had been spending her soma-holiday with Pope.” That delirium often accompanies death in normal circumstances is tragic enough—that Linda’s disconnect with reality is induced not because of her affliction but because of soma is simply terrible. Her final moments are not spent with her son but with fantasy—but parents and children have no meaning in this world, anyway (205)

• “As though death were something terrible, as though any one mattered as much as all that!” John’s reaction as an affront to the children, and threat to their death-conditioning, and thus at odds with the World States definition of “community”

• “‘God, God, God...’ In the chaos of grief and remorse that filled his mind it was the one articulate word.” God, not Ford.

• The twin pointing with the eclair, asking, “Is she dead?” Such a devastating image to end on, a perfect juxtaposition of the child’s sweet treat and the adult’s immense loss. John’s only connection in the world—and his only connection to the world in which he was born and raised—has been severed, and it’s just another day in London

Chapter 15

• “Twins, twins…like maggots they had swarmed defilingly over the mystery of Linda’s death.” The depiction of the children as maggots, and subsequently, the workers receiving their post-shift soma ration, is telling. These kids and workers are something less than human, mindless, thoughtless, with no fixed identity. Their conditioning has been portrayed as dehumanizing throughout, but I think John’s repeated use of “maggots” symbols an even more dramatic shift to plain anger and outrage: these twins are not something to be pitied, but are instead a force that defiles human nature, something to be stomped out

• The use of “mystery of death” is important here, too, further exposing the horrors of the World State in treating a process so human, philosophical and religiously fraught as just another inconvenience that can be conditioned away (209)

• “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world…” Here is the final crack. At the beginning of the journey, John said it with hope. In chapter 11, he said it at the factory, before vomiting. Now he says it at the breaking point, the complete shattering of the illusion. We understand what it represents, but why did Huxley choose this as the title? I’m sure many quotes from Shakespeare would have worked, so what is it about the symbolism in this phrase that Huxley deemed most important?

• O brave new world…Those “singing words…had mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision…they insisted on the low squalor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms.” Hope —> Disillusionment —> Resistance

• “Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble.” There is that deep, pesky human optimism that the World State tries so hard to suppress. Shakespeare did not allow John to understand romance, but finally it allows him to grasp hope, the idea that a better tomorrow is worth fighting for (210)

• “Linda had been a slave, Linda had died; others should live in freedom, and the world be made beautiful. A reparation, a duty.” Just a beautiful passage, and further evidence of the transition in the novel. Not just the idea that a dehumanizing existence should be lamented, but that it should be protested and resisted, that doing so is a moral obligation—for people like Linda (or Billy Pilgrim, or the Joads) who succumbed to such slavery. It’s the essential human struggle—we saw it in Steinbeck, and we saw it in Vonnegut

• The Savage standing up and telling all these raging drug addicts “Stop!” Wow that takes some balls, man. Chills

• Soma is finally called what it is: poison. We’ve touched upon its modern-day equivalents throughout our read, but we haven’t named them explicitly. That’s what all of it is: Budweiser, Blue Dream, Facebook, Tik Tok, Big Macs, OnlyFans. Poisons not because they kill our bodies (though some do) but because of what they do to our brains. They distract us, they sedate us, they replace our agency with dopamine hits—they remove our ability to face the world fully, with all its pain and beauty (211)

• “‘But do you like being slaves…do you like being babies. Mewling and puking.” Infantilization of the populace is a theme that runs through the novel, and I’m mad that I didn’t make the connection to Slaughterhouse-Five earlier. They take two different forms, but the function is the same. Let me explain. Slaughterhouse-Five is also titled The Children’s Crusade. It depicts the sacrifice of young men— “babies”—as a condition of war. Additionally, Billy is portrayed as having reverted to infancy as result of his trauma—for example, when he hides under the blanket during his wife’s visit to the hospital. In Brave New World, this infancy is engineered; in Slaughterhouse-Five, it’s both a condition and result of war. What is the significance of this? In both novels, the growth of men is stunted and reversed by power structures over which they have no control. That we can grow and struggle and learn and ultimately flourish as human beings is a central aspect of our humanity—to reverse this, through war or through drugs—is unnatural and tragic, and neither serves the people (212)

• “Grief and remorse, compassion and duty—all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hated of these less than human monsters.” The total rejection of the World State’s system is complete. The “twins” move from embodying happiness and satisfaction, to being a lesser-life form, maggots, worthy of contempt, to, finally, being rejected as part of the natural order entirely

• “Don’t you want to be free and men? Don’t you even understand what manhood and freedom are?”

• Soma out the window—SYMBOLISM (213)

• John swinging on the twins and Helmholtz jumping in beside him had me straight-up cheering. I mean talk about catharsis. I haven’t felt this exhilarated since 28-3. I wanted to be beside John and Helmholtz, swinging on those freaks too. But let’s break it down in more literary terms…

  • One, this confirms what we already suspected about Bernard—that he’s a huge pussy. He likes the idea of conflict, but only in theory. I guess he is meant to symbolize the guy who understands injustice, but is not willing to invite discomfort or danger in order to fight it. When sedation fails, as it did for Bernard, these oppressive regimes still have fear at their disposal, and that’s an equally powerful motivator

  • Two, it also confirms that Helmholtz is a real one. We already suspected that too especially when he started penning poems about loneliness, but this also serves as confirmation. This is the “madness and violence” that he so craved, in a context that he understands

  • “Men at last!” The rejection of sedation and infantilization, the acceptance of risk and suffering, in the name of true freedom

• Bernard getting shot by the water pistol anyway strikes me as deeply symbolic. Even those of us who try to be neutral will ultimately be cast as sympathizers or dissidents. In Bernard’s case, the decision was made for him. It calls to mind the poem that’s been all over the internet lately, and for good reason: “First They Came” by Martin Niemöller

• Synthetic Anti-Riot speech lol…better than tear gas and rubber bullets, I suppose?

• The Voice tells the rioters, “Oh, I do want you to be happy. I do so want you to be good!” Happiness and goodness are incompatible with freedom. (215)

• “Why shouldn’t I be?” At least Bernard was man enough to admit that John and Helmholtz are his friends. It’s just too bad he wouldn’t join the actual fray

This wraps up our discussion for chapters 12-15, and now we have just the final three chapters of the book to go, which I will post in just a few short days. We’ve come a long way from the sterile, scientific mundanity of those first few pages, and have finally witnessed a rebellion against the dehumanizing conditions of the Brave New World—with soma at its center. The only question left to answer is what price will John and Helmholtz pay for finally fighting for freedom in their small way, and what their fate will tell us about the world we inhabit today.

Keep reading.

Steve

Chapter 10

• The D.H.C. explains, “The greater a man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than many should be corrupted.” Another example of sacrifice in the name of the greater good, although of a different kind than that witnessed in Malpais, not a blood ritual but instead the deliberate suppression of man’s creative and intellectual abilities

• “Murder kills only the individual and, after all, what is an individual.” Unorthodoxy threatens society itself.” We’ve been tracking since the beginning, the fusion of individual into that of the group, the erasure of agency and identity in the name of stability (148)

• Bernard bringing Linda to the D.H.C. is an undeniable power move

• She’s described as “Bloated, sagging, and among those firm youthful bodies, those undistorted faces, a strange monster of middle-agedness…” Middle-aged as monstrous…wow that is dark

• “I should have known you anywhere, among a thousand”—the Director is distinguishable, unlike many in the World State, not some identical twin, which we know. But to Linda it’s more than that. He’s special to Linda because of who he is (150)

• Your Linda. This is proof, right? That Linda mattered to him. That she didn’t “belong to everybody else” — she belonged to him. It’s further evidence of the humanity of the director, though he tries to plays it off like she’s a once-hot ex approaching him at the bar while he’s with his boys. I wonder if this meeting happened in private if his reaction would have been different

• “My father!” John exclaims to the Director, falling to his knees in front of him, a striking parallel to Buddy the Elf. Seriously, though—it’s the same formula. An outsider born into/raised in a society that isn’t their own, returning to their real homes as cultural aliens, seeking emotional reunions with their well-established fathers and being rejected (151)

• “Father” is not considered as obscene a word as mother in society—as it’s “one remove away from the loathsomeness and moral obliquity of child-bearing.” Obviously the World State’s take on motherhood is extreme and a means to an end, but this dynamic parallels that of our own society, in which men are not subjected to the same responsibilities surrounding child-bearing, nor subjected to the same laws and often cruel treatments, simply because they don’t bear the children (151)

• The crowd breaks out in laughter, too, and this must feel just as dangerous to the D.H.C. and the powers that be. It’s spontaneous, an actual form of expression, community, and disruption. That their laughter results in test-tubes of sperm being spilt testifies to its danger

Chapter 11

• Linda is viewed as obscene, grotesque, because of her physical appearance—but not as a real savage because she was born from a bottle. People don’t want to see her because she is a physical symbol of mortality

• She immediately takes to the soma, which the doctor prescribes despite knowing it will kill her in a month or two— “And a good thing too”, considering they can’t “rejuvenate”

• Soma stretches time—it shortens Linda’s life, but the holiday is “immense". The doctor explains that every holiday stretches into “eternity” (154). An unimaginably pleasant trip that feels like forever. It doesn’t sound like the worst thing, especially for a person truly ailing, but it’s not real

• The Savage responds to the doctor’s reassurances about Linda with a quote from Antony and Cleopatra: “Eternity was in our lips and eyes.” The quote comes from Cleopatra to Antony, as she protests him leaving her to go off to war. It speaks to the abandonment John, like Cleopatra feels: the loss of his mother to soma, her departure on a journey that does not include him. But I also read it as a protest to the doctor’s words—John’s pushback to eternity not as something out of time, but as something spoken, witnessed, and experienced. Eternity is in the lips and eyes, yet Linda’s mouth is closed and her eyes are shut. How can that be eternity?

• The doctor says, “Of course, you can’t allow people to go off popping off into eternity if they’ve got any serious work to do”— bodies as commodities, human experience reduced only to its ability to produce

• Linda’s trip is a “labyrinth of sonorous colours…that led to a bright centre of absolute conviction… [it] was the sun, was a million sexophones, was Pope making love, only much more so, incomparably more, and without end.” The classic conundrum: can there be meaning without an end? (155)

• The doctor thanks John for allowing him “to have had this opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being”—again here is the clinical gaze, value not placed on human life but on cold scientific inquiry. I’m also wondering about the sudden diagnosis of “senility.” Linda is described as middle-aged, she remembers the Director and her home remarkably well, surely she isn’t actually senile. Is their definition of senility not mental but physical? After all, the World State emphasizes the capacities of the body, not the mind.

• Because of John, Bernard is suddenly treated as a person of “outstanding importance” and is suddenly swimming in pussy. It’s a dynamic we’re all too familiar with in our own society, the ugly dude who gains some status and is suddenly pulling a ten. I’m a bit shocked by Bernard’s turn into a total bro, though. We were led to believe at the beginning of the story that his objection to the meaningless sex was moral, but was it really just an excuse because he couldn’t get any? Was Bernard just an…incel? (156)

• Bernard even has the gall to accuse Helmholtz—who’s an actual catch—that his silence in response to Bernard’s boasting is because of envy. Does Bernard one likes the idea of adversity only in theory? Did his experiences in Malpais frighten him into embracing sterile, simple life of the World State?

• “Bernard felt positively gigantic—gigantic and at the same time light with elation, lighter than air.” Maybe this social success is Bernard’s own form of soma, his own intoxicant, that he embraces because he cannot confront what the Savage represents. Intoxication in men can take many forms, soma is just the easiest

• Mond is offended that Bernard doesn’t think he can say “mother” to him—I’m fascinated by the depiction of Mond as an intellectual, somebody who understands the world, but still ruthlessly wields control

• John is more interested in “the soul” than the “civilized inventions”— thematic crux of the novel here, just spelled out in different terms

• Mond takes exception to Bernard lecturing him about the social order, in which Bernard writes the Savage finds “civilized infantility too easy or….not expensive enough.” Mond determines to teach Bernard a lesson but decides to hold off for now. Does he want to give Bernard a lesson in pain and suffering, to show him what a more complicated social order would bring?

• The Savage observes a factory staffed with Delta, Gamma, and Epsilon twins. He again quotes, “O brave new world that has such people in it” and then ends up puking. It’s the opposite sentiment from the one he quoted before embarking on his journey to London, not one of optimism but of disillusionment (159-160)

• The Eton school is only for upper-caste boys and girls. No twins, “one egg, one adult” (161). We can see the parallels in America today, where the upper-class attend expensive private schools with plentiful resources, where each student can receive thorough, individualized instruction. Compare this to the underfunded public schools of many cities, with larger classrooms and fewer and fewer teachers, where more and more students get left behind. It’s both a result of the class divide and a propagator of it, exemplified by the Upper School

• The Head Mistress explains that these children require special education as they’ll be “called upon to take responsibilities and deal with unexpected emergencies.” We see this across history, the idea that there must be some ordained class or ruler that stands above the common people, above the serfs, who make the necessary decisions for the land over which they rule. But the big question is, in whose best interest are these decisions made? It’s a problem that democracy tries to tackle, but even that can be exploited. Who draws the maps? (161)

• The Savage Reservations aren’t worth the expense of civilizing—everything is a calculation to the World State. Nothing goes untouched because it is sacred, or because its way of life is worth preserving, only because it’s development is too costly. Sounds familiar.

• Self-harm is funny to the Etonians, who laugh at images of Pentitentes whipping themselves. Penance and self-harm—these are foreign concepts to the children. They’re unable to view them as the result of human impulse and suffering, which is why they laugh (162)

• Although the students can be taught about about the Savage Reservations and elementary relativity, they’re still denied Shakespeare: no “solitary amusements”, the Head Mistress says. Literature is too dangerous for even the Alphas because it clashes with the mantra of community. The concept of community, we know, has been warped into an ideology to maintain control (163)

• The students “learn to take dying as a matter of course” — death conditioning starts at eighteen months, which is remarkably twisted. It tracks with the logic of the World State, though. There’s no more powerful motivator than death, the knowledge that we have limited time on this Earth, and so should live our lives to the fullest. It motivates us through fear, but it also motivates us through identity—knowing we only have one life to live, that our individual experience is unique and meaningful. As Drake once said, “YOLO,” and there’s no doubt “The Motto”, like Hamlet, would too be banned (164)

• Bernard denies the hormone chewing-gum from Benito earlier in the novel but now chewing it casually. It’s giving the kid who was afraid of weed in high school, went off to college and tried it, and when he returns from Thanksgiving break it’s become his whole personality

• Lenina “was lucky in having shared with Bernard a generous portion of the Savage’s immense celebrity, lucky in reflecting…the moment’s supremely fashionable glory.” The Savage is a type of accessory, a showpiece, like a Malthusian belt—the society is shallow to its core (165)

• Lenina recognized that the attention she’s receiving is false, that it’s only because they think she slept with John. She also admits to Fanny she likes John, which shows further character development, one that emphasizes the individual, a departure from “everybody belongs to everybody”. Is she beginning to recognize the hollowness of it all? (166)

• Hug me till you drug me, honey; kiss me till I’m in a coma…Love’s as good as soma—sex as sedative, described only in terms of sensation, not emotional terms

• At the film, Three Weeks in a Helicopter, the “negro” suffers a concussion which knocks out his conditioning, causing him to develop for the Beta blonde “an exclusive and maniacal passion.” The negro is treated as a villain in the film, his passion as dangerous, in line with the teachings of the World State, yet his struggle ignites something different in Lenina: “the moth did not completely die.” She seems stirred by the passion, stirred by John sitting next to her

• At the same time, her brain doesn’t connect with her feelings. She’s shocked by John calling the film “base” and “ignoble” (170)

• Lenina thinks John’s finally going to sleep with her but is shocked when he sends her away in the helicopter. Was Lenina calling the film lovely what made up John’s mind? It seems she liked it because of its depiction of passion, not because of its moral. But she’s unable to articulate that and is ultimately misunderstood

• John links Othello, a black man, to the black hero of Three Weeks in a Helicopter, which we can also link to the Savage Reservation. These three different worlds all point to the backwardness of the World State, its moral inversion

Chapter 12

• Stricken, John refuses to meet the Arch-Community-Songster with Bernard, and the illusion of Bernard as desirable is thus shattered—he’s back to having alcohol in his blood-surrogate. The kids have a word for Bernard: FAKE.

• Lenina is melancholy about her rejection, “cut off from those who surrounded her by an emotion which they did not share.” Further evidence of Lenina’s changing character, as she becomes separate from those around her—from the community—due to her experience of “anxious exultation” she feels at the thought of confessing her feelings to John

• She’s going to tell the Savage “that I like him—more than anybody I’ve ever known.” It’s the return of that long-abolished “teenage longing”, the high school crush all over again. It’s only made possible by John’s rejection of her—Lenina’s own experience of suffering—and it only strengthens her conviction

• Violent Passion Surrogate. I’m guessing this is exactly what is says, a surrogate treatment for “violent passion”, probably a shot of adrenaline or something similar. It suggests that, like the pregnancy surrogate, the body and brain still need such stimuli, that conditioning is not wholly effective in repressing human need (174)

• “What should have been the crowning moment of Bernard’s whole career hs turned out to to be the moment of his greatest humiliation.” C’mon dude. I just can’t with the hypocrisy. Bernard’s whole thing was his disgust over using people, yet he has no problem with using John for his own social gain

• “Lenina, who had lingered for a moment to look at the moon, dropped her eyes and came hurrying across the room to rejoin him.” This is BIG, I’d argue the most example of character development on Lenina’s part because of what it symbolizes. Earlier in the novel with Bernard, Lenina could not stand to look at the moon over the ocean without the radio playing. She needed distraction. This is the central thrust of the book, distilled into a single clause. It’s a quick line, but it’s essential (176-177)

• On page 177, Mond rejects a biology paper for publication. Huxley just gives us the answer here: “…make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead that the goal was somewhere beyond…that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.” We’ve questioned the World State’s definitions of Community, Identity, and Stability, but their definition of “happiness” is one that must be challenged, too

• Is Lenina really doing to let the Arch-Community-Songster hit??? I shouldn’t be surprised but I am—just goes to show the battle going on between her conditioning and her soul

• For Bernard, “the intoxication of success had evaporated…the old self seemed unprecedentedly heavier than the surrounding atmosphere.” More evidence that the success had a drug-like effect on Bernard, that he is just as susceptible to sedation as his fellow human-beings, though of a different form

• The Savage is “unexpectedly sympathetic” to Bernard’s crash, recognizing that he’s more like he was in Malpais now. He tells Bernard, “I’d rather by unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.” That’s real. (179)

• Bernard recognizes the truth, and is comforted by John’s support, yet continues to “nourish a grievance” against him. “One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.” Is this true? Is this Huxley or Bernard talking? I want to say there is some truth in it, but I question whether Bernard and John are truly friends. They were in Malpais, but that friendship was distorted the moment they stepped foot in London. I feel like this is just another justification for Bernard’s refusal to confront the truth

• Helmholtz is also a good friend to Bernard. His magnanimity humiliates Bernard, because “it owed nothing to soma and everything to Helmholtz’s character.” Bernard is grateful but resents Helmholtz, too, “for his generosity.” John and Helmholtz are, back-to-back, held up as foils to Bernard—they highlight his lack of moral clarity (180)

• On page 181, Helmholtz describes his attempt to “engineer” his students “into feeling as I’d felt when I wrote the rhymes.” He tries to create something that moves his students, that gives insight into his own emotions and feelings—some might call it art

• Helmholtz’s poem is about loneliness, solitude. He exclaims to Bernard, “I feel a though I were just beginning to have something to write about. As though I were beginning to use that power I feel I’ve got inside me—that extra, latent power.” Helmholtz is beginning to discover what he sought at the beginning of the novel: words that mean something, words that speak to human experience, to the human condition

• Why does Helmholtz take to John more than Bernard? Is it because the Savage is not shameful, because he is proud of who he is and stands by his convictions? (183)

• Shakespeare elicits “unprecedented emotion” in Helmholtz

• “‘Orgy-porgy!’ said Bernard… ‘It’s just a Solidarity Service hymn.’ He was revenging himself on his two friends for liking one another more than they liked him.” God, this guys sucks. It’s so strange to see this character who did understand, deliberately refusing not to. He no doubt recognizes the significance of these moments of bonding between John and Helmholtz—he could be a part of it himself—yet he instead diminishes a moment of real community and connection with a quip about a Solidarity Service. Why is Bernard afraid to be real? Again, I think it goes back to him being those one of those guys who likes the idea of protest and rebellion in theory, but is unwilling to give up comfort for it. What do we think is the reason for Bernard’s heel turn? (183)

• Bernard does the job of the World State for them, paining Helmholtz and the Savage “by the shattering and defilement of a favourite poetic crystal.” A microcosm of how personal emotions such as unhappiness and jealousy can be weaponized against the culture at large

• Helmholtz remarks that Romeo and Juliet as a “superb piece of emotional engineering”—that Shakespeare “makes our best propaganda specialists look absolutely silly.” It’s amusing irony, but also a sly comment on the nature of propaganda itself, how it manipulates emotion in the same way as some of our greatest fiction

• Yet Helmholtz laughs at a powerful scene in Romeo and Juliet which John is utterly moved by, set off by “sweet mother” and “Tybalt lying dead, but evidently uncremated and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument.” It’s the same reaction the children at the Eton school had to self-harm. Though Helmholtz is moved by the language of Shakespeare, his conditioning still does not allow him to acknowledge the significance of family and death and suffering illustrated in Romeo and Juliet. It’s the last intellectual leap one must make—the single truth the World State is most intent on obscuring (184-185)

• “And yet, said Helmholtz, “I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can’t write really well about anything else.” True, but also, a meta-commentary on the novel itself?

• “We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?” Helmholtz needs to understand this madness and violence through the lens of his own world to actually understand it, and such madness and violence is, by design, difficult to come by. That, my friends, is some damn obvious foreshadowing.

We’re in the home stretch, here. And we’re leading up to something big. Everyone is choosing his or her path, whether they will succumb to the sedation of the world they inhabit or protest against it. John is still a fish out of water in the World State, and his mother, Linda, is still zonked on the soma. Characters like Lenina and Helmholtz are breaking from their shackles every so slowly, while Bernard is reverting back to the comfort and ignorance the World State tries so hard to maintain. I’m rooting for everybody to break their chains and find true freedom, but, given the world Huxley has manufactured, that feels just a tad naive.

We’re going to finish this for next weekend. Our discussion post for Wednesday, 5/14 will cover chapters 13-15. This will be followed by a post on Sunday, 5/18, which will take us to the end of the novel.

As always, please join the discussion. Feel to go off any of my points or drop your own observations below.

See you all soon. Keep reading.


Steve

In these chapters we finally get some insight into the “Savage Reservation”, and it’s exactly what we would expect, the complete opposite of the World State in every way. We also meet John and his mother, Linda, the girl who the D.H.C. lost on his trip many years ago. The Savage Reservation and its inhabitants represent a stark contrast to the sterilized World State, and provide us with plenty to unpack.

Chapter 7

• Malpais appears to be based on real landforms in the American Southwest, and is worth noting in its own right. It’s yet another example of the theme running through the novel that pits nature against the sterility of the World State

• Lenina is shocked at the appearance of the Malpais inhabitants, “their dark bodies painted with white lines (‘like asphalt tennis courts,’ Lenina was later to explain)” — We’ve talked at length about the role of games in this world, but comparing indigenous body paint to lines on tennis courts reveals just how far their deranged conditioning really goes. The word “asphalt” is playing an important role here, too, further illustrating the World State as something manmade, unnatural by design (109)

• “But how can they live like this?” Lenina asks about the dirt, the rubbish, the dust, the dogs, the flies—all of it. That’s the big question Huxley is gearing up to answer

• “What’s the matter with him?” Lenina asks about the old, emaciated man. Even Bernard is startled by his appearance. He explains to Lenina that the World State keeps everybody young by preserving them from disease, transfusing young blood, etc. Sure sounds like utopia, doesn’t it? The treatment and elimination of disease is something society has always striven for, at least until recently But is it sensible to treat aging as just another fixable affliction? Is it human?

• And there’s a catch: “Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! the end.” (111) Would you take that deal? It’s not exactly unappealing, especially as my thirties march onward and my hair continues thinning. But what is lost? Our whole grandparent era for one, playing bingo and crushing ice cream and saying racist shit and most importantly having grandchildren to spoil? Those days may seem distant to many of us, but they carry meaning. Is that why the World State has done away with the concept of motherhood altogether, because it clashes with their designs? (111)

• This all points to our cultural fear of aging—the obsession with maintaining a youthful appearance. Botox, fillers, plastic surgery. Just look at the Kardashians. Or, tragically, Tom Brady. All the money in the world, all the success, and still that same fear: decay. Mortality. The World State exploits that fear, as all successful authoritarian regimes do. Not by confronting it—but by making you forget it’s happening at all

• Bernard and Lenina witness women breastfeeding: “What a wonderfully intimate relationship…Often think one may have missed something in not having had a mother. And perhaps you’ve missed something in not being a mother, Lenina.” Generally speaking, no person in the world evokes stronger, warmer emotions than one’s own mother (sorry Dad). Conversely, losing one’s mother is one of the most devastating things we experience in life. You can’t feel strong, dangerous emotions about your mother if the concept of motherhood is erased altogether. The erasure of family is another form of sedation, shielding us from pain but also shielding us from love

• To reframe this Tennyson/Tumblr style: “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

• On page 113, Lenina witnesses the beginning of the sacrificial ritual: “Lenina liked the drums…it reminded her reassuringly of the synthetic noises made at Solidarity Services and Ford’s Day celebrations…the place was queer, so was the music…but the performance itself—there seemed nothing specially queer about that.” I really like this example because it shows the similarities between the two vastly different societies, how both of these societies utilize music and ritual as a means to shed their own individuality and find deeper meaning within the group, however misguided such meaning may be

• It also speaks to the power of music in general—that Lenina simply “liked the drums” and didn’t find it queer makes me wonder if she would also like “Pink Pony Club.” Across time and across societies music is powerful—we’ve talked about that—yet we also witness how its community-building powers can be wielded to warp meaning and distort bonds instead of strengthening them

• Not going to break down the wall of text on 114-115 that describes the ritual but this part stood out to me: “Then the old man lifted his hand and, startlingly, terrifyingly, there was absolute silence.” — Totally different context but it reminds me of Bernard and Lenina hovering over the ocean, where she needed to turn the radio on. Also speaks to silence in general—how in this world (and our own) it is something to be feared, to be distracted from, whether with a radio or an iPhone

• The ritual in Malpais, however, ends with a sacrifice— “for the sake of the pueblo—to make the rain come and the corn grow" — Sacrificial rituals are something the World State would scoff at and so would we. Most of us think of some poor guy getting his blood spilled atop a Mayan temple in order to please the gods as a barbaric practice belonging firmly to the past. But the World State has sacrificial policies of its own. Sure, they’re not whipping people in the public square, but people are sacrificed in the name of prosperity every day. The World State takes this to an extreme, eliminating emotion and family and agency in order to make the worker as docile and productive as possible. We do it, too. Look at the union-busting of Amazon and Starbucks, the gig economy, the workers in California picking crops for pennies (Steinbeck sends his regards). Everywhere in this country—even our own jobs in which our raises are somehow lower and lower each year for the good of the shareholders—human dignity and well-being and individuality are sacrificed in the name of cheap production and mass consumption and, most importantly, profit. This extends to our beautiful planet and its stunning biodiversity, too—everyday plundered and polluted in the name of economic growth

• We finally meet John, a white dude amongst the savages, who of course is also smitten with Lenina (thiccness — also universal) (117)

• John is the one exclaiming how he wishes he could have been the one sacrificed—”to show that I’m a man.” Does bearing suffering prove one’s manhood?

• Linda is John’s mother, and the same girl we witnessed the Director reflect on in previous pages. She’s alive! (118)

• Regarding Tomakin/Thomas, the Director: “He must have flown away, back to the Other Place, away without her—a bad, unkind, unnatural man.” John’s assessment of the Director contrasts directly with the Director’s own telling of the story, in which he injured himself searching for Linda in the rain. It’s clear from his telling that he’s haunted by the painful memory. I wonder why John assumes he just left and not that he just wasn’t able to find her. Does he know the World State places no value in actual relationships, assumes the D.H.C. didn’t really care, and is therefore “unnatural”? Either way, this highlights again how conflict exists within even those highest up in the World State—a humanity that cannot be entirely repressed

• We meet Linda on page 119, who Lenina also finds offensive, not just because she’s old but because she’s also fat—another image of ill-health and decay. Lenina is also put off by the stench of alcohol on her breath—even though Lenina herself was reaching for her soma just a page ago

• Linda misses the old world—she’s overwhelmed by Lenina’s acetate silk clothes and velveteen shorts. Her whole introduction on pages 120-121 is basically a rehash of her conditioning—she strives for the sterile, stimulating world that she left behind, the soma, the sexual freedom of everybody belonging to everyone else—and the people of Malpais hate her for it

• Linda is a distorted mirror to Lenina herself—she has the same impulses, the same beliefs, she is still a slave to her conditioning even after all of these years. Existing in a society that rejects such things, however, has made her an outsider, has made her grotesque

• Yet even Linda is not entirely brainwashed. Having bore a son the natural way, she admits, “And yet John was a great comfort to him…I don’t know what I should have done without him.” Linda may still adhere to all that she was conditioned to believe, but having experienced motherhood, she is unable to reject it (122)

Chapter 8

• This chapter begins with a deep dive into John’s upbringing

• It’s interesting that John begins with an account of his mother attempting to reject sex from a stranger because her son is in the room. Obviously that would be the norm in our society, but for Linda, and her conditioning, it stands out that her motherly instincts are far stronger than her conditioning, that she sees something wrong with the situation, though she is eventually forced to give in (124)

• Linda is a fish out of water in Malpais: “How should I know how to do their beastly weaving? Beastly savages.” More inversion here—the turning of craft into something obscene

• The comparison between mescal and soma is made apparent. Linda says “it ought to be called soma; only it made you feel ill afterwards.” Throughout the novel the problem with alcohol, and the justification for soma, is that alcohol gives you a hangover and soma doesn’t. This intentional framing (by either the World State or Huxley) deliberately and revealingly ignores the true harm of such drugs, which is how they are used to bury emotion

• Pope comes to see Linda often, always bringing mescal, always trying to Netflix and Chill. But Linda has other men, too, which causes the women of Malpais to break into her home and whip her for sleeping with their men. This is an early source of trauma for John, who asks her, “But why did they want to hurt you, Linda?” It’s perhaps the first inkling that he and his mother are different, that they are somehow outside of the society in which they live, just like Bernard and Helmholtz (126)

• Linda blames John for her fate: “Turned into a savage…Having young ones like an animal…I might have got away. But not with a baby. That would have been too shameful.” We know that Linda later claims John helped her grapple with her own alienation and discomfort—so this early memory suggests development on her part, a shift in perspective facilitated by her own experience with motherhood

• Linda describes “The Other Place” to her son as a positive utopia, where you can go flying “whenever you like.” Its scientific wonders disguise the degradation of the soul that made such a place possible, not unlike how Cinderella’s Castle masks the three-hour lines, the oppressive heat, the stifling crowds, and the maniacs on scooters running over your toes…Utopia in image, wallet-emptying apparatus in reality

• She also tells John of “people never lonely, but living together and being so jolly and happy, like the summer dances here in Malpais, but much happier, and the happiness being there every day, every day…” An acknowledgement of happiness existing in the World State, an acknowledgement of dance as human and humanizing, as acts of community. It also raises a point about happiness: can it be so rich if it’s a constant? If prom were every weekend, would it be so special? (128)

• The bottom of page 128 goes into detail about the faith of the pueblo, which is a bit muddled to say the least, but I think that’s the point, to show these people as human, as trying to make sense of their purpose and identity, as opposed to the World State which forces upon them a single view in which an industrial titan has replaced God.

• Also worth noting that one of the pueblo’s stories regards Etsanatlehi, “the woman who makes herself young again,” — a clear indicator that the human impulse to reject time and aging exists across societies, an impulse exploited by the World State

• Linda teaches John to read but it’s a World State science book, The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo...and he struggles to even read the title. “Beastly book,” John calls it, just as his mother calls weaving the same. Two important aspects of human nature, reading and craft, are thus linked with savagery and denied any importance or significance, not because they lack it but because they are not understood (129)

• John is bullied because of his rags. He finds solace in telling himself, “But I can read and they can’t.” Reading as an act of resistance and strength, knowledge as power

• John can read the words but doesn’t understand what they actually mean. This is a reflection of Helmholtz, who writes the words but realizes that they actually lack meaning

• This is further dissected in his discussion with Linda about the origins of chemicals, who understands what they do but does not actual science behind them. John finds the answers of the old men of the pueblo to be more “definite”, although theirs are rooted in religion and are just as wrong. It’s a notable contrast. The world in which Linda was raised knows the answer to the origin of chemicals, but has compartmentalized knowledge so completely that Linda is clueless about them, as it wasn’t her job. The men of the pueblo, on the other hand, examine the world not through science but religion. The true answer about the origins of chemicals would prove existentially shattering to the people of both societies (130)

• Pope gives John a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which is banned in the World State. This is a major moment. It’s not an inaccessible science book but literature. If you’re reading The Great American Book Club, I’m sure you understand why this is a big fucking deal

• (Disclaimer: I have an English degree but am by no means a Shakespeare scholar. I also have a set of his complete works on my bookshelf like the pretentious mfer I am but have not read them all. I’ve done my research about all the relevant quotes in Brave New World but my analysis likely lacks depth in many cases, so if you’re a Shakespeare stan, please comment about anything I’ve missed)

• The first quote John reads is from Hamlet, and the words immediately speak to him: “The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken.” It’s an immediate assertion of the power of literature—the translation of sensations only felt, like music, into something more concrete, the grounding of human experience in words

• More importantly John understands this passage from Hamlet in the context of his own mother, her drunkenness and salaciousness. Hamlet was written in a different time about different people, but its themes are universal, and therein lies its power, “a terrible beautiful magic” indeed (132)

• I’m not totally sure why the words make John hate Pope even more. I think it might have to do with how the words allow John to articulate villainy in a way he hadn’t before. Shakespeare allows John to name the drunkenness and lechery that bother him so much with regards to his mother and Pope. Yet at the same time, because he doesn’t have a total grasp on the literature, he naturally applies the qualities of the King to the person in his life who most makes him uncomfortable

• Because honestly Pope seems pretty chill. I mean he’s the one who gave John the works of Shakespeare to begin with, that’s real. He doesn’t even react to John stabbing him with anger—he actually bursts out laughing, and even calls John brave. He is wise, understanding, and forgiving

• On page 134 John recounts old Mitsima teaching him how to work the clay. Earlier Linda struggled to weave baskets, calling them beastly, but here John admits “to fashion, to give form, to feel his fingers gaining in skill and power—this gave him extraordinary pleasure.” It points to the importance of craft, of creation, and also culture. Those doing their jobs in the Brave New World like their jobs, too, but because they are conditioned too, not because it taps into the human impulse to create (134)

• John also tells of the marriage ceremony he witnessed between Kothlu and Kiakime which is obviously not a thing in the World State and which his mother of course views as uncivilized. John was devastated because he “loved” Kiakime, though he was only sixteen. His experience of what is most likely a “high school crush” is one that could never be in the Other Place. Teenage longing, yet another casualty of utopia (135)

• He is also denied the rite of passage in the Antelope Kiva, where boys enter and emerge as men. “Not for the son of the she-dog,” the children exclaim, and pelt him with stones. “He was all alone.” The most heartbreaking characterization yet of John as an outsider, John as alien (136)

• John does not cry because of the pain of the cuts and bruises but because “He was all alone, because he had been driven out, alone, into this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight.” Physical pain is second to the mental anguish John experiences due to his rejection from the community—loneliness is cast as the most serious of afflictions

• “To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow.” Hand up I did not catch this Macbeth reference because I’m a Macbeth fan but because it’s referenced in the song “Take a Break” in Hamilton but it’s a beautiful, enduring passage that is worth quoting in full:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

• Do we think Huxley is claiming this nihilistic worldview, or working against it?

• This quote is also used for the title of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury which I just briefly considered including in the book club at some point before realizing that would be insanity. If you’ve attempted even just the first chapter you’ll understand why. Good book though

• “He had discovered Time and Death and God.” Did he only discover these concepts because of his bleeding, because of his rejection, because of his suffering? (137)

• John is surprised that Bernard admits to also being lonely. he says, “I thought that in the Other Place…I mean, Linda always said that nobody was ever alone there.” The Other Place is not lonely in terms of physical touch and social interaction but it is a manufactured form of community, one that doesn’t allow true connection, true emotion, or true loss. If you crave something deeper, like Bernard, you will be just as lonely as John

• “I stood out against a rock in the middle of the day, in summer, with my arms out, like Jesus on the Cross…I wanted to know what it was like being crucified.” John tells Bernard, which should set off our Christ figure alarm bells. Bernard responds, “It seems a funny way of curing your unhappiness,” but goes on to think there might be some sense in it, that it’s better than taking soma. Is it better to bear suffering instead of running from it? Is that why the story of Jesus has such unparalleled staying power in our world?

• And here we go. Bernard is going to bring John to London. It’s what the whole book has been leading up to, and it’s setting us up for an epic clash

• John, of course, responds to the news by quoting The Tempest: “O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is…O brave new world that has such people in it. Let’s start at once.” Poor guy. He has no idea.

Chapter 9

• Lenina responds to the horrors of Malpais with an eighteen-hour holiday. That’s a strong ass gummy. But it’s a proportionate response to the magnitude of what she witnessed, and how impossible it is to reconcile with her conception of the world (140)

• It’s fascinating that Mond views the return of Linda and John to London as a matter of “sufficient scientific interest”— they’re not viewed as humans returning home but as commodities to be further studies and dissected. It’s a clinical gaze, not a humanist one (141)

• John breaking into the bedroom is a weird move, not gonna lie. His experience of Lenina’s slippers and and perfumes I believe is supposed to point to the tactile irresistibility of the World State’s products to the average human, and Lenina herself is an extension of this engineered seduction. But breaking into a woman’s room and inhaling her perfumes is never a good look

• While observing Lenina he quotes more Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, and then Romeo and Juliet—both of these passages notably emphasize the whiteness of the women’s hands. I haven’t read Troilus and Cressida, so much of this significance is probably lost on me. Yet the importance of white as a symbol of purity and innocence is an obvious one, two attributes that do not apply whatsoever to Lenina. My reading of this is that John is romanticizing a person who he barely knows based only on her beauty, and his knowledge of Shakespeare is infusing his lust for her with a meaning that might not actually exist. In other words, he’s putting the pussy on a pedestal. I suppose we will see how that turns out.

So here we go. John and Linda going to London. In a way the whole first half of the book has been set up for this moment. We’ve met the important characters and witnessed their internal struggles, we’ve seen the irreconcilable differences between the Savage Reservation and the World State, and now we have John and Linda, aliens in their own community, returning to Linda’s former home, also as outsiders. I have a bad feeling about all of this.

Let’s keep reading.

Our next reading section for Brave New World will be chapters 10-12 and will be posted on Tuesday, May 6. It’s about 40 pages. I’ll see you guys then.

Steve

Initial thoughts

In chapters 1-3 we saw how the machine was built. In these chapters we get a better look into the characters existing within it, especially Bernard and Lenina, and their respective struggles. Let’s get into it.

Chapter 4 - Part 1

• Lenina tells Bernard she’s willing to go to New Mexico with him: “I’d simply love to come with you for a week in July. That is, if you still want to have me.” Bernard is uncomfortable with the casualness of it all. Lenina wonders why he’s acting like he made a joke—”asked him who his mother was, or something like that.” We’ve traced this inversion of sexual norms in the society—how what is “dirty” has been flipped on its head. It’s central to understanding how the World State operates (58)

• “He looked up into the sky and round the blue horizon and finally down into Lenina’s face. Isn’t it beautiful!” His voice trembled a little.” Some smooth writing here. Bernard’s admiring the sky, but also Lenina’s face. He’s moved by both. Through this Lenina is connected with nature, but what does that mean?

• “Simply perfect for Obstacle Golf.” This is the World State’s theory of control in action, playing out exactly how they planned. Lenina is incapable of viewing nature and the outside world as anything other than an outlet for games—distractions that don’t allow its players to admire the mountains or the smell of the trees. Its purpose is for them to spend but also to be distracted—to not be moved (59)

• Lenina’s view of nature parallels that of her own body and sexuality. She can’t comprehend it as something deeper or more meaningful, a vessel for human connection and intimacy

• On their way to Obstacle Golf, Lenina and Henry fly over central London: “Forests of Centrifugal Bumple-puppy towers gleamed between the trees.” Have to make the Top Golf connection here. It’s even more apt than the NFL one. It looks like an airport. It has an elaborate apparatus that tracks every single ball. Heaters blasting during the winter so you can even play in the cold. Overpriced drinks, undersized nachos (actually). It’s the capitalism-induced evolution of much the much chiller OG golf, which could itself be argued as an apparatus, a bastardization of the natural world in its own way. But the point about Top Golf is that it seems like an awful lot of money, effort, and energy just to do something you could do at a driving range. But a driving range isn’t $100+ an outing (62-63)

Part 2

• “Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.” Bernard thinks about Benito Hoover. Is it a commentary on how this world has inverted good behavior and bad, so it’s impossible to truly know? Or is more about how pleasure has replaced morality as the driving force? (63)

• Bernard doesn’t feel the excitement he expected from Lenina’s acceptance—he’s put off by her going off with Henry right after, thinking the day perfect for Obstacle Golf, talking about private affairs publicly— “behaving as any healthy and virtuous English girl ought to behave…” It’s the nerd trying to change the party girl—a tale as old as time—except this party girl has been conditioned to party (64)

• We get a big dive into Bernard’s physique and psyche. He’s eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height. He feels humiliated that he looks eye level at a Delta instead of down—this is key

• Bernard self-consciousness about of his physical defects increases his sense of being alien and alone—emotions we also witnessed in Billy Pilgrim. Billy’s status as a prisoner of war and witness to the bombing of Dresden alienated him from the American myths and propaganda surrounding war, just as Bernard’s physical deficiency removes him from milieu of the upper caste in which so many other Alphas exist unquestioningly. It’s the key to any good story that seeks to critique myths and power structures—a person who is a part of the system but somehow separated from it

• We’re given more insight into the propaganda apparatus of the world state in the Bureaux and the College Emotional Engineering. The basement contains the three great London newspapers. The Hourly Radio is an upper-caste sheet. The Gamma Gazette is for Gammas, and then there’s The Delta Mirror, “exclusively of one syllable.” Lmao

  • It’s telling though, that these three “great” papers are housed in a government building, stratified by class. It calls to mind Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, dictating that moving forward the only topics its Op-Ed page would cover would be “in defense of personal liberties and free markets” and that viewpoints “opposing those pillars would be left to other publishers.” Newspapers are supposed to be pillars of truth, forums for public discourse and sources of information that inform a democracy. If The Hourly Radio is for the upper-caste, and the Gamma Gazette is for the Gammas, then who is The Washington Post for? What is its purpose?

• Helmholtz Watson — able, Alpha, a stark and intentional contrast to Bernard in every way, but also alien in his own way, afflicted by a “mental excess” has isolated him just as a physical defect has isolated Bernard. A counterpart to Bernard whose mental acuity separates him from his peers, and thus the system

• Watson is a professor at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing). Watson is an Emotional Engineer who writes for The Hourly Radio, composes feely scenarios, and has a knack for slogans. Calling writing emotional engineering is thought-provoking, for sure. I mean writing is emotional engineering. Huxley is trying to engineer emotions in us—I’m trying to engineer emotions in you. But writing is also a source of thought, questioning, and knowledge. To reduce it to only its emotional impact is to reduce its power, to wield it as a tool of repression instead of liberation

• “What the two men shared was knowledge that they were individuals.” This is the whole theme right here, guys. It’s kind of annoying that he is straight-up just telling us. We can examine everything we’ve looked at so far through this lens. It even gives us an answer to the question we posed at the beginning when discussing the epigraph: what is lost, in pursuit of utopia? Individuality and identity are two of the answers. Yet Bernard, Helmholtz, and even Lenina, in her own smaller, scandalous way, demonstrate that the World State cannot eradicate this truth completely (67)

• As far as Helmholtz is concerned, “sport, women, communal activities were only…second bests.” Like Bernard, Helmholtz wants something more

• “Some sort of extra power that you aren’t using—you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines.” It’s fascinating Helmholtz uses this example here. He’s depicted as at odds with the World State and his occupation—yet all the same slips into the language of consumption that denies natural beauty any innate worth (69)

• “It’s not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.” Helmholtz recognizes the power of written words to sedate, but he wants to inspire. Yet he doesn’t understand how he can write piercingly about a world sapped with meaning (69-70)

• “Can you say something about nothing?” — Poo-too-weet. It’s a different flavor of nihilism: you can’t say something intelligent about a massacre, and you can’t say something intelligent about nothing, either. Or can you?

• Helmholtz wishes Bernard would show pride. He does care about Bernard. Good chance this all ends with Bernard showing pride, somehow (71)

Chapter 5 - Part 1

• Lower Caste barracks vs. proper houses for Alphas and Betas at the the golf club, separated by a wall—a clear, visual metaphor for class stratification. Language of barracks vs. houses delineates the two groups: one as a single unit, the other as individuals (73)

• “The approaches to the monorail station were black with the ant-like pullulation of lower-caste activity” — further development of the lower castes as part of a larger, productive organism, stripped of individuality, existing to benefit only colony and queen (73)

• The Slough Crematorium has four tall chimneys, each “flood-lighted and tipped with crimson danger signals. It was a landmark.” Now that’s symbolism if I’ve ever seen it. What do we think it means?

• Phosphorous recovery from dead bodies—the natural outcome of the commodification of bodies that drives the World State’s consumption, chilling in its illustration of the human body itself as a resource

• Lenina turns her eyes away from the Crematorium. She’s disturbed that “Alphas and Betas won’t make any more plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas down there.” This is her witnessing the undeniable: we’re all human beings, we all bleed red, we all emit phosphorous when cremated. Lenina turns her eyes away because it is proof that the class system is manufactured, alongside her own happiness and sense of identity and superiority

• Everyone works for everyone else…even Epsilons are useful.” — Community

• “And if you were an Epsilon, your conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you weren’t a Beta or an Alpha.” It reeks of the fatalism witnessed in Slaughterhouse-Five, that this is how the world structured (in the case of the World State, deliberately so). There must be a class of poor, there must be children who fight in the wars, there must be the many who live less full lives to the benefit of the few (74)

• The World State, however, has done away with the emotions that make these injustices problematic: “I suppose Epsilons don’t really mind being Epsilons,” Lenina says. But if they don’t mind being Epsilons, if they don’t strive for something better, are they even human?

• “Do you know what that switchback was? It would be curious to know who it was—a man or a woman, an Alpha or an Epsilon…” I thought Henry was a douchebag but he’s a dash sentimental here—recognizing the individuality lost at the altar of consumption. It seems that even in perfectly content Alphas like Henry there exists a humanity that cannot be fully repressed (75)

• But he finds solace in knowing whoever it was, was happy. But were these people happy or simply sedated?

• With that, they continue on with their night, popping soma like a THC gummy and hitting the town. The night is “moonless and starry; but of this on the whole depressing fact Lenina and Henry were fortunately unaware.” The natural world here is again a casualty—the cool clear night ruined by electric sky-signs. But the night sky is also framed as something not desirable to begin with. This is The Great American Book Club, so I have to make the connection to Times Square. The number one landmark in the most famous and populous American city, its electric advertisements inundating the teeming tourists with the same message so essential to the Brave New World: look at anything but the sky. Sephora, Shake Shack, the latest Marvel flick. Be dissatisfied, be distracted, and spend.

  • It’s not just the big screens. It’s the little screens, too, that package these cultural landmarks into bite-sized clips, to be consumed like french fries: an insufferable dancing weather man busting a move alongside Deadpool, a man-on-the-street segment asking a tourist how he got rich or “What’s your body count?” Clips send across the globe only to end up on a high schooler’s phone as he scrolls and scrolls and scrolls on the bus ride to school, not once looking up at the sky

• Henry and Lenina’s time spent at the Colour Organ sounds a lot like a Disney ride, perhaps Epcot’s Soarin’ or the Animal Kingdom’s Avatar ride. These rides are exhilarating, stunning, and stimulating to the senses—but also entirely synthetic

• In the World State, spectacle has replaced introspection

• Skies are blue inside of you — twisting of nature into pleasure: why think when you could simply feel good? (76)

• Bottled — restricted, constrained, not free—experience filtered through soma (77)

Part 2

1. The Solidarity Service tells us that this will be about the enforcement of community. “Twelve of them ready to be made one, waiting to come together, to be fused, to lose their twelve separate identities into a larger being.” Definitely some weird, religious ritual. Another practice aimed at the repression of individuality through a false, forced community, a manufactured one, with the help of drugs

2. “I drink to my annihilation.” The denial of the self with drugs. Also, that line goes incredibly hard (81)

3. They sing together, as they forge into one. We saw singing in both The Grapes of Wrath and Slaughterhouse-Five. The residents of Hooverville sang and so did the British prisoners, and that was actual solidarity: a source of strength for the community, a way to form bonds, a form of protest. Singing is a deeply human act. Just the act of doing it or even just singing at a concert alongside strangers carries meaning. And that’s what the World State exploits, forcing its civilians to sing away their sense of self, turning human nature against itself

4. I drink to the imminence of His Coming - Ford as Jesus. This is an obvious symbol we’ve already noted

5. “The feet of the Greater Being are on the stairs.” The ritual turns into a hallucination where everybody can here the Greater Being approaching except, of course, Bernard

6. For I am you and you are I —further erasure of individualism this time in a religious context (82)

7. One of the participants in the ritual, Clare, screams that she can hear the Greater Being coming “and it was she was having her throat cut” - A comment on the death of her status as an individual, most likely. It’s about her giving away her agency, finding comfort in collective hallucination. It’s also just a straight up critique of religion, not as salvation but as murder and death (84)

8. Bernard hears nothing, but he goes along with it. Which means it’s possible the others were going along with it, too. Could they all be faking it?

9. This mirrors the experience of Lenina and Henry at the cabaret in its rising of expectation building to a climax. That seems to be the MO of the World State, good vibes, expectation, and collective orgasm

10. Then they all start dancing and it’s fucking creepy but yet again there is that inversion: taking an act of community, of humanity, and turning it on humanity itself, deceiving into it believing in its own subjugation

11. Orgy-porgy - Again, creepy. Nursery rhyme —> World State mantra

12. “She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement—for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation…a rich and living peace” (85) Just another way the World State is maintaining control, through rituals such as these. We leave church feeling unburdened, replenished, at peace with ourselves, more convinced of our own salvation and the salvation of others and thus less inclined to question the injustice in the world

13. Love this line describing Bernard’s separateness at the end of it all: “He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to the pitch of agony.” (86)

Chapter 6 - Part 1

• That Lenina considers visiting both New Mexico and the North Pole (which she has already been to) demonstrates the effectiveness of the World State’s mandate for “consuming transport”

• She laments that the North Pole hotel rooms didn’t have televisions, scent organs, or enough pickle ball Escalator-Squash courts. No mention of polar bears or the Northern Lights, of course. Travel as a means to see beautiful places and explore new cultures is threatening to the World State—it can only be another form of pleasure, distraction, and consumption (87)

• “For what was there that one could do in private?” This is another reversal of expectations, the natural extension of the World State’s idea of community, the mantra that “everybody belongs to everybody.” Its motive isn’t just sexual in nature but aimed at the elimination of private life altogether—because privacy is where dangerous thoughts take root (88)

• To go off on this idea of privacy a little more. These sports and games are so essential in the World State because they keep the people occupied, as we know. To keep us doing things with others, to never be alone with our thoughts. That mission is carried out with games and spectacle. Yet Huxley didn’t envision an even better way to keep the people occupied, unquestioning—he didn’t envision the cell phone, social media, or the algorithm, and this apparatus is just as potent as the World State’s in the way in which is eviscerates privacy. The World State’s answer to privacy is to engineer it into meaninglessness—Silicon Valley’s strategy is to corrupt it—not just by collecting a person’s data, but by reaching out to him when he is lonely, with a simple push notification that says you don’t have to be alone, you don’t have to think those thoughts, you can just scroll, or you can be part of a community that understands, all from the comfort of your own bed

• Privacy encourages individualism and discourages groupthink

• Bernard expresses his desire to be alone with Lenina. She tells him “we shall be alone all night” — That’s another casualty of the regime, the death of intimacy, which is connected to privacy (89)

• On the way back across the English Channel, Bernard decides to hover his helicopter above the waves. It’s a slick move, but Lenina is appalled. “Let’s turn on the radio. Quick!” That same refrain plays through the radio: Skies are blue, inside of you. In this moment it’s especially relevant. The skies are somewhat scary, somewhat beautiful— but Lenina can’t confront that either. She’d rather seek comfort in the pleasures of the flesh

• Bernard tries to tell Lenina how looking at the sea makes him want to be more than just a cell in the social body. Lenina goes back to Community — where everyone works for everyone else

• “Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” “I don’t know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.”

• Happiness in your own way, not in everybody else’s way —> Bernard appeals to agency, struggle, fulfillment

• He appeals to intimacy, too, telling Lenina he thought they would be more “together here—with nothing but the sea and moon. More together than in that crowd, or even in any rooms. Don’t you understand that?” Bernard craves the intimacy of sharing moments with just a single other person in the world (89)

• “I don’t understand anything,” she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact.” Lenina is depicted here not as conditioned but as making a choice. It suggests she can understand what Bernard is saying, she does understand the potency of the sea and its solitude, but she’s still compelled to make the easier choice. Understanding means confronting the impending storm and the crematorium stacks—understanding means accepting beauty but also accepting suffering. Her worldview is convenient and protective—she’s not going to give it up that easily

• In fact, when challenged, Lenina ultimately turns to attempted seduction as a way out. Bernard flies back into the sky, begins laughing, and then begins fondling Lenina. Has he given up on changing her perspective?

• So I’ve been wondering what pneumatic means this whole time…apparently it just means thicc? (93)

• Bernard is even mad that Lenina lets him hit after the first date. Even that is a hynoaedic lesson: “Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have today.” He wants tension, passion, to which Lenina responds, “When the individual feels, the community reels.” Stability.

• Bernard spells it out. The “adults” are only adults in the workplace, and “infants where feeling and desire are concerned.” Infantilization as a way to deny one’s humanity (94)

Part 2

• When Bernard goes to get his permit signed, the Director reflects on a visit he made to the reservation when he was Bernard’s age. Bernard is taken aback by the Director’s reminiscing—talking about the past is frowned upon and the Director knows it. It shows that even a man as important as the Director still has human impulses (95)

• The director’s account of his trip to the reservation is heartbreaking. He was with a girl, and she got lost in one of the mountains, and he injured his knee trying to find her in the storm, but they never did. And he had no soma for the whole ordeal. It’s a horrific story, an account of true suffering, both mental and physical, for both the Director and his girl, whose fate remains unknown. It’s the exact type of scenario the people of the World State are taught to avoid

• That the Director’s girl was lost to the mountains, to the thunderstorm, to nature, is intentional, too. Nature is unpredictable and therefore dangerous (97)

• More inversion — the Director tells Bernard he knows of his strange behavior and that even Alphas don’t have to behave “infantile”, he expects that they will. He threatens Bernard with a transfer to Iceland if he violates the standard

• Bernard leaves the meeting empowered: “the thought of persecution left him undismayed, was tonic rather than depressing. He felt strong enough to overcome affliction, strong enough to face even Iceland.” What is the reason for Bernard’s invigoration? Was it the Director’s story, the hint that many men (at least Alphas) crave the same connection and intimacy, and are willing to suffer because of it? Was it the prospect of actually facing adversity? Or is it the fact that he thinks Iceland is an empty threat? (98)

Part 3

• Finally, Bernard and Lenina take the trip. The hotel they stay at in Santa Fe is a marked contrast from the one at the North Pole, complete with “liquid air, television, vibro-vacuum massage, radio…eight different kinds of scent laid on in every bedroom.” It’s the Ford Seasons, a palace of stimulation and sport (sorry) (100)

• Grand Canyon as a hydroelectric station is appalling — more evidence of how this society does not think in terms of beauty but only in terms of power-generation (101)

• “Those who are born in the Reservation are destined to die there.” Is that not also true of those born in the World State?

• The “savages” of the Reservation have marriage, families, superstitions. They also face true danger and suffering: “Pumas…infectious diseases…priests…venomous diseases.” (103) Hmmm.

• At this key moment Bernard learns from Helmholtz that he actually his being send to Iceland. Now actually faced with hardship, his courage vanishes. “Of that imagined stoicism, that theoretical courage, not a trace was left.” (104)

• Lenina comforts him with soma, which he takes. She says, “Was and will make me ill. I take a gramme and only am.” The erasure of the past, and the elimination of purpose, in the name of stability.

• At the top of page 105 is an assertion of nature as they cross the frontier that separated “civilization from savagery.” There are deserts and forests and “violet depths of canyons”….marked by a fence: “the geometric symbol of triumphant human purpose.” The human purpose being to control men, to subjugate men, to put them in prisons, to defile their nature and to defile nature itself

• The animals fried on the electric fence testify to this derangement—the backwardness of it all (105)

• The savages were bombed and that’s why they stay in line. But why are the savages repressed by the World State with bombs instead of soma, genetic engineering, sleep-teaching and Centrifugal Bumple-puppy? What makes them so special

  The first three chapters showed us exactly how the World State exercises its control, while these few chapters have shown us that its mechanisms might not be quite as airtight as we were led to believe. Bernard, Helmholtz, Henry, Lenina, and even the Director—all of them exhibit humanity in this chapter in spite of their class and conditioning. I have a feeling this visit to the Savage reservation is going to blow this whole thing open.

  Let’s keep reading. Our next discussion will be for chapters 7-10 and will be posted Monday, 4/27.

  See you then.

Epigraph

We didn’t talk about the epigraph in the beginning of Slaughterhouse-Five and it ended up being directly referenced so I guess we will give it a shot here. I hate to begin the discussion by breaking down a long-ass French quote but we have to do this baby justice. Here’s the translation of the quote:

Utopias appear to be a good deal more realizable than was previously thought. And today we are faced with an alarming question of a different nature: How to avoid their complete realization? Utopias are realizable. Life moves towards utopias. And perhaps a new century is beginning, a century when intellectuals and the cultured class will dream of ways of avoiding utopias and of returning to a non-utopic society, less "perfect" and more "free."

Yeah, so, anyone got any thoughts on this? In 2025 it’s hard to deny that life moves toward utopias. I mean just look at ChatGPT, for example, churning out high school and college essays. The suggestion here, though, is that something is lost in a perfect world which, in my poor example, would be students’ critical reading and writing skills. So maybe we should open this read with the question: what is lost?

Chapter 1

• The novel begins with a description of a “squat grey building of only thirty-four stories” — the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning center. We’re immediately presented with an image of something drab, dreary, absent of any color or vibrancy. Just the simple choice of gray here really his sets the tone for the whole book, which sounds like it will be an uplifting read

• COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. This is the World State’s motto. I mean who doesn’t want that? Enjoying the support of people around you, knowing who you are, living in a stable (and safe) society. Sounds pretty damn close to the American dream to me. But of course this is a dystopia, so we have to wonder: does the World State’s definition of those three words match our own? It’s no different from the “Great” in Make America Great Again. It all depends on what your definition of “greatness” is.

• The description of the room on the ground floor further contributes to the illustration of the building as a place hostile to life: a sanitized, sterile laboratory where “wintriness responds to wintriness.” The light is “frozen, dead, a ghost” and even the workers even the workers inside are linked to this deathly atmosphere by their “corpse-coloured” gloves. The only “rich and living” substance is beneath the microscopes, suggesting the lab workers have somehow lost something essential to life

• The substance beneath the microscope is compared to butter, an interesting word choice considering butter’s status as a particularly human product and indulgence, and a bit of a jarring contrast compared to the cold and bleak room. I went from deep uneasiness to wanting waffles real quick, and I think that’s exactly what Huxley intended.

• So it’s a fertilizing room. That makes total sense, considering the lifelessness of it all. The author’s word choice tells us all we need to know what he thinks about this place. That he’s working against nature is already clear (1)

• The Director tells the students about the workers in the hatchery: “For of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently—though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible.” He goes on to say that “not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.” In other words, workers must know enough to do their jobs but not enough to philosophize, to question the system.

• Questioning the system — The Great American Book Club is now batting 1.000 with that theme. Seems important.

• A central theme in both The Grapes of Wrath and Slaughterhouse-Five was the danger in questioning the powers that be, whether the bank or the bomb-droppers. One was dealt with by the police, the other by denial, fatalism, and Tralfamadorian detachment. How will those questions be dealt with here? (4)

• The Director is described as ageless—he could be old or young, thirty or fifty-five. Notably it’s not a question that people ask in the year A.F. 632, “in this year of stability.” Whatever and wherever this society is (A.F.?) in time, it seems to have solved the “problem” of aging. We’re also given our first insight into the concept of “Stability” that the book opened with. You or I would likely define stability as something like existing in a peaceful society and having access to food and water and medicine. But to the World State a core component of stability is the absence of aging (4)

• “Begin at the beginning.” Stored sperm and ova, stored in the lab. The storage and processes are important for the world-building but more important here is the absence of human sexuality and connection that creates life

• Bokanovsky’s Process— “Ninety-six humans out of one egg. Progress.” The mass production of fertilized eggs. Fantastic. It’s not just a rejection of human sexuality but of individualism which is, uh, concerning, based on what we witnessed in California and in Dresden. This is a dystopia, too, so buckle up.

• That the touted process of bokanovskification is achieved in part by dousing the buds with alcohol is just a bit on the nose, but point taken

• Obtaining eight to ninety-six embryos is described as “A prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature,” and it’s hard not to throw up. It’s the mantra of capitalism applied to biological man and it's chilling in its implication. Bodies as commodities. If only Meg thee Stallion would relay that message to the world. (7)

• “Identical twins—but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days…” Viviparous = (of an animal) bringing forth live young that have developed inside the body of the parent. So in this society it seems the days of women bearing children are gone altogether.

• Bokanovsky’s Process is “one of the major instruments of social stability.” So we have the absence of aging (likely coupled with absence of illness and possibly death) informing our definition of stability, and here is another: uniformity. Again, to me stability is going to Market Basket, buying bread and ice cream, and being astounded by the variety of idiots who don’t know how to maneuver a shopping cart. In the World State it means identical people, which may result in more efficient shopping but also everybody selecting the same gallon of ice cream, so I’m not sure which world is worse, here.

• “You really know where you are. For the first time in history.” What do we think this means? It’s followed by the Director quoting “planetary” model of “Community, Identity, Stability” once more. How does knowing “where you are” contribute to these concepts. Could it be about purpose, or the absence of it? (7)

• “The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.” What could go wrong with that?

• Freemartins — they’re structurally normal, guaranteed sterile, but with the “slightest tendency to grow beards” — seem to be a middle ground between male and female, but I’m not quite sure what that means with regard to the plot. I’m tempted to make a woke joke here, but that would be too easy

• The babies are predestined and conditioned, as “socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers…” It’s intriguing to view this form of “predestination” alongside the determinism of the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five. While one adoption of this philosophy is scientific and the other psychological, their function is the same: the erasure of discomfort and conflict—the creation of a moral order that is difficult if not impossible to question, and therefore a form of “stability” but at cost of individuality, freedom, and ultimately truth (13)

• It appears both the World controllers and Directors of Hatcheries are “Alphas” and we find out in a few pages that the students are, too. I’m wondering how much of this world is inhabited by these Alphas

• “Nothing like oxygen shortage to keep an embryo below par” — what appears to be the central theme spelled out in scientific language, the justified and deliberate stunting of human growth in the name of progress and stability (14)

• Epsilons don’t need and aren’t given human intelligence—they appear to be the lowest of the low (15)

• The deranged logic of the World State even extends to reproduction. In Mombasa they produced individuals who were “sexually mature at four and full-grown at six and a half…but socially useless…too stupid to do even Epsilon work.” They were still trying to find the ideal compromise between adults of twenty and adults of six.” The insatiable appetite of capitalism at last applied to the human body, one that necessitates that childhood itself is viewed as superflous. It’s the same logic driving the attempt to remove child labor laws in some American states taken to the extreme—the logic of production, consumption, and shareholder value. Overnights on a school night? What’s the harm in that? (15)

• “That is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do.” What do we think of this? It’s hard to wholly reject. If my job was something I liked and believed in like hitting home runs for the Red Sox I’m sure I’d be happy and virtuous—but the problem here is the World State decides what it is a person has “got to do”(16). We’re also relying on their definition of “happiness and virtue,” too

• “All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” The World State has engineered destiny and the acceptance of it. Dystopia at its finest. But what does this dystopia tell us about the real world we inhabit? Since we read The Grapes of Wrath, I can’t help but view the concept of social destiny as a tool of oppression in and of itself, however woke that may sound, in that it absolves us of responsibility for the fates of those left behind. “It’s not us, it’s the Bank” says the representative booting the farmers off of their land. It’s simply how the world is naturally structured: a world of rich and poor, of winners and losers, of economic forces that we are beyond our control. (16)

• We meet Lenina, a nurse: “For all the lupus and purple eyes, she was uncommonly pretty.” Really bro

• “Alpha Plus intellectuals” —Alpha Plus. It’s kind of giving Mew-Two. Apparently these are the real big swinging dicks of the World State

• The Decanting Room — seems important, considering the chapter ended with it

Chapter 2

• The nursery is a stark contrast from the laboratory at the beginning of the novel—a place “bright and sunny” as opposed to the one in which a “harsh thin light” glares. The nursery is a place of actual human life—for which sunlight is everything (19)

• Huxley dedicates a whole paragraph to the description of the flower petals, and it’s refreshing. Of course he goes on to subvert it two pages later but in the moment the assertion and appreciation of nature is there, and that’s no doubt intentional

• As the sun shines into the room: “The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books.” An assertion of passion and meaning and knowledge. Glimmers of humanity. (20)

• We’re all familiar with Pavlov’s dogs—so I don’t have to spell this one out for you. I also don’t really know what else to say about the babies treatment than wow that was some fucked up shit

• “They’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives.” Lol. A cheeky line. But a damn good indicator of what we should be paying attention to (22)

• The student “could see quite well why you couldn’t have lower-caste people wasting the Community’s time over books…yet…well, he couldn’t understand about the flowers.” (22)

• The D.H.C. tells the student people were once conditioned to like flowers so that they would go out to the country and “consume transport.” That transport is something that is consumed sounds like a strange idea, but it is something we consume. Just look at the airlines raking in billions, and still charging us to select a seat

• But why did the consumption of nature change? It changed because “primroses and landscapes…have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy.” And there is the logic of capitalism, the logic of extraction, laid bare. Everything must turn a profit, and there is no value in that which doesn’t, no matter how beautiful. Everything must be commodified in some way; everything must be perceived through the lens of ever-increasing profit. This isn’t dystopian British logic either—it’s the logic of our current administration, for whom the beauty and biodiversity of our National Forests and National Parks is not enough: “Under the pretense of national security, the president’s orders aim to gut environmental safeguards and fast-track industrial clearcutting in some of the US’s most precious and climate-critical forests.” (The Atlantic)

• The above is one of the best hikes I’ve ever done, Looking Glass Rock, in Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. When we finally got to the top of the rock and looked out, all I could think was “look at all that wasted timber.”

• To its credit, we have no indication (at least so far) that the World State is simply plundering nature for resources (they def are). They don’t want to stop the tendency of people to “consume” transport but they need an explanation “economically sounder” than primroses and landscapes

• So what is the solution to keep people going to the country? Conditioning them all to like country sports that use an “elaborate apparatus” to keep them consuming “manufactured articles as well as transport.” (23) I can’t help view this through the lens of—you guessed it—the NFL

  • I work next to Gillette Stadium, and on game days when I’m sitting in miles and miles of traffic it always strikes me how stupid it all seems. These people driving out here from across New England just to watch what amounts to an hour of actual action. A million cars, a million cops screaming at them, all for a game

  • For the NFL, it’s not enough to just buy a ticket to the game or to have it on your television. The commercials are insufficient. You need to have the throwback and Color Rush jerseys, the Bud Lights, the knitted hats and hoodies, the survivor pool and the fantasy team and the five-leg parlay, the Tik Tok clips and the buffalo wings. Sure seems like an “elaborate apparatus” to me

  • And the question I think that Brave New World wants us to ask is why is this how we spend our Sundays? Why do we spend a day off getting drunk and overeating and losing bets and raging as we watch Mahomes fake run out-of-bounds yet again. Why not spend our Sundays down the street from the stadium at the state forest instead, taking in the tranquility?

  • I like football, I swear. It’s just too easy.

• “Our Ford” — This is the first time we see Ford used in place of “God” in the novel, and I don’t want to dive too deeply into what this might mean just yet. But it’s important for to note that in this society an industrialist has replaced God, and industry has replaced religion

• Polish, French, and German are dead languages — this gives us more insight into the world, a place where difference and therefore culture has been eradicated. It’s more uniformity, and in turn, stability. But it’s stability at the cost of Identity, another core tenet of the Word State’s motto. How do they reconcile that? With a different definition of identity that is biological instead of cultural (23)

• Sooo…not only do women not bear children, it seems like the concept and practice of parenthood has been erased from society altogether.

• “The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boys’ eye-avoiding silence.” — This hints that sex and “smut” still exist, but they’re wholly detached from their scientific or natural purpose. Has sex been reduced to only pleasure?

• Why is George Bernard Shaw “one of the few whose works have been permitted to come down to us”? I don’t know enough about him to venture a guess. Anyone got something? (24)

• Sleep-teaching — Those subjected to it can remember the words, but they don’t understand what the words mean. They can repeat facts but they don’t actually understand them. An apt metaphor for the internet age

• Students are alphas, but they are still “well-conditioned.” Are all Alphas still conditioned. Does any person of tier of people in this society exist that hasn’t been conditioned at all?

• The “Elementary Class Consciousness” class is the instrument with which the World State exercises control. Although dystopian in nature, it parallels the very real experience of growing up in a society stratified by class. We absorb the things we hear, from our family and friends and media, and this informs how we perceive the world, how we perceive those we deem beneath us (27)

• The sleep-teaching also can be connected to the internet today — how we don’t necessarily believe what is true, but what we see repeatedly. What would Huxley have to say about the age of the algorithm?

• Epsilons are still worse — Interesting how even in this society which claims to have it all figured out there still needs to be a bottom caste, one beneath all of the others. Why is that the case?

• Words without reason — the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time

Chapter 3

• Chapter 3 opens with a description of a garden in which children play. The roses, the nightingale, the cuckoo provide another natural contrast to the dreariness and lifelessness of the World State, another fleeting illustration of life

• The Director muses how games used to be played with mostly just a ball and some netting, but now the Controllers would never approve of a game without a complicated “apparatus”. We touched upon this already, but it’s worth noting again as it provides insight to the dynamics of society and the power of the Controllers. That soccer and basketball would not be approved by the Controllers tells us a lot

• Erotic play between children is normalized. Definitely one of the weirder aspects of the book, but it tracks with what we’ve seen already: the speeding up and suppression of childhood

• Most people in Ford’s day weren’t having sex until after 20 years old. A society of loser virgins in their twenties doesn’t exactly seem to be healthy, either, but the Word State’s answer to that—children “frolicking” in the garden—seems like a gross overcorrection (33)

• His fordship, Mustapha Mond — The Resident Controller for Western Europe, a dark and authoritative kind of guy, Snape-like, firm in his convictions

• Mond’s words are described as “straight from the mouth of Ford himself.” In a society in which Ford is God, the Controllers take on a religious significance, the same divine authority rulers throughout history have wielded. How do you question the words of somebody who speaks for God (or Ford) himself?

• “History is bunk.” A quote from Our Ford. This suggests a society that believes it’s beyond the forces of history, that the lessons of history do not apply to it, and are not worth paying attention to. It’s an essential authoritarian creed (34)

• Mond whisks away with his hand Babylon and Odysseus and Job, Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, cathedrals, King Lear, and the Passion. It’s not just rejection of these key symbols of human civilization and flourishing—it’s disdain for them. Historical and architectural wonders like Rome and Athens described as “ancient dirt.” Odysseus and King Lear rendered irrelevant. Religion and worship and the Passion of Christ written off as worthless. History is bunk. What threat do these symbols of human civilization represent to the World State? (35)

• The Feelies — seems to be like the movies, but with…touch?

• As Mond talks to the students about history, the Director thinks about the rumors of forbidden books in Mond’s study: Bibles and poetry. Blatant hypocrisy if true, but Mond no doubt has a justification for it

• “Mother” is a “smutty” word. The students have no concept of home. It’s clear that much of the World State’s power is derived from its total severance of the population from that which makes them human, and their ability through various means to convince the people that this is the norm. A rejection of the natural order of things in the name of stability, in the name of control, yet at the cost of one of the most innermost aspects of one’s identity—his family (36)

• Mond describes a mother’s cooing over her baby as something to induce a “shudder”— even motherly instinct is turned on its head (38)

• It’s interesting to compare the World State’s dogma with that of Steinbeck — In his work, the ultimate source of strength and solidarity for downtrodden people like the Joads was family. It makes sense why the World State would want to erase that, but damn that is bleak

• Not exactly sure what a pregnancy substitute is, but I assume these drugs that Lenina and her friend take mimic the effects of pregnancy, since women no longer give birth. Seems just a bit unnatural but hey, stability

• “Our Ford—or Our Freud…he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters…” So Freud and sex appear to be the psychological counterpart to Ford and his industry, which must partly explain the whole garden scene. Is the World State governed by mass production and pleasure? (39)

• Fathers = misery; mother = perversion; siblings, aunt, uncles = madness and suicide. It’s insane how the World State has took the pain and difficulty that exists within families, and turned it into an argument for the abolishment of the family altogether

• “And yet, among the savages of Samoa, in certain islands off the coast of New Guinea…” I wonder what Mond’s definition of “savage” is (39)

• Lenina’s consistent dating of Henry Foster is viewed by her friend, Fanny, as shocking. It’s that same inversion of normal human experience that we see throughout the text. Four months of Henry Foster! The horror! Mond sums up why: “Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channeling of impulse and energy.”

• “But everyone belongs to everyone else,” a hyponpaedic proverb that results in everyone just banging everyone else. You don’t even have to try to get laid in the World State. The second pillar of their motto is Community, and what is more communal than everybody fucking everybody else? I mean I was thinking more along the lines of a farmer’s market but that really is the quintessential example (40)

• Emotions are the opposite of stability, and what aspects of life channel the strongest emotions? Our relationships. With our parents, with our siblings, with our boyfriends and girlfriends. The World State’s power is predicated on the erasure of emotions, the erasure of pain, in the name of stability—strong emotions lead to conflict, and must be avoided

• “Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment.” It’s tied back to production here, too, suggesting that the World State’s motives—its battle against suffering—is not primarily humanist but economic

• On page 41, “their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy.” We questioned the definitions of virtue and happiness above, and we were right to. Because it’s not about true virtue or happiness, it’s about not caring enough to become upset

• “Crying: My baby, my mother, my only, only love; groaning: My sin, my terrible God; screaming with pain, muttering with fever, bemoaning old age and poverty—how can they tend the wheels?” Note the justification for the erasure of pain is not a rebuke of suffering itself, but a rebuke of how suffering makes human beings less productive (42)

• Bernard Marx doesn’t like Obstacle Golf and spends his time by himself. What a freak. He hates how the other guys talk about Lenina as if she’s a piece of meat. He’s a specialist in sleep-teaching, which is ironic. He seems like a decent guy.

• “Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth.” The election was stolen. (47)

• Lenina, with her odd dating habits and interest in Bernard, is someone out of step with her peers just as Bernard is, if not so drastically. Their characterizations show us that despite the World State’s control, not everyone succumbs it completely

• “Has any of you ever encountered an insurmountable obstacle?” Mond asks the students, who all shake their heads no. Instant gratification is now the way of life—another way the World State has distorted and undermined the nature of time in the name of stability (45)

• Huxley gets cute with the technique here, alternating between perspectives with short paragraphs, which is nice to read but annoying to write about.

• There seems to have been a war, and chemical weapons, that led to an Economic Collapse—and it’s out of this horrible war that the choice emerged between “World Control and destruction. Between stability and…” The war killed liberalism (47)

• “Ch₈C₆H₂(NO₂)₈ + Hg(CNO)₂ = well, what? An enormous hole in the ground, a pile of masonry…a foot, with a boot still on it, flying through the air and landing, glop in the middle of the geraniums—the scarlet ones; such a splendid show that summer!” A Tralfamadorian description if I’ve ever seen one, painting the weapon as a neutral chemical equation, the detached way it speaks about a man’s severed foot. If the Joads response to suffering was family and solidarity, and Billy Pilgrim’s response to suffering was fatalism, then the World State’s response to suffering is totalitarianism—to do away with the emotions that cause such suffering in the first place (48)

• That being said, I feel like the Big Ten Controllers obviously exploited the horrors of war for their own gain. They convinced people to give up their liberties in the name of stability, in the name of safety. Scared people will give up anything. Patriot Act, anyone?

• The new world order after the war compelled everybody to “consume so much a year. In the interests of industry.” There were mass protests. “Anything not to consume. Back to nature.” This serves as a reinforcement of points touched upon earlier with regards to nature and functions as an assertion of its righteousness. Man should be consuming nature, not goods. He should be hiking in the state park not screaming at his television that the NFL is rigged. This history that the Controller relays so dispassionately is actually an assertion of human dignity, just like the labor strikes in Steinbeck, and that is why in the World State claims “history is bunk.” (49)

• The mantra of consumption is repeated in the sleep center: “I do love flying, I do love having new clothes.” And later: “Ending is better than mending.” Why get your iPhone with the cracked screen fixed when the iPhone 37 is releasing this October with an even better camera? “The more stitches, the less riches.” (49)

• “You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.” THEME.

• I’m curious how the Controllers were able to pull of an “intensive propaganda” against parents. I mean

• “Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments; by the suppression of all books published before A.F. 150.” That’s the playbook, guys. And it’s undeniable that it’s playing out right here, right now. The past is dangerous, because the past is the truth.

• Fanny tells Lenina that her choices are going to get her into trouble. But they don’t grapple with it. Their conversation then devolves into talking about belts, just like the Controllers want (49-51)

• The introduction of the new Ford T-Model is chosen to mark the beginning of the new era, another obvious example of industry as religion. Will the introduction of the Model S one day mark an era of our own?

• No God anymore. Crosses with their tops lopped off, turned to Ts — the substitution of religion for an industrial creed. Undeniably clever (52)

• Underconsumption is described as “positively a crime against society” in the “age of machines” — there is that familiar logic of mass production and mass profit that asserts itself as an inevitability, a force of nature in its own right like that of the Bank and the Tractor

• “There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.” (53)

• Bernard hates the bros. Bernard craves human, individual connection (53)

• Alcohol, morphia, cocaine…the Controller cites these former societal ills as justifications for the new world order which is eerily similar to how the current president ties everything to fentanyl—an obvious problem, but one that is exploited

• Lenina as meat — a different take but not wholly disconnected from that of Steinbeck and Vonnegut, in that she is denied individualism, agency, and decency, just like Tom and just like Billy

• Soma - The perfect drug. “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant…all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.” This is a more obvious symbol of the theme of sedation that we’ve been dancing around but haven’t yet named: the suppression of emotion is not just biological and social but also pharmaceutical

  • It’s interesting how soma is said to be free of defects, too. It might not inspire fanaticism or lead to a hangover but its proponents gloss over what some might consider the biggest defect of all: how it disconnects people from human experience

• “And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn.” I’m surprised I haven’t seen this on a dispensary billboard yet, which have popped up all over the region. Reading Brave New World I can’t help but wonder about the impact the widespread marketing of this different type of sedative has on society, same with mobile sports gambling

• Old age is the last thing the new world order needs to conquer, and they do: “the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think”—and if they do they can simply pop a soma.” Keeping them productive to the very end (55)

• Keep them working, keep them high, and keep them fucking, and they won’t ever question anything

We’ve covered a lot here, and a lot of it wasn’t exactly subtle. The World State has built a controlling apparatus in the name of “stability,” but at the cost of both identity and community, which its motto claims to uphold. So much of what makes us human has been erased in the name of preventing suffering. It’s certainly dystopian, but there are hints that it will be questioned. Namely, Lenina and Bernard show us that there are cracks in the facade, flaws in the system, people who see the system for what it truly is. A reckoning is inevitable. I wonder what form such a confrontation will take.

As always, make sure you comment on whatever stood out to you in these first three chapters. Go off one of my talking points or post your own—we will go wherever the discussion takes us.

Our next discussion will be for chapters 4-6 and will be posted on Wednesday, April 16. It should be a good one.

Steve

The people have spoken, and they have selected…a British author. Wow. Our next read will be Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which might just be the perfect read for the times. Unlike our first two picks, Brave New World is not set in the United States, nor does it specifically touch upon the American Dream. Its themes, however, are universal—and its lessons can easily be examined through the lens of our country right here and right now.

Our first reading assignment for Brave New World will be for chapters 1-3 and will be posted on Sunday, 4/6. It’s around 50 pages. As always, any and all observations about plot or character or theme are welcome. As was the case with our previous two reads, the central theme of the novel will come into focus over time, so to start just take notes or comment about whatever in the text stood out most to you.

A few other notes: We’re not quite finished with Slaughterhouse-Five. That will be completed this week before the discussion for Brave New World is posted. There will be the wrap-up post for that work, and hopefully an additional piece that I unfortunately can’t yet guarantee.

Check out the results for our poll at the bottom. The (again) second place finisher, The Underground Railroad, will be back for our next poll, and hopefully will pull through this time. (Seriously guys, 3 straight white male authors, you’re making me look bad here).

Last, if you’re on the fence, please consider joining us! Slaughterhouse-Five was a bit challenging due to its experiments with chronology, but I think Brave New World is a bit simpler, both in structure and theme, which is much more closely tied to the experience of the every day American than Vonnegut’s terrible experience of war. I’m obligated to once again mention that the best time I have to promote the book club is right now, between reads. If you've been following along, or you're just jumping in—spread the word. We’re taking this baby to the moon.

Keep reading.

Steve

• The Underground Railroad (2016) – Colson Whitehead
  A harrowing reimagining of the real-life Underground Railroad as an actual subterranean train system. The novel follows Cora, an enslaved woman who escapes a brutal Georgia plantation and journeys through different states, each with its own twisted version of oppression.

• Brave New World (1932) – Aldous Huxley

  Set in a dystopian future where everything is controlled—work, relationships, even happiness. People are engineered into their roles, and society runs like a well-oiled machine. But not everyone fits the the mold.

• A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) – Jennifer Egan
  A genre-bending novel told through interconnected short stories spanning decades. It explores the rise and fall of people tied to the music industry, touching on themes of time, nostalgia, and the way life changes us.

• The Age of Innocence (1920) – Edith Wharton

  Set in elite New York society during the 1870s, where every glance, visit, and conversation follows strict unspoken rules. The story follows a well-respected man trying to do what’s expected of him—until someone unexpected challenges all of it.

For those of you who participated in Slaughterhouse-Five and The Grapes of Wrath—you know who you are, and your participation means the world to me. Feel free to share the book club with family and friends—anybody you think might be able to gain something from our mission. Word-of-mouth is the most effective way to make this into something big.

We’ll announce our next book and reading assignment Sunday night. The final Slaughterhouse-Five wrap up post will also be posted early next week. I’m also hoping to be rolling out a new feature soon featuring guest writers, a sort of “expert” section to supplement our own discussions. Stay tuned.

Steve

Initial thoughts

These final chapters conclude the story, and in them we witness some of Vonnegut’s most damning indictments yet. American exceptionalism, American culture and the Tralfamadorian worldview are all exposed—and most importantly, Billy Pilgrim finds his voice.

Chapter 9

• This chapter starts off hot with the death of Billy’s wife, Valencia. It’s hard not to view her as a tragic figure, a victim of the war in her own way. She cares about Billy, but we don’t really get the sense that she and Billy have anything really special. I feel like this disconnect has to be a result of them marrying so soon after the war, before Billy could even come to terms with his experience there. She was described earlier as a “symptom of his disease”, a heartbreaking description to consider as she drives to the hospitals in hysterics, and ends up dying

• Vonnegut compares the sounds of the Cadillac missing the mufflers to “a heavy bomber coming in on a wing and a prayer.” Just a masterstroke of a simile from Vonnegut. It further plays into Valencia as another casualty of war, and touches upon the intrusiveness and inescapability of the war, even long after the last bombs have fallen

• Valencia is slumped against the steering wheel, and her “horn brayed steadily”— A chilling sound that any of us who drove a little too recklessly in GTA will be familiar with. Also used to devastating effect in Chinatown

• I wonder what the significance is of Valencia’s death. She is fine during the original rear end, she crosses the median and crashes, but survives that too, only to be suffocated by the carbon monoxide because of the interior of her car had changed. She “survives” the “plane crash” like Billy did—like he survived the war—only to suffocate at home, in the car designed with to provide safety for a collision but with no defense the unseen—the tasteless, odorless carbon monoxide. The wounds sustained in the war weren’t always fatal, but they changed men, in body, mind and spirit, in ways that would results in death later

• Valencia was also hit by a Mercedes, a German car. Hmmm.

• The man sharing a hospital room with Billy is Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, who broke his leg skiing. He’s seventy, has energy of a man half his age, and 23 year old wife, a veritable Belichick. He’s the twisted opposite of the young soldiers who were sent off to war to die, many of whom died virgins

• Rumfoord is also a retired brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve and the Official Air Force Historian, and a professor. It’s useful to view his actions and words as a representation of the American military, specifically the Air Force

• Rumfoord remarks that in his sleep all Billy does is “Quit and surrender and apologize and ask to be left alone.” — More indication of Billy’s trauma, and the root of Rumfoord’s disgust, even though Rumfoord has lived what seems to be a life of luxury. He broke his leg skiing; Billy’s plane crashed into a mountain with a ski resort and Billy thought he was back in Germany

• Lily, Rumfoord’s girlfriend, is depicted in numerous ways as a child. Is she just another child crusader used by the rich and powerful for their own ends? Rumfoord knows very little about her except “that she was one more public demonstration that he was a superman.” It might be a reach but are Lily and Rumfoord microcosms for the larger American military dynamic, which too relies on public displays of superhumanness in the name of military might, a military of children? (185)

• Lily can’t read the Truman statement about the dropping of the atomic bomb, so she pretends to. Is Lily’s illiteracy intended as a comment on American culture and education (which would be right at home today, in the era of the clip). Or is it meant to symbolize something deeper with regards to how young Americans perceive the Bomb? Or is it the simple fact that these children were born after the war, and as such have no comprehension of it?

• The Destruction of Dresden - In the first discussion post I pointed out that Vonnegut’s claimed death toll was inaccurate and wasn’t sure why. Apparently this is because Vonnegut used Destruction of Dresden as a source, which is no longer considered authoritative. Its author was also apparently written by a Holocaust denier which is interesting

• In the foreword to The Destruction of Dresden we witness the recurring justification of revenge, espoused by Rumfoord’s military friends: “I find it difficult to understand Englishmen or Americans who weep about enemy civilians who were killed but who have not shed a tear for our gallant crews lost in combat with a cruel enemy.” Why can’t we weep for both?

• Also, “It might be well to remember Buchenwald and Coventry, too.” Horror begetting horror.

• We’ve seen this attitude echoed by these generals explicitly linked to the American military before, with the the major who wanted to bomb North Vietnam “back to the Stone Age” because they were Communists, the enemy (60)

• Air Marshall Saundy writes, of Dresden: “That it was really a military necessity few, after reading this book, will believe. It was one of those terrible things that sometimes happen in wartime, brought about by an unfortunate combination of circumstances. Those who approved it were neither wicked nor cruel, though it may well be that they were too remote from the harsh realities of war to understand…” There again is that American detachment, that lack of accountability. It was just the way things played out, it wasn’t wickedness or cruelty, it was out of their control. The bombings were fated to happen; it’s the nature of war. Nobody made the choice to kill, nobody made the choice to slaughter innocents, the bombs falling were never meant to be cruel and indiscriminate, in spite of their design

• The comment on those approving the bombings who were “remote” from the realities of war points squarely to that bastard Rumfoord, who spends all his time, skiing, sailing, and chasing tail half a century younger than him, all while resenting Billy for his weakness and trauma

• After this passage from Saundy, which relays the death tolls of the bombing of Tokyo and Hiroshima, Billy says “If you’re ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob.” We kind of glossed over Bob the first time, the colonel who lost his entire regiment of 4500 men, “most of them children.” (66) What does this repeated phrase mean? It’s fantasy, a picture of war Bob did not experience. His men never actually called him Wild Bob—in fact they all died—yet he dreams of reminiscing with the boys back in his hometown when the war is over and they return home as heroes. It evokes the simply moving on from it, suburbia, good old boys throwing them back at home in the states, the same reminiscing Vonnegut at the beginning of the novel couldn’t partake in. And last the inability to face the truth. Wild Bob is both an example of the warrior mentality mythology that obscures the tragedy of war, and also a keen parallel to Billy in his complete inability to confront what he has witnessed

• On page 189, Billy travels in time to when he was sixteen, in the waiting room of a doctor. The only the other person in the waiting room is an old man who can’t stop farting and burping. He says, “I knew it was going to be bad getting old. I didn’t know it was going to be this bad.” I feel like we have to view this ironically—Vonnegut remarking that compared to dying a horrible death in a war at 18—a little gas maybe isn’t all that bad. Better than mustard gas, at least.

• Billy’s son, Robert, is “straightened out now” that he went off and joined the military. He’s not given much time in the novel, detached from Billy, a symbol of the ever-churning war machine’s need for youthful bodies. I wonder if his smaller part in the novel is meant to be a comment on his relationship with Billy and the war. I mean did Billy ever even play catch with this kid? Is Robert another casualty of WWII?

• While in the hospital Billy’s mind races with “letters and lectures about the “flying saucers, the negligibility of death, the nature of time” — Tralfamadore as cope? (190)

• Dresden was no secret to the Germans, or the Russians, who occupied Dresden after the war, who are in Dresden still” — a subtle comment on the cyclical nature of war, how the legacy of WWII extended far beyond its official end

• Rumfoord wrote a volume about the history of the air force in WWII which barely mentioned Dresden, “even though it had been such a howling success.” Lily questions why it was kept secret, to which Rumfoord responds, “for fear that a lot of bleeding heats might not think it was such a wonderful thing to do.” Total denial—and indicative of a common thought process rife in American politics today—to cast those protesting inhumanity as bleeding hearts or socialists or Communists instead of examining in good faith the systems they critique

• Billy responds to Rumfoord’s accusation of bleeding hearts. “I was there,” he says. This was the most powerful moment in the novel for me. It’s an assertion of agency for Billy, the first step to confronting the past, in admitting he was there, that he did experience something horrific. The controversy surrounding the bombing of Dresden is not one of political posturing; it’s about real human cost, and Billy speaks to that, courageously. It’s a rebuke of the official Air Force Historian, drunk on righteousness and patriotism, and therefore a rebuke of American military might at large. (191)

• Lily is open to Billy’s words, but Rumfoord tells her it’s echolalia, which Vonnegut says is for his own comfort: “An inconvenient person, one whose death he wished for very much, for practical reasons, was suffering from a repulsive disease.” The Germans in the way of American bombs were certainly inconvenient, their destruction justified in the name of rooting out the disease of Nazism

• The hospital staff hates Rumfoord. They think he is a “hateful old man, conceited and cruel” who thinks that “people who were weak deserved to die.” The staff, on the other hand, “was devoted to the idea that weak people should be helped as much as possible, and nobody should die.” The staff is driven by humanity, Rumfoord (and America) by ideology.

• On page 193 we witness another confrontation between Rumfoord and Billy. Billy states in the middle of the night to Rumfoord, “I was in Dresden when t was bombed. I was a prisoner of war.”

  Must we talk about it now? Said Rumfoord. He had heard. He didn’t believe.
  We don’t ever have to talk about it, said Billy. I just want you to know: I was there.

• A reassertion of Billy’s agency and dignity again in the face of denial. Rumfoord is not interested in talking about it because it would shatter his own worldview, and would force him to confront the decisions his colleagues had made. The importance of Billy standing up to this man and asserting his experience against his false narratives is profoundly important to the novel

• Two days after the war ends, Billy and five other prisoners ride around in a “coffin-shaped green wagon” — clear language that indicates these men as marked

• “Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones—to stare only at the pretty things as eternity failed to go by. If this sort of selectivity had been possible for Billy…” And there it is: the rejection of the Tralfamadorian worldview; the same worldview that kept the bombing of Dresden out of the history books. (194)

• As Billy snoozes in the back of the wagon, he is armed for the first time since basic training. The war continues for Billy. Will he finally have to fight?

• The horses transporting Billy were suffering from thirst and gashes and broken hooves, treated by the Americans as no more sensitive than a six-cylinder Chevrolet. Livestock treated as robots, machines, means to an end—their suffering ignored

• The two people that confront Billy about the horses were obstetricians, in fitting with the motif of babies and birth. They delivered babies until the houses burned down, and “now they were picnicking where their apartment used to be.” A devastating image.

• “When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn’t cried about anything else in the war.” Why is it this that makes Billy cry? I want to say it’s the undeniable image of animal suffering—the same one symbolized by the slaughterhouse—that has such an effect on him. He’s desensitized to the suffering of man, but to see an innocent animal tortured and ignored and used as a “means of transportation” breaks the spell

• Interesting callback to the epigraph— I wanted to speculate on this at the beginning to prove that I was a diligent reader but honestly had no idea what it was talking about. Here it is:

  The cattle are lowing,

  The Baby awakes.

  But the little Lord Jesus

  No crying he makes.

• Now it makes perfect sense, linked with how Billy “cried very little, though he often saw things worth crying about.” There is no more innocent figure than the baby Jesus—no other figure more closely tied to conceptions of right and wrong, or more attuned to suffering. He’s born into a world with immense suffering, but he doesn’t cry. Why? Shouldn’t we cry? (197)

• No piece of good old American literature is complete without a Christ figure, and it looks like Billy might be one, too. Is his a classic example? Billy suffers because of his innocence—his life sacrificed to absolve the sins of man

• About the destruction of Dresden, Rumfoord tells Billy: “It had to be done. That’s war.” There is again, that framing of inevitability, that Tralfamadorian fatalism that insists there could have been no alternative, that absolves the perpetrator of guilt and responsibility.

• “Pity the men who had to do it.” I mean, I do, but I’d rather drop a bomb than be underneath it. Why can’t we pity everybody involved in these inhumane endeavors?

• Quick aside: Paul Tibbets, Jr. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima from his plane the Enola Gay, which was named after his mother. There’s something mighty twisted and ironic about the plane that dropped the atom bomb being named after a mom. (Photos of the Enola Gay were recently marked for deletion by the Pentagon because of DEI. If that isn’t just the heigh of absurdity.

• “You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground.” — Says Rumfoord to Billy. Another scathing indictment of Rumfoord and his military cohort, symbolizing his detachment from the terror of their own actions. The suggestion of mixed feelings is especially rich and shows the extent of their delusions—the belief that a man on whom bombs fell and emerged on a place as flat at the moon would still retain that patriotism, that pride, that we really showed them even amongst the rubble and bodies

• Billy’s response reinforces this assessment: “Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore.” (198)

• Forgive me, but I’m going to directly inject politics in the post here, only because it’s so relevant. I won’t bother going into the details of Signalgate, which is so absurd its stood out even above the cacophony of idiocy that’s been on display since mid-January. I just wanted to highlight one part of the conversation, featuring the Vice President and the National Security Advisor, concerning bombs dropped on Yemen:

• The Vice President and the National Security Advisor, folks, collapsing an apartment building in the name of fighting terror, and celebrating with emojis—fire, fist bump, flag. He was the top missile guy. They’re attacking shipping. It had to be done.

• I appreciated the image of Billy in his NYC hotel room on the top floor. Beyond the terrace was “air space over Forty-fourth street,” and the people Billy looked down on were “jerky little scissors. They were a lot of fun.” Billy sees the world from the perspective of a bomber, and it symbolizes that sense of detachment from destruction from those “not on the ground”

• Billy flips through the channels but can’t find anything good to watch. He wants the later shows, when “that allowed people with peculiar opinions to speak out. It’s a little after eight o’clock, so primetime television (remember that), but all the shows were about silliness and murder. So it goes.” One, this shows Billy as still fundamentally out of sync with his fellow Americans, as he’s been depicted throughout. (200)

• Silliness and murder — is Vonnegut right? Has much changed in our culture today. I mean let’s take Marvel as the most obvious example. It had a historic run. It’s murder disguised with sleek shields and spiderwebs, and nothing is sillier than the multiverse (at least as a narrative device). Speaking of which, the cast for was announced yesterday, and it includes Patrick Stewart, 84 and Ian McKlellan, 85, reprising their roles as Professor X and Magneto, this time amongst the Avengers. If that’s not silly I don’t know what is, but this is what the culture wants, I guess? Fan service and geriatric X-Men?

• Billy seeks refuge in a book store: “In the window were hundreds of words about fucking and buggery and murder, and a street guide to New York City, and a model of the Statue of Liberty with a thermometer in it. Let’s break this one down.

  • Fucking and buggery and murder. In the interest of transparency, I had to look up “buggery” which my brain initially linked with “bugging out” or just sort of being a weirdo, but it is in fact anal sex. This adds to the portrait of America on the television screen as a country steeped in vice, an immoral land.

  • A street guide to New York City - Juxtaposed with fucking and buggery and murder, it’s the contrast of the ideal with the reality. New York is a sinful place but still a tourist attraction, a symbol of the American dream but a representation of its dark underbelly. A place of opportunity that lifts people up but drives others into the ground, literally and figuratively

  • The Statue of Liberty with a thermometer in it - Feels like this has to be read as taking the temperature of the country. Are our conceptions of liberty making us a bit too feverish?

• “Power and sports and anger and death.” My man really is coming at America in these last view pages, dunking on both the government and the people. And not without cause. Power and sports and anger and death — an irrefutable description of our beloved NFL, from the fans fist-fighting in the stands to the quarterbacks having fencing responses on the field to the star linebacker killing himself years after his last game, the parallels to war are undeniable (200)

• Don’t get me wrong, Tom Brady gave me some of the best years of my life, but football is a cultural phenomenon with casualties. Like, Tua, come on bro, just retire. We’re no different than the American military or the Tralfamadorians. We look at 28-3 or the Malcolm Butler interception, but we don’t look at Aaron Hernandez, we don’t look at the CTE, or Eli Manning

• Billy in the peep show shop. Oh boy. The photos are Tralfamadorian because they’re stuck in time, like a bug in amber, they don’t change. Photos are better, because they’re stuck in time.

• “Twenty years in the future, those girls would still be young, would still be smiling or smoldering or simply looking stupid, with their legs wide open.” An obvious parallel to the schoolgirls boiled in the water tower, who would also never grow old (200)

• Page 201: Billy finds a Kilgore Trout novel that he had read in the veterans novel “about an Earthling man and woman who were kidnapped by extra-terrestrials. They were put on display in a zoo on the planet of Zircon-212”—and there it is, the story behind Billy’s fantasies

• I liked the image of the abducted Earthlings tracking their investments on earth, being stimulated by the fake stock market. A critique of our obsession with a symbolic wealth that will never really realistically belong to us, or maybe just a milder point about our obsession with money in general

• And then we have the other Trout story about apprentice-carpenter Jesus who built a cross for the execution of a rabble-rouser. A neat little parable. What was Jesus if not a rabble-rouser? Has to be saying something about how the man makes tools for another’s destruction, never thinking they will one day come for him?

• How does the Trout story end? With the time traveler confirming “The Son of God was dead as a doornail. So it goes.” Seems to be a pretty clear rejection of the resurrection, that’s for sure. Where does it fit into the larger narrative?

• The quintuplets running the store give major McPoyle vibes (202)

• The clerk “…had to tell the other clerks about the pervert who wanted to buy the window dressing.” Beautiful satire. (204)

• Montana Wildhack is back, too, on the cover of the magazine Midnight Pussycats. So that explains her appearance on Tralfamadore, too.

• The magazine was publishing “print pictures from blue movies” Montana had made as a teenager. Billy did not look closely at these. They were grainy things, soot and chalk. They could have been anybody.” Can’t help but make a connection here to the grainy wartime photos of soldiers who also could have been anybody. There seems to be a through-line in the novel between the bathing school girls, girls in the sex trade, and “child” soldiers. All victims of violence and vice in their own ways.

• Billy goes on the radio show, whose topic is weather or not the novel is dead. Billy is booted for talking about flying saucers and Montana Wildhack. I wonder about the novel but here, is it just a sort of meta-commentary? What’s the point of including that detail?

• He travels back in time for the last time (that we see) to Tralfamadore. Montana is breast-feeding their child because that’s a theme. It’s almost poignant how she speaks to Billy like a knowing wife, whose grown to understand him over the years: “You’ve been time-traveling again. I can always tell.” She knows that it wasn’t the war that he travelled too, either.

• Billy talks to Montana about the “blue movie” she made. Her response is described as “Tralfamadorian and guilt-free”— an acceptance of her past, the refusal to feel bad about it, or to even question it or the choices that defined it

• She tells Billy she heard about him in the war, how he was a clown, and how Derby was shot. She says, “He made a blue movie with a firing squad.” What do we think of the comparison between Montana’s videos and Derby’s execution?

• She moves the baby from one breast to another because “the moment was structured that way.” But is it?

• “They’re playing with the clocks again,” Montana says. Are the clocks just Billy’s mind, messing with his memories. It seems like it.

• Page 209 - Nice rack.

• Oh, yeah, the locket. Sorry, got distracted. It contains a photograph of Montana’s alcoholic mom—a grainy thing, soot and chalk, another link in the train of generational tragedy

• The locket shares a quote: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things that I can, and wisdom to always tell the difference. And therein lies the philosophy underpinning this book. It’s not that the Tralfamadorians are right or that the Earthlings are right, it’s that they’re both half right. America couldn’t stop WWII, but it could stop the bombs from falling on Dresden. Billy couldn’t stop his enlistment, but he could find the courage to find his voice. Maybe there’s a reason I know three different girls with this quote tattooed across their ribcages—maybe it’s the truth.

Chapter 10

• Chapter 10 shifts back to the first person perspective of Vonnegut, whose musings kicked off the story

• He immediately invokes the assassinations of MLK and RFK—a touch on the violence that seemed to define the Vietnam era

• “And everyday my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.” Military science — bit of an unsettling term that goes against the very idea of science, which is to sustain life

• He also comments on the death of his father: “He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.” A comment on the irony of being a sweet man but also a gun nut, a contradiction that mirrors the American war machine: the leader of the free world who collects not guns but aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and missiles. (210)

• “They rust” — seems to be an endorsement of disarmament which we’ve seen in this work earlier

• The Tralfamadorians adore Darwin, who taught that "“those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. So it goes.” It’s an exact echo of Rumfoord’s (and therefore America) words about weaklings, and it’s the exact philosophy the the whole book is working against. It’s the refusal to take accountability for the misfortunes of others, whether the hungry or the bombed—the insistence on fate, inevitability, that the world is just structured that way

• We saw this in The Grapes of Wrath, too, the acceptance of injustice as a means of self-preservation, man’s refusal to acknowledge his part in the chain of disenfranchisement that renders his former neighbors hungry and destitute. We can’t help the role that we play, whether we’re piloting the Enola Gay or driving the tractor that crumbles our neighbor’s home

• “If what Billy Pilgrim learned from Tralfamadore is true, that we all lie forever, no matter how dead we sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed.” What do we think of this admission from Vonnegut? I’m tempted to read it through the whole lens of “well without an end there wouldn’t be any meaning” but I think it’s a bit more cynical. I think Vonnegut is just saying life just really sucks sometimes (211)

• “Still, if I’m going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I’m grateful that so many of those moments are nice.” Note this isn’t the Tralfamadorian perspective of only looking at the good moments, but a subtle acknowledgment that he visits the dark moments, too. Maybe he’d rather forget everything than live with the good and bad forever.

• Vonnegut hits us with the Wild Bob line again, this time in response to the thought of how much money he and O’Hare made. Still, though, there’s no reminiscing, no glory, no camaraderie—just anguish

• On the exploding global population, Vonnegut says to O’Hare: “I suppose they will all want dignity.” Isn’t that the whole fight?

• The books ends with a flash back to Dresden, two days after the bombing, where Billy and Vonnegut both were put to work in the ruins.

• The Germans were barricaded off from the ruins. “They were not permitted to explore the moon.” There’s the moon again, painting the former Oz-like city of Dresden as something alien, inhuman, barren, lifeless

• Billy digs with a Maori and they strike upon a “corpse mine” with dozens and dozens of bodies in it: “They were sitting on benches. They were unmarked. So it goes.” The image of the “corpse mine” rivals that of the schoolgirls in the boiling water for the most haunting image of the bombings. That they were sitting on benches attests to their humanity and innocence.

• And here, finally, is the origin of “mustard gas and roses”: it was the scent of decaying bodies, a smell that has no doubt stayed with the author. It makes sense, too. Nothing brings back memories more potently than a smell. I still have a bottle of Adam Levine eau de toilette I wore in college when I went to go strike out at the bars. Sometimes when I go out I’ll spray it on and I’m instantly transported to those times. Smell is powerful, and triggering

• The Maori dies of dry heaving from the stench, so instead of sending down men to retrieve them they cremate them all with flamethrowers. An ironic fate, given the fire that consumed Dresden, and an undignified one (214)

• Derby is shot for stealing the tea pot. He’s not just looting the ruins, like we thought, but “plundering the catacombs.” I mentioned this in a previous discussion but it’s interesting to view Derby’s trial and execution in light of the widespread, indiscriminate slaughter surrounding the men. It’s the kind of order and process he would likely respect, but at the same time absurd in its senselessness. The fact that it was over such a simple luxury as tea makes it even sadder. Is Derby a tragic figure? (214)

• “And then, one morning, they got up to discover that the door was unlocked. World War Two in Europe was over.” Just like that—and now it’s back to suburbia.

• “One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-too-weet?” There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.

Wow. This was my third time reading Slaughterhouse-Five and I think it’s the first time I actually got it. It was a lot to take in, and some of the themes were difficult to track at first, but I think we ultimately landed on the novel’s main thrust. It’s an anti-war novel, yes, but more so a pro-human novel, one that declares, ultimately, the dignity of the sufferer, and a rebuke of those in power who cloak cold-blooded murder in language of patriotism, justice, and inevitability. It’s about memory, too. Confronting instead of suppressing our worst crimes and deepest traumas, so they don’t come back to haunt us.

“I was there,” says Billy Pilgrim to Rumfoord, the embodiment of American military might and memory. It’s the most profound act of defiance in the whole novel—even more so than Derby’s of Campbell—the assertion of one’s humanity, and the refusal to be just another faceless victim crushed under the wheels of history.

This concludes our discussion posts for Slaughterhouse-Five. There is obviously so much to talk about, and discussions can be started at any time and any one of the posts. I’m also going to be posting a shorter wrap-up post in which I will try to further break down what we found to be the central argument of the novel, and how it relates to our country today, so stay tuned.

Thanks to everybody who has participated and thank you for engaging with my work. It was challenging at first with all the time-jumps but I definitely emerged from this read with a much deeper appreciation of Vonnegut and his craft. Stay tuned for the wrap-up post, and while you’re at it make sure you vote for our next read, which kicks off next week.

I’m launching the new poll now, just to keep the transition to our next book seamless. The voting window will be longer than last time as well in order to give myself more time to shamelessly promote the book club between reads.

This poll will be open through Friday, 3/28 after which I’ll announce the winner and post the first reading assignment.

Two of the choices for the next read are our second place finishers from the last vote, The Underground Railroad and A Visit from the Goon Squad. The next two I made the executive decision about. I picked Brave New World for its relevance (forgive me, Huxley is British) and The Age of Innocence because it’s set in the Gilded Age which is a fascinating period in American history. But as always, you decide. Please check out descriptions below.

• The Underground Railroad (2016) – Colson Whitehead
  A harrowing reimagining of the real-life Underground Railroad as an actual subterranean train system. The novel follows Cora, an enslaved woman who escapes a brutal Georgia plantation and journeys through different states, each with its own twisted version of oppression.

• Brave New World (1932) – Aldous Huxley

  Set in a dystopian future where everything is controlled—work, relationships, even happiness. People are engineered into their roles, and society runs like a well-oiled machine. But not everyone fits the the mold.

• A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) – Jennifer Egan
  A genre-bending novel told through interconnected short stories spanning decades. It explores the rise and fall of people tied to the music industry, touching on themes of time, nostalgia, and the way life changes us.

• The Age of Innocence (1920) – Edith Wharton

  Set in elite New York society during the 1870s, where every glance, visit, and conversation follows strict unspoken rules. The story follows a well-respected man trying to do what’s expected of him—until someone unexpected challenges all of it.

If you’ve been reading along or waiting for our third read to start please spread the word. It’s difficult to get people to jump in mid-read, so the times when we’re rolling out a new book are the best opportunities that I have to grow the community. As always, thanks for participating. See you soon.

Initial thoughts

We hit on some heavy stuff in this chapter, and finally see Billy’s experience in Dresden in full. It’s the key to the whole narrative and it’s deeply tragic, but it sheds some much-needed light on whole story, and why Billy is the way that he is. Of course, it also leaves us with even more questions, so let’s get down to it.

Chapter 6

• This chapter begins with Billy being captivated by an “animal magnetism” emanating from his coat. There are two lumps in the lining of the coat, one shaped like a pea an one a tiny horseshoe. What do we think these items could be? (137)

• Billy receives a message from the lumps “carried by the radiations. He was told not to find out what the lumps were. He was advised to be content with knowing they could work miracles for him, provided he did not insist on learning their nature.” The use of “radiation” here makes me wonder if it’s a comment on the nuclear age and the potential for destruction that was unleashed by WWII.

• Disturbing story Lazzaro tells about the dog and the steak. I mean this guy is one sick fuck. Vivid characterization, though? What do we make of this?

• For one I feel like Lazzaro’s fantasy of being some sort of like mob boss might be his own way of coping with the war. Billy’s alternate reality is Kilgore Trout. Is Lazzaro’s The Godfather?

• The dog bite/clock springs steak parallels the mindset of the countries that fought WWII, a never-ending cycle of revenge and reprisals. Germany provoked the war just as the dog bit Lazzaro, but did the dog deserve a torturous death, did the people of Dresden?

• Is Lazzaro a symbol for how war desensitizes us to horrors, and how we justify those horrors in the name of revenge? (139)

• Lazzaro talks about enacting his revenge on the Blue Fairy Godmother and Billy, too: “He’ll settle down. A couple of years’ll go by…” before there’s a knock on his door and he’s shot.

• He tells Billy the same, calling him “kid”: “Nothing’s gonna happen for maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty years…” Lazzaro’s delayed revenge is a representation of the war coming back to haunt the men that fought in it. Something that may lie dormant for many years but something whose consequences they are unable to escape, whether those consequences me physical or mental. This opposes the solution to the war offered up throughout the novel, of moving back home, marrying, getting a job. The effects of war reach long past the date of its peace treaty. Judging how Billy’s daughter, Barbara, witnesses his mental deterioration, these effects can reach down into generations

• A Balkanized United States, divided so it “will never again be a threat to world peace.” Chicago, hydrogen-bombed. Is this reality? Or is this the logical result of the destruction Billy saw unleashed at Dresden? Is that why the US is a threat to world peace?

• Billy knows the day of his death: “will die, has died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976.”

• Billy on his own death: “If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I’ve said.” Billy’s words here moments before his supposed death strike at the tension at the heart of the novel, the conflict between the human view of time and that of the Tralfamadorians, of free will and fatalism. But which is true? Though Billy espouses the nonlinear nature of time as correct, his suggestion that death is not a terrible thing and should not be protested is opposite of everything Billy experienced in the war. The destroyed architecture, the tens of thousands killed. From our perspective and Billy’s, these are terrible, permanent things.

• It has to be like this, so there is no point in confronting it.

• Cinderella’s slippers as airmen boots painted silver. The Cinderella connection is worth mentioning, with Billy likened to her and the major to the godmother. But what does it mean? Is it meant to indicate a sort of unreality to the events of the war the men find themselves in? Does it represent fantasy as a means of escape? Or is it more the human tendency to find meaning to inject meaning where there is none?

• The glass slipper always fits. In Cinderella the shoes fits, the fantasy becomes reality, there is meaning, there is purpose, that comes from Cinderella’s magical night. But in war there is no resolution, the owner of the shoe is not found.

• Speaking of shoes, one of the most harrowing exhibits about WWII that I’ve witnessed was the in United States Holocaust Museum, which has a display containing piles and piles of victims’ shoes. An experience that defies words.

• English major’s advice on staying a live seems to mimic this denial state—polishing boots, brushing teeth, checking his posture. Yet he’s still a prisoner who hasn’t seen a tree or flower or woman or child in five years. He envies the troops going to Dresden, a beautiful city “where the life is.”

• Derby is elected as the head American, the only nominee, praised for his “maturity and long experience.” Derby promises to “make damn well sure that everybody got home safely”—sounding like an American officer. He’s met with disgust by Lazzaro. These two men have adopted two different concepts of war—one idealism, the other cynicism. Derby thinks wisdom and age and intelligence have value in the war, Lazzaro only violence

• The hobo in the grass, his boots taken, his bare feet blue and ivory. “It was alright, somehow, his being dead. So it goes.” The Tralfamadorian way to view everything: don’t question, don’t wonder, just accept. (148)

• Love the description of Dresden, the city around whose destruction the whole story turns: “The skyline was intricate and voluptuous and enchanted and absurd." It looked like a Sunday school picture of Heaven to Billy Pilgrim.” A holy, magnificent place destined to be destroyed

• Liked the bit of Vonnegut in the boxcar calling Dresden, Oz, and comparing it to the only other city he’d seen, Indianapolis. It hints at the absurdity of the war, that the second city a young American from the midwest would ever see would not be Chicago or New York but a city in Germany

• It’s a nice touch that the “grandfather” in the squad watching Billy was an architect, considering that is what Dresden was known for. It’s also interesting to view through the lens of age. The grandfather had a life before he was swept up into the war, he once contributed to the culture, he built. Billy, however, was a kid when he was swept up into the war. He was never given the chance to create, only to destroy (149)

• Also, the grandfather in the squad with his grandson: war as generational, inevitable

• That the Germans are first afraid of the “murderous American infantrymen,” they relieved to find “more crippled human beings, more fools like themselves.” A broader anti-war message here, one that points out that the soldiers shooting each other are often normal men, architects and schoolteachers, swept up into war by the forces of history

• I’m curious about the different afflictions assigned to the three Americans when being assed by the Germans. Billy is still in his Cinderella get-up, looking “at least sixty years old.” Lazzaro has a broken arm, “fizzing with rabies.” And Derby is “mournfully pregnant with patriotism and middle age and imaginary wisdom.”

• We touched on this above but it’s the way they are coping, war has demented each in his own way. Billy has given in to fantasy. Lazzaro was bitten by the rabid dog of war and now, naturally, is rabid himself. And Derby clings to the ideals of patriotism and wisdom and meaning in the cause

• “Pregnant” seems intentional here, too— do those like Derby return from the war and pass down those same ideals to their children, unable to actually come to terms with what they witnessed. It’s described as an affliction, the patriot gene passed down from generation to generation, expressed by the father in WWII,the son in Vietnam

• The people watching Billy in amusement, giving life to the city, will soon be dead

• Billy’s appearance is questioned by a surgeon on the street, but Billy is only confused. “Fate” costumed him. Again here is the rejection of free will, of choice

• Billy returns to the lumps in the coat—which he pulls out: A two-carat diamond and a partial denture. What could be the significance of these two items?

• Slaughterhouse-Five. A shelter for pigs about to be butchered, now a “home away from home” for American POWs. Men as pigs, men as things destined to be butchered.

Chapter 7

• The airplane crash referenced earlier, that Billy survives, is finally here—how does Billy know that the plane is going to crash? Is it more that he knows the flight will trigger an episode? Is it the act of being in a plane, since planes dropped the bombs?

• To the Tralfamadorians, “every creature and plant in the United States is a machine." They’re amused that Earthlings take offense to that. Here again is the central conflict of the novel, the Tralfamadorian perspective versus our own. Are we machines? Are we not responsible for our own actions? Or is that the only way that Billy can make sense of the the world?

• The barbershop quartet on the plane seems significant—they must have some connection to the war. But what?

• Billy witnessed the Pole being hanged three days after arriving at Dresden. A Polish farm laborer hanged for sleeping with a German woman. A reminder how war punishes otherwise good and natural relationships, and how a system that bombs and slaughters indiscriminately is simultaneously capable of cruel and methodical execution as well (155)

• Billy flashes back to Roland Weary banging his head against the tree, where Billy said, “You guys go on without me.” Where it all began, where he first became unstuck in time.

• The ski resort that the plane crashes into mirrors WWII, with German-speaking Austrian ski instructors. The young people skiing are almost described as alien, with enormous boots and goggles, “bombed out of their skulls with snow.” Billy thinks he is in a new phase of the war

• Billy is operated on by a surgeon in Boston. But did the plane crash actually happen? Or did Billy experience what might be his worst breakdown yet on the plane? (157)

• The true things Billy dreams of are “time travel”— his memories of the war

• Was struck by the description of Billy’s first night in the slaughterhouse for a couple of reasons. First, there is again the obvious linkage of the men with the slaughtered animals: they push the cart between empty pens for animals, its axles greased with dead animal fat

• Second is the description of Dresden, “blacked out because the bombers might come,” so that Billy is unable to witness the beauty of the lights blinking on one by one. Just a perfect embodiment of war, played out nightly across the globe during the years of the war. The suppression of light, the stifling of human flourishing and activity, how we are made to hide instead of shine. Just totally unnatural. Although I guess electric lights are technically unnatural, but you get the point

• Billy doesn’t get to witness the city lights reflected by the Elbe, either. Another small tragedy.

• Werner Gluck as a younger Billy, a distant cousin—suggests a connection between the men fighting each other. We’re all distant cousins.

• Gluck, Derby, and Billy are described as a “childish soldier”, “a poor old high school teacher,” and a “clown in toga and silver shoes”: Gluck as young, Derby as old, Billy as alien. Unlike the other two whose experience is still framed through their identities, Billy has become completely untethered from his (158)

• This dynamic is outlined again a page later. The war widow asks Gluck if he’s too young to be in the army, asks Derby if he’s too old, but asks Billy what he is supposed to be. Is there an okay age for somebody to be fighting in a war or is it all stupid?

• Billy, Derby, and Gluck pass through the communal shower where teenage girl refugees from Breslau, which has just been bombed, are showering. I hope these aren’t the same girls boiled alive in the water tower, but I’m guessing they most likely are. So it goes.

• That this is the first time Gluck and Billy have seen a naked woman drives home the message of The Children’s Crusade— war deprives young men only of their lives and their limbs and their minds but of simpler pleasures, too, like the all-American rite of reaching second-base in the backseat of a car

• The naked women is nothing new to Derby. He’s married and has sick body. He’s been around the block.

• It’s not just an interesting scene to view because of what it tells us about Billy and Gluck, but also what it says about the horrors of war. These schoolgirls were bombed once and will be bombed again. That they are witnessed in their nakedness seems to be almost biblical imagery. They’re free of sin, as innocent as Billy, yet will still meet a horrific end

• From showering in the steam —> to being boiled by it. War takes the good things like city lights and water and disfigures them into something dangerous

• “Spooning was a crime”: the spooning of syrup has to be linked to image of men spooning on the box cars, and Billy’s spooning of his wife in bed, and now linked to the spooning of the syrup in the factory. “Spooning” links together separate moments in time, but also a symbol of survival and companionship

• That the syrup the men sneakily spoons is for pregnant women furthers the theme of men as children, babies, out of place in a war

• Derby bursts into tears at having syrup—suggesting that maybe even his ideals of age and wisdom could just be a front. Has war reduced Derby, too, to a child?

Chapter 8

• We’ve seen Campbell, the American Nazi propagandist, earlier. He’s not recruiting American POWs for a German military unit, “The Free American Corps” to fight only on the Russian front. Is this commentary on the absurdity of it all, the nationalistic lines along which we fight and die for? Is it another hint at the post-war world in which the United States and the Soviet Union will clash?

• Campbell is the perfect caricature of the American Nazi, his cowboy boots adorned with both swastikas and stars, a shoulder patch of Lincoln. An American ahead of his time, really.

  He says: “Blue is for the American sky. White is for the race that pioneered the continent, drained the swamps and cleared the forests and built the roads and bridges. Red is for the blood of American patriots which was shed so gladly in years gone by.” (163) This man is all about draining the swamp, too! Ahead. Of. His. Time.

• Seriously, though, this seems like a good statement for The Great American Book Club to break down. What do we make of this?

  • Blue: It’s not the color of the American sky; it’s the color of the sky. Seems to suggest a self-centeredness, a righteousness about America and its place in the world. The sky is also in this novel a place of terror, from which from American planes rain down.

  • White: Some thinly-veiled white supremacy here, not to mention endorsement of Manifest Destiny and the destruction of Native Americans that followed. Sorry, but it’s true. No picture of Americans who “pioneered the continent” is accurate unless it also grapples with the destruction of Native Americans that followed. It’s the same logical disconnect as the one that allows the American generals to shrug at the bombs falling on Dresden, on Vietnam in the name of security and world peace. The color white represents a convenient history for Campbell, a pure and innocent image of what the country once was and should continue to be. The roads and bridges touted by Campbell—the progress—is all that matters because that is what defines American greatness. The devastation is just a side effect.

  • Red: The red represents the blood of American patriots. But why does it not represent the blood of Americans right now? If Campbell is so patriotic why is he working with the Nazis? I think his conflicting nature is intended to mirror America’s own morals, twisted by notions of war and patriotism that permitted it to commit terrible acts in the name of justice. I think it also stems in part from his disillusionment with the United States itself, as he outlined in his work, chiefly the lack of dignity given to the poor. Is Campbell simply a self-serving actor in an amoral world, meant to shine a light on American hypocrisy?

• Campbell says, “You’re going to have to fight the Communists sooner or later. Why not get it over with now?” A humorous take on the cyclical nature of war, the Cold War looming over the horizon, somewhat Tralfamadorian in how its depicted as an inevitability. (164) Was it an inevitability though? Was there a way out of WWII that didn’t result in another power struggle?

• “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.” War strips man of his individuality, his agency. (164)

• Notably, Derby becomes a character in his confrontation with Campbell. He calls him a snake, but then claims Campbell is less than a snake, because “he could help being was.” Thus Derby rejects the Tralfamadorian perspective, both in his own way as a “character” and with his words, in which he calls out the American Nazi as somebody who is responsible for his choices. Derby does not accept injustice as the way of the world but as a product of man.

• Perfect flourish by Vonnegut toward the bottom of hte page, where Derby’s poetic words about American ideals and fighting Nazism are immediately followed by air raid sirens. It grounds the moment, slows it down. Derby may have these romantic ideals figured out in his head, but these same ideals have inspired terrible things.

• The image of Trout managing newspaper delivery books and making sure they sell “the fucking Sunday edition, too” is hilarious (166)

• Trout looks like a prisoner of war, a “cracked messiah” that Bill felt like he knew from Dresden

• The money tree whose flowers are government bonds that attracted human beings who killed each other. I believe this is a critique of how the US government used the images of sacrifice and valor to fund the war, a sort of self-sustaining cycle

• The Gutless Wonder — One of Trout’s novel, about a “robot who had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured.” The robots, however, drop “jellied gasoline” on human beings from airplanes, a clear reference to the napalm of the Vietnam War. The robot appears human and mingles in society. Because he had no conscience, “nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable.” Seems to be a comment upon society’s tendency to humanize in some respects and dehumanize in others, whichever is most convenient. Halitosis is unforgivable to them. But the bombs dropped far away is totally fine. It’s more hypocrisy, more moral relativity, highlighting how we pick and choose what we protest against often in a way that will not shatter our worldview.

• Does Trout’s refusal to think of himself as a writer mirror Billy’s own warped identity? How so? (169)

• Love how Rosewater and Trout think that the other can’t right. Rosewater telling Trout he should be “President of the World”, childlike language. This is spelled out for us: Rosewater he writes like a fourteen-year-old, but was a captain in the war. The Children’s Crusade. Children fight wars, but does war also turn the men fighting back into children? Would seem to be the case with Derby and Rosewater. What do we make of this?

• Trout tells Maggie that God is listening, and if she’s done more bad things than good things, she’ll “burn forever and ever. The burning never stops hurting.” Is this another subtle reference to Dresden, in the burning, in the judgment coming from the sky as punishment for “bad things.” Is it another critique of moral absolutism?

• And here we have a barbershop quartet, again, whose “sour” chord induce a “psychosomatic response” in Billy

  • “He had supposed for years that he had no secrets from himself. Here was proof that he had a great big secret somewhere inside, and he could not imagine what it was.”

  • Is this the whole crux of the novel? The secret that’s linked to the barbershop quartet and the supposed plane crash on Sugarbush Mountain. Is the suppression of this secret the reason for Billy’s mental anguish? Is it the reason for Tralfamadore? What is the secret?

• Trout calls it a time window but describes a memory. The Tralfamadorian perspective obscures the truth.

• This scene of trauma is followed by Billy gifting Valencia the ring, the sapphire with the star in it. Valencia immediately takes the attention from Billy and I just know by her actions here that she would be an insufferable Instagram follow. But what is this meant to represent? The turning away from trauma. The giving into routine, to gifts and anniversaries and ceremony, the refusal to confront what ails us (174)

• Billy thinks about why the quarter effected him so much. For the first time he remembers, a significant change of language of time that is usually used. This points to this memory as being the most important of the novel, if the title didn’t give it away.

• The four guards in the meat locker with the POWs, take in the destruction “like a silent film of a barbershop quartet.” There is the connection, the link in time.

• “Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody in else in the neighborhood was dead. So it goes.” A once bustling and beautiful city changed forever by the bombs—turned to rubble, deprived of life, forever severed from the earth, like Billy, like the moon

  On Tralfamadore, the pregnant Montana Wildhack can’t send Billy to get ice cream because outside of the dome is cyanide (substitute for radiation), so she sends him to the fridge instead. A metaphor for war and destruction, and the desire for normalcy and family that overrides it all and allows us to live in ignorance: a refusal to view things as they are, even if pregnant in a zoo on an alien planet (179)

• The paragraph on 179 where Billy describes Dresden cuts to the core of his trauma: the destroyed buildings, the people consumed by flames, the four guards who “in their astonishment and grief, resembled a barbershop quartet”

• “It was like the moon.” A once stunning, beautiful place of human culture and life rendered alien, lifeless

• “Nobody talked much as the expedition crossed the moon. There was nothing appropriate to say.” There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Poo-too-weet.

• Survivors in the city are described as a flaw, a keen insight into the utter destruction and intent of the Americans

• The American planes strafe survivors—including the American POWs—in the aftermath of the bombing. Vonnegut describes that as an act “to hasten end of the war”, an absurd image considering the aftermath of the destruction. As if killing Billy or the people of Dresden would make any difference. It also sounds a lot like the argument that was used to justify the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and I think that’s intentional

• The innkeepers at the edge of the city “understood they were on the edge of the desert now”—a lifeless place—but they do open for business, cleaning the glass and winding the clocks. That there is “no great flow of refugees” from the city—the cost of total war

• The devastation finally confronted and acknowledged, the chapter ends with a familiar theme: hospitality

And that concludes chapters 6-8. We know how Billy’s life ends, and we now know exactly what happened in Dresden, but there are still some central questions to be answered. Mainly, will Billy ever be able to come to grips with the horrors he witnessed? Will he accept human agency and choice as reasons for these horrors or will that remain impossible for him? Is there anything intelligent to say about a massacre? Vonnegut is navigating the tension between determinism and free will masterfully, but I’m curious as to what his final conclusion will be, if there even is any. As always, please comment on whatever speaks to you and let me know what you think of any of my points which may very well be wrong.

This brings us to the end of the book, with only around 35 pages to go. Our final discussion post for Slaughterhouse-Five will be Tuesday, 3/25, followed by a wrap-up post in which we break down the central argument of the novel and how it relates to America.

Thanks for reading!

Chapter 5

• There is no plot, no structure, in Tralfamadorian books, just awe. This is another main argument of the book that is worth deconstructing, and I’m having a hard time understanding what to make of it. Billy is a victim of time, of linear thinking, of cause and effect. But the Tralfamadorians don’t see moment by moment, they see the big picture, and that is why they are sane. They don’t have notions of change, of plot and structure, only notions of beauty (88). Their books are still beautiful and surprising and deep, works of intention by the author, but fundamentally different from earthly books in that they don’t have a beginning or end, don’t have a moral, no cause or effect. Human books need an active protagonist, one who challenges an unjust system in the name of good, but to Tralfamadorians such depictions are in vain.

• Is this description of the Tralfamadorian books an attempt by Billy’s conscious to reckon with America’s place in history? Maybe the grand picture is good, but its moral arc is meaningless to those who burned in the fires of Dresden. Is the source of Billy’s discontent partly a result of his failure to only look at the good, only look at the big picture?

• Is that why he fears the Grand Canyon? Is it his inability to understand and appreciate the whole picture, the entire beauty of it? Is he a hostage to the moment? Or is it just that the Grand Canyon, with the Colorado River cutting through it, is the ultimate reminder of time and erosion?

• In the Carlsbad Caverns, when he was 12, Billy remembers the radium dial watch. Radium comes up a couple of times in these chapters, a reminder of another tragic result of WWII, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the ghastliness of radiation poisoning. It must be hard for survivors like Billy and Vonnegut to reckon with the legacy of even greater destruction ushered in by WWII

• The description of the English prisoners who are in the middle of the camp, surrounded by Russian prisoners, is a fascinating one. They had not seen a women or a child in over four years, nor had they seen a bird. Just a totally unnatural way to live. It’s also yet another example of a prison. They’re everywhere: the zoo on Tralfamadore, the bug in amber, Billy’s marriage, the hospital rooms and most importantly—memory (94)

• More insight into Edgar Derby’s character—he’s old and wise, and expected to rise in the ranks quickly because of this. “But here he was on the Czechoslovakian border at midnight.” (92) Age and wisdom mean nothing in the warped world of war.

• That the Englishmen sing well together is no surprise. As the families did in Hooverville in The Grapes of Wrath, singing seems to be a way to build community and reinforce bonds, a form of protest. American slaves sang on the plantations, too. The importance of singing is universal, its essence the opposite of imprisonment (94)

• The Englishmen are all attempted escapees. However, instead of being punished, like one might inspect, they were rewarded. They’re muscular and well-fed, “among the wealthiest people in Europe, in terms of food” because of a mistake the Red Cross made. We’ve seen this inversion of cause and effect before, in the WWII movie that Billy watched. The Traflamadorians argue that there is no cause and effect at all, and this lends credence to their beliefs. The Englishmen are in a better position than so many others in the war not because of their own successful escapes but because of a clerical error. It’s more illogic, more senselessness, more winners and losers not based on their choices but random events. (This can be connected to Vonnegut’s critique of the American poor in later pages).

• “They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun.” I hate to make another Call of Duty reference but it fits. For example in Black Ops II you can earn the coveted diamond camo by acquiring enough headshots because nothing is more stylish than that. Or, to take another example Fortnite skins, which is a good example but an abomination of a game

• One last point I’d like to make about the Englishmen is the hospitality that they extend to the American prisoners by preparing the feast. We determined that hospitality in the face of adversity was one of the key themes of The Grapes of Wrath, a form of solidarity and community and resistance, just like singing. Those same themes apply here

• Each tumbler was filled with warm milk. Milk was a symbol in Grapes, too, for birth and motherhood and sustenance. In Slaughterhouse-Five to represent more the infantilization of soldiers like Billy, a desire to return to an innocent, unthinking state

• The candles made from the fat of Holocaust victims is a morbid but necessary touch— reminding us that despite the rosy scene we’re still amidst a war. That human fat is made into soap and candles is horrifying, but calls to mind the animal products we use and consume daily without a second thought to the conditions that brought them into existence. It’s another link to the theme of man as cattle, man as expendable (96)

• Billy has no idea where he is at the banquet table with the soldiers. They watch them put on a play of Cinderella and he loses it at the line, “Goodness me, the clock has struck—Alackday, and fuck my luck.” What is it about this line that sets him off in particular? What connection can we make to the theme as a whole? (98)

• Billy ends up in the hospital. It’s clear his mental break is worsening. It seems to all have been started on the train. I also wonder if the description of the Englishmen, these strong, swashbuckling and well-fed men, is even accurate at all. Did they actually perform Cinderella? How delirious is Billy?

• The back-and-forth between the prison hospital bed and the psych ward bed presents an intriguing framing device and an obvious link between the two memories. These scenes are worth digging into.

• Billy winds up in the psych ward, 3 years after the war’s end. He had committed himself in his final year of optometry school: “Nobody else suspected he was going crazy.” Another indictment of the whole “return-to-normalcy” ethos, the idea that these men who had witnessed horrific things would be fine just coming home and diagnosing astigmatism for the rest of their lives. (100)

• The doctors blame Billy’s mental suffering on his father throwing him into the deep end of the pool, and taking him to the Grand Canyon, but not the war, never linking the trauma to Billy’s mental state. It’s the same as the humans inability to understand the Tralfamadorians perspective on time—just completely outside of perspective and comprehension of those who have no experienced it (100)

• Another argument could be made that Billy’s perception was widened by the war, his understanding of the depth of human depravity changed, yet he’s now expected to return to his hometown and live a banal, less perceptive life that fails to even acknowledge the questions he faced during the war. The war is over and that is that! No reckoning necessary! Now pop out a kid and get after that 9-5, even if Dresden is still in rubble.

• In the psych ward, a bird says to Billy “Poo-too-weet”—allegedly the last words in the book. Remember: there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Is it a reminder to Billy not to try to make sense of the experiences that left him and 29 others in a mental hospital?

• The man in the bed next to Billy in the psych ward is Eliot Rosewater, who introduces Billy to Kilgore Trout, a science fiction author. His work must be the inspiration behind Billy’s fantasies. (100)

• Rosewater finds life meaningless, too, like Billy. What is mental illness if not the inability to find purpose and meaning in life? Billy’s horror is Dresden; Rosewater’s is different, distinct, but just as destructive: he mistakenly shot a 14-year-old fireman.

• “So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help.” (101)

• Rosewater is the central character in another of Vonnegut’s novels, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

• I want to dig into this reference of about The Brothers Karamazov because it definitely matters but I haven’t read it. I want to, but if I took that up now, this book club would immediately fail because it’s a monster. It’s also about patricide, at least plot-wise, so I’m wondering the significance here. If anyone has read and and wants to take a stab at it, please do.

• I also will say I have gotten around to reading Tolstoy last year and everybody should read him. It’s incredible stuff, and accessible. I liked Anna Karenina more than War and Peace.

• Rosewater says to the psychiatrist: “I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living.” Billy and Rosewater are two men unable to live with the lies anymore, lies of good will and humanity and meaning (101)

• Billy covering his head while his mother visits him in the mental ward is a distressing image of this reversion to infancy (102)

• Rosewater is holding onto a book Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension: It’s about people whose mental diseases couldn’t be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension, and three-dimensional Earthling doctors couldn’t see those causes at all, or even imagine them. War. War war war war war. This is directly speaking on the experience of those who came back from the war with PTSD, as we already outlined above with the doctors’ diagnosis of Billy. This seems to be a main thrust of the novel—the war veteran as an outsider, as alien. (I typed these exact words in one of The Grapes of Wrath notes. It’s interesting that both books tell stories of men who became outsiders in their own countries, one through economic disenfranchisement and the other through war

• Derby is reading the The Red Badge of Courage by Billy’s bedside. More characterization of him as learned, thoughtful, someone who wants to understand war more deeply, an ironic portrayal given his execution over a teapot. Also an interesting contrast between Rosewater reading sci-fi and Derby reading fiction (105)

• Speaking of which, it’s revealed that Billy was a direct witness to Derby’s execution, done by a firing squad of 4 men, one of whom was given a blank cartridge. One of the reasons for the blank cartridge is that allows each shooter to maintain plausibly deniability that he was the one who fired the fatal shot

• Another invocation of “The Children’s Crusade”—this time uttered by the colonel who visits Billy and Derby at the bedside. “War is fought by babies….It’s the Children’s Crusade” (106)

• Loved the language of “artificial weather” used to describe the battle in which Derby was captured, the knives and needles that showered down—the language attaches a sort of unreality to the experience of war, once again casting it as something difficult if not impossible to comprehend

• Billy’s wife, Valencia, at his bedside, is described as a symptom of his disease. Even his proposal to her manifests as this out-of-body, mechanical experience, where he is just going through the motions. Is this more commentary on free will? Was Billy always bound to fall into such a relationship given his need for comfort and money? How many men returned from the war and got married without even yet coming to terms with their experience, starting off “the rest of their lives” on the wrong foot?

• Valencia offering Billy candy in the hospital is another portrayal of him as childlike, and she as motherly, doting…an affection that is maternal in nature rather than romantic (108)

• One of the Trout novels tells the story of an alien who visits earth to study “Why Christians found it so easy to be cruel.” We saw a clear-cut example of Christian cruelty in the treatment of Rosasharn in The Grapes of Wrath. Doesn’t seem like these American authors like Christianity all that much. Hmmm. Is it because it was Christians who dropped the bombs on Dresden? Is it because of the horrible thing God does to his people in the name of love and salvation?

• The whole crucifixion about lynching and nobodies and “A bum who has no connections” seems to be asserting the importance of everybody, ascribing a sort of divinity to everybody that contrasts religious teaching, but I’m not sure if I got that one totally right. It was a bit too satirical for me. (109)

• Talking about Billy’s diamond he got in the war that he gave to Valencia, Rosewater says that that’s what makes war attractive: “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.” Here too is a sort of grandmotherly language disguising the grim reality of war. Similar to Valencia with the candy at the bed side. (111)

• Billy is 44 when he is displayed at the zoo, a “memory” that is perhaps the height of his delusions. He is naked and on display in front of a crowd of Tralfamadorians. This again is that recurring theme of man as an animal, man as caged, taken to the extreme. That he is naked reminds us of the prison showers too and is certainly linked to that. But the image also calls to mind victims of the Holocaust who too were stripped and experimented on, treated as animals.

• “Most Tralfamadorians had no way of knowing that Billy’s body and face were not beautiful. They supposed he was a splendid specimen. This had a pleasant effect on Billy, who began to enjoy his body for the first time.” (113) Is this a comment on beauty standards for men?

• Billy admitting to the guide that he is as happy on Tralfamadore as he was on Earth is an indicator of his total detachment from the human experience, his complete alienation from it (114)

• FIVE SEXES ON TRALFAMADORE. Almost ripped my copy in two there holy shit. Unbelievable, these American authors. First Steinbeck with the Communism, now this. (114)

• Seriously, though, is that detail a rejection of black and white, good and evil, and instead an assertion of universality and community? It could be, in its own weird way.

• Time is incomprehensible to the Tralfamadorians, just as their concept of reproduction is to Billy, just as mental illness is incomprehensible to the doctors (115)

• The whole bit on page 115 about looking at a mountain range and Billy having his head encased in a sphere, also while strapped to a flatcar on rails, seems to be another critique of man’s limited perception, only able to experience time sequentially

• It also calls attention to Billy’s trauma, some of which is certainly a result of his harrowing experience in the box car, where his visage was also limited by the ventilator. Vonnegut comments that whatever Billy witnessed through the pipe, “He had no choice but to say to himself, ‘That’s life.’ It sounds a lot like The Allegory of the Cave, speaking to man’s inability to see beyond his own experience. But was the portrait of life Billy had through the box car door necessarily wrong? It also seems to symbolize that detachment, that shrug, that reluctance to point blame and to assert that the world should be a different, better place.

• “I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who were proud of fighting pure evil at the time.” The most shocking, vivid description we’ve gotten yet of the horrors witnessed by Billy during the Dresden bombing, and a strong insight into the source of his mental anguish. Pure evil in the name of fighting pure evil. A strong indictment of war, perhaps the crux of the whole novel. (116)

• The Tralfamadorians tell Billy the world ends when one of their test pilots presses a button “and the whole universe disappears.” It can’t be prevented, they say, because “the moment is structured that way.” The nuclear football is a button designed to be pushed. The fate of the world is a product of the structures and the systems we build. Mutually assured destruction sure sounds nice and rosy in theory, but combat systems and weapons are built only for destruction. This seems to be yet another comment on the terrible legacy of WWII, the existential dread and fear that defined the nuclear age. To build these weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent seems like less of a good option than, I don’t know, not having them at all. (117)

• The Tralfamadorians have had wars in their past, but can’t do anything about them, so they “spend eternity looking at pleasant moments.” A clear parallel to Billy, and the American psyche at large, that prefers to ignore rather than confront past horrors. The clear and obvious example is the bombing of Dresden. But Americans massacred civilians in Vietnam, too. They treated captives like animals during the Iraq War (nakedness and all). All in the name of fighting evil.

• The narrative shifts to yet another scene in a bed, the night of Billy’s wedding to Valencia. Vonnegut comments that one result of the night would be the conception of Billy’s son, Robert Pilgrim, who will become a Green Beret. Interesting detail here that while Billy was a chaplain his son will meet the heigh of military skill (118)

• “I never thought anybody would marry me,” says Valencia, a sad bit of characterization, considering Billy thinks it was a mistake. In her own way Valencia is also a casualty of the war, her own life’s trajectory distorted by a veteran’s failure to assimilate because of his trauma

• Billy knows that his marriage to Valencia will be “bearable all the way,” but I wonder if this is true or just another example of his “time-travel” or omniscience obscuring the truth. Earlier he described her as a symptom of his disease. We know that he cheats on her. So I question what the true nature of their relationship is (120)

• Their relationships’s contrast with that of the beautiful honeymooners is unmistakable. Seems to be speaking of the wealthy and their romantic notions, “loving each other and their dreams and the lake,” the total opposite of the pairing of Billy and Valencia which is rooted in convenience and optometry. It might be a reach, but the couples’ connections with Newport, RI and JFK seems to suggest a link to the ruling class as well, those (like Kennedy) who sent “children” to war in the name of freedom. The privileged class can enjoy such romantic notions because their perception of reality has not been shattered. They’re separated, removed from suffering in a way that Billy Pilgrim was not.

• Valencia trying to talk to Billy about the war while her baby takes on attributes of Green Beret inside of her contributes to the idea of war as timeless, generational, inevitable, innate, natural

• “It would sound like a dream,” Billy responds to her inquiries. More detachment, more illustration of his experience in the war as unreal, severed from normal human experience, and, again, impossible to understand for somebody who did not experience it (121)

• Valencia is also “proud” that Billy was a soldier, a part of his history that Billy feels no pride in himself. She, like many Americans, clings to notions of patriotism and duty, while having no understanding of the reality on the ground, among the bombs and the rubble

• We learn during this exchange that Billy buried Derby after his execution, and his connection with Derby seems to be becoming an even bigger piece of the puzzle, another terrible moment that has stayed with him and impacted him

• “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” That’s the epitaph that both Billy and the author decide would be fitting for their tombstones. It’s about the human capacity for denial, Tralfamadorian in its perspective. Like the aliens, like his country, like his fellow soldiers, Billy exists in a society that insists on moving forward, on focusing on the good, on never reckoning with its crimes and horrors. Is his mental illness the result of this disconnect, between what he knows to be true and how he is expected to live?

• What do we think of the words of the German propagandist on pages 128-130? I’ve seen this circulated online in screenshots a lot recently: “It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor.” Not to agree with a Nazi propagandist, but I’d argue that it’s an accurate sentiment. He goes on to discuss the self-loathing amongst American poor, the myth of the ease of making money, the “poor that don’t love another because they do not love themselves”—basically another description of the mantra of “rugged individual” we saw in Steinbeck’s work. The human (or American) tendency to place a man’s misfortune solely at his own feet instead of outside forces is baked into our national consciousness, a worldview that allows us to deny responsibility for his condition, much like the soldier in the firing squad tells himself he fired the blank. BOOM.

• This is an obvious attack on the mantra of the American Dream and American opportunity, but I will say it feels a little bit out of left field. Would love thoughts on the propagandist Howard W. Campbell, Jr. and his work. His memoirs make up another of Vonnegut’s novels, Mother Night

• The jump back to 1968 with Billy writing to the newspapers and distressing his daughter, Barbara. “Oh my God, you are a child,” she says about him sitting in the cold. Billy was a child during the war but reverts to a child as his memories take over. Or was he a child this whole time?

• Is Billy’s tryst with Montana Wildhack a distorted memory of his one-time infidelity, a manifestation of that guilt? He doesn’t really seem to feel guilty

• Also, Vonnegut just dropping that Billy has a hog had me dying. But maybe it’s also another reinforcement of the theme, a violation of expectations—in this backward world even a weakling can be packing

• Love how he compared the relief of Montana’s body to the architecture of Dresden. Amazing detail and possibly a window into how Billy is tortured by loss and the past even in the most visceral moment (133)

• At the end of the chapter, Billy tells the young dental patient whose father killed in Vietnam that he is still alive and that he would see him again. I guess the main question I have is this: Does Billy believe this? Are the teachings of the Tralfamadorians true? Or is this perspective of time and moments just a manifestation of Billy’s refusal to come to grips with loss: the beautiful architecture of Dresden, of the old and wise Edgar Derby, of his now-grown children, of his own childlike innocence?

That concludes our discussion points for chapters 4 and 5. It was a lot, but we can see the story coming together and the main themes emerging pretty clearly despite the story’s fragmented nature. We have the execution of Edgar Derby, the vengeful machinations of Paul Lazzaro, and the bombing of Dresden all hanging over the narrative, coalescing slowly, piece by piece. But we still don’t know what all this will mean for Billy in the end.

Will he find peace? Will he find meaning? Will he turn his gaze to only the good and beautiful and live in ignorance? Will he confront the past, whatever that may mean, or will he succumb to its tragedy?

Our next discussion post will be on Monday, March 16 for chapters 6, 7, and 8. It’s about 50 pages, and should bring us close to the end of the story. Thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll see you all in the comments.

Steve

Initial thoughts

In these chapters things get weirder, and sadder. Billy is unwell. It was apparent early on but the scope of his disconnection from reality is revealed even more starkly in these pages. I think its best to view his encounter with the Tralfamadorians through the lens of dissociation—the hallucinations of a person unable to come to grips with the horrors he witnessed. That’s the frame through which we should examine these couple of chapters, rather than the frame of science fiction.

Chapter 4

• I’m curious about the pairs of colors that appear repeatedly in these first few pages. The wedding tent, orange and black, are juxtaposed clearly with the color of Billy’s hands, which are ivory and blue. We later learn that Billy’s hands were the color of ivory and blue on the the railcar as he was transported to prison. It’s one of many details that link together his memories, like dogs barking and taking a leak. (72)

• I was struck by Billy and his wife in the bed (the first of many scenes this chapter in a bed), with Billy thinking about how she no longer had ovaries or a uterus, a sad and uncomfortable revelation. That her surgeon was none other than one of Billy’s Partner in the new Holiday Inn is another twisted mix of the tragic with the banal that Vonnegut so excels in, that highlights the absurdity of life itself. A man using money made removing a woman’s ovaries to invest in hotels that provide all-American families with comfort and memories is an interesting take on the American Dream, to say the least.

• Billy knows he’s about to be kidnapped on the night of his daughter’s wedding. I wonder if this means he knows when he’s about to have a mental break, or is just another indicator of his jumbled memory

• The empty, moonlight bedrooms of Billy’s two children is an evocative image, one marking the steady march of time. Billy’s children are “children no more. They were gone forever.” Youth and innocence are casualties of not just war but time. The permanence of Billy’s daughter’s passage into adulthood is profound to Billy—and here we feel for him as a father more than anything else.

• “Billy was guided by dread and the lack of dread.” This is another example of Billy inhabiting two different states at the same time. (73)

• Mustard gas and roses—not sure if I traced this the first time when it was first linked to the man the author talks to on the phone. The combination of a chemical agent with the symbol of love is pointed, suggesting a clash of two irreconcilable concepts—chemical warfare and love

• Soft drink with no nourishment — another critique of capitalism? Steinbeck was basically like rich get too rich and we get the guns while Vonnegut’s seems to be more a a critique of us as consumers, more about the emptiness of it all

• “He had an hour to kill before the saucer came.” Perfect.

• I wonder if the war film that “played backward” was the trigger for Billy’s abduction

• The playing of the film backward is a clever device. It doesn’t just play into the idea of time not being sequential. It also plays into an image of good will and even ends with what could be viewed as a symbolic assertion of peace. American bombs that remove the bombs from German cities instead of dropping them, German planes that suck the bullets from American fighters. It’s the turning back of time, the changing of the past, and it’s only possible with a remote

• That the reversed film ends not just with the planes landing again but with an image of disarmament, of sending the bombs home and away from Europe—almost seems to be an indictment not just of war but also nuclear proliferation (74)

• American fliers turning back into high school kids—not just the turning back of time but the giving back of youth and innocence

• “It became imperative that he took hold of the bottom rung of the ladder.” I like this image that of a ship taking men off to war. The use of “imperative” has connotations of duty and order and inevitability. The imperative that had a generation of men climbed up onto a transport ship that would take them across the Atlantic to fight a war

• Why me? Another central question in the novel. He’s asking this of the Tralfamadorians, who could also be examined as godlike figures. It’s an old, existential question

• Billy is linked to the paperweight on his desk with ladybugs in it, “trapped in the amber of this moment” like the bugs, according to the Tralfamadorians. Is Billy trapped in amber, too? Is it futile to question why is living the life he lives, with all its senselessness? The Tralfamadorians seem to think so.

• I’m wondering if the hobo’s commentary to Billy about how it could be worse is a sort of meta-commentary upon Vonnegut’s story itself, one intended to reflect the many WWII victims who suffered far crueler fates than him. But that’s the point, it’s all relative. Billy’s mental illness is just as severe.

• That Billy is lashing out in his sleep to the point where nobody wants to sleep near him suggests that he was already breaking during the train ride. That he sleeps standing up or doesn’t sleep at all in the car could be one of the early sources of his trauma. It’s also interesting to think about considering the amount of scenes that take place in beds (79)

• Roland Weary dies—just not the hero’s death he imagined. He dies of gangrene in his feet, another casualty of the war, not from a glamorous bullet but from a bully who took his shoes, linked to a the schoolyard to the bitter end, waxing poetic about the Three Musketeers and sending messages to his family. Like a child, too, he wants revenge, and blames Billy Pilgrim for his death.

• Billy gets a civilian coat instead of his soldiers. He survives the bombing of Dresden which killed civilians. He is not warlike. He does not even carry a weapon. He is always linked to a civilian because he is one, at least in spirit.

• The prisoners are forced to take off their clothes, just like Billy is in Tralfamadore. Prisoners of war of course were not the only ones to be deloused in showers, either. Victims of the Holocaust received the same treatment, not to mention a second, crueler form, the evil that looms over the text but is not outright stated. This image nakedness speaks to the dehumanization of man, the turning of into cattle which wind up in the slaughterhouse

• I think Billy’s display in the zoo on Tralfamadore can be directly linked with his experience here in the prison, where he is mocked for his weak appearance, and treated as a specimen. This contrasts directly the perception of him on Tralfamadore where he’s actually considered quite sexy

• Edgar Derby. He’s the one who we know steals a teapot and is executed, a different kind of victim than Billy Pilgrim and the civilians but a victim nonetheless. He’s a teacher, like Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan, and he’s also described as old but also a DILF. I feel like I trust him. He is so old that his son is fighting in the Pacific— another indictment about how war relies on the relentless churning of youth into canon fodder. Imagine if instead of having a son screwing off in college he was fighting in Iwo Jima instead. And you were fighting in France. And imagine being the mother and wife left behind while this was happening and just like, doing dishes, while this is all happening. Bet that underage drinking citation doesn’t seem so scary now. Just a totally different planet that Vonnegut is touching upon here from today, and it was the reality that once existed. Derby is old, for war. It’s the Children’s Crusade, after all.

• I like the contrast of Derby, one of the best bodies, with Lazzaro, one of the worst. Lazzaro is small and nasty with scars and boils. He heard Weary in the box car and decides to do his bidding. This sets him up as a direct antagonist to Billy, so I wonder if that means Derby will be a friend (84)

• The cooing of the German captors is linked also with infancy, with motherhood. One of the biggest tropes in war films is the fatally wounded soldier screaming for his mother. Does he scream because he is still a kid, or because he longs to be one?

• The chapter ends with the revelation that to the Tralfamadorians only know the concept of free will to exist on Earth. If we view the aliens and their knowledge as manifestations of Billy’s consciousness, then what does this mean? Billy seems to embody the opposite of free will, instead simply being a cog in the machinery of history. But is this the truth?

The discussion on chapter 5 continues here.

Initial thoughts

We have a lot going on in these chapters. The first chapter begins from first-person, and depicts the narrator’s struggles with turning his experience of the bombing of Dresden into a book. The second and third chapters insert us into this story, tracing the story of Billy Pilgrim as he becomes a chaplain in WWII and is ultimately captured, interspersed with various moments from his life as he becomes “unstuck in time”, all thanks to the so-called Tralfamadorians. It’s a lot to take in, but it’s worth breaking down as best as we can. Let’s do it.

Chapter 1

• “There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground.” The scene is immediately set to explore what happened at Dresden—a horror so vast that its buildings were left flattened and bones seeped into the earth. Given the title, its safe to assume that the horror of what happened at Dresden will inform the whole novel

• The prisoners of war being locked up in the slaughterhouse is a symbolic choice. They’re meat for the grinder, no better than animals. We saw this same men-as-animals sentiment in The Grapes of Wrath, though the context was different

• “But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.” A marvelous, macabre flourish by Vonnegut. The way he juxtaposes two deeply human needs— a home and education—with the incineration of his mother is shocking but intentional. How can something so grotesque give way to normalcy? Is that the power of time?

• So it goes. We’re going to see this again and again. It seems to represent one big shrug, a powerlessness, a resignation to one’s fate, even in death

• The book about Dresden—he thought his experience of it would define him, but he can’t just write what he had witnessed in spite of its inherent significance. This suggests the protagonist might still be coming to terms with what he had seen, that he is still traumatized by his memories

• Liked this description of war as glacial, unstoppable, a force of nature (3)

• I have to say I agree with the protagonist’s instincts about his book ending with the execution of an American, Edgar Derby, by firing squad for taking a tea pot from the ruins. It’s an unmistakable contrast to the indiscriminate slaughter of the bombing campaign. Its deliberate and legal nature calls into relief the bombs falling from American planes that killed tens of thousands of people with far less dignified deaths, none of whom stole teapots

• One American taken diamonds and rubies from dead people in the cellars of Dresden…so it goes. (6) The plunders of war, just another inevitability

• The narrator describes the war ending: “Then we were sent home, and I married a pretty girl who was covered with baby fat, too. And we had babies.” This notion of “babies” and children is introduced here and will be developed much further in the coming pages

• The narrator talks about his education, saying that at the time “they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody” because, no surprise, universities were woke even during the Cold War. Unreal. When viewed through the lens of war, however, this is absolutely true

• You never wrote a story with a villain in it, the narrator’s father tells him (8). My guess here is that he never had a villain because everybody was the villain. The worst atrocity he witnessed during the war was perpetrated by American planes. How can he point fingers when the whole of humanity took part in the destruction of WWII?

• I liked how when the narrator relayed the story about the man crushed by the elevator, he was pressured to get a statement from the man’s widow. It reflects the media environment today, where an individual’s grief is viewed only through the lens of content and clicks instead of compassion (9)

• The narrator claims the Dresden bombing was “worse” than Hiroshima, and that is untrue at least in terms of casualties (10). But if he’s not referring to just deaths, what does he mean? Worse how? I’m not sure what to make of this

• When trying to tell the University of Chicago professor what he had witnessed at Dresden, the narrator relays that the professor “told me about the concentration camps, and about how the Germans had made soap and candles out of the fat of dead Jews and so on” (10). I think this is one of the most important anecdotes so far. A clear example of a “learned” man who dismisses the narrator’s experience and deflects any implication of American atrocity. Does the reality of the Holocaust justify the flattening of a German city and the killing of 25000 people?

• Really appreciated the image of carp in the Hudson river “as big as atomic submarines.” (12) It’s an evocative image but also one that suggests that the war—and the subsequent prospect of nuclear annihilation that it ushered in—hangs over the narrator’s life, even in moments so perfect as spending time by the river with his daughter

• When he gets to O'Hare’s house, he pictures them reminiscing “in a paneled room,” where two old soldiers can drink and talk” (13). Instead, O’Hare’s wife sets them up at the kitchen table under blinding white lights, which he likens to an operating table. This is more again a subversion of the war nostalgia and myth-making first seen in the author’s inability to write about what he had witnessed. It suggests that the shared experience of the two men is not, in fact, something to be reminisced over, but is instead something malignant that should be extracted

• O’Hare’s wife, Mary, strongly criticizes his book, bemoaning how when it’s made into a movie he’ll be played by Frank Sinatra or John Wayne, and this Hollywood makeover will disguise the fact that the men who fought were barely adults

• War is encouraged by books and movies, Mary says. And that seems to be the case today. This calls to mind American Sniper (2014), with Bradley Cooper as the star. I worked in the movie theater in those days and never saw the auditorium so packed, even the front corner seat was full. All to celebrate a guy who shot people in the head. To me at the time that was the heigh of patriotism.

• The Children’s Crusade as the secondary title functions perfectly, especially considering the futility and needless death of the actual Children’s Crusade that Vonnegut describes

• The description of the Prussian siege of Dresden in 1760 further informs our understanding of the novel. It describes the burning and eventual collapse of the the Kreuzkirche tower as it succumbs to cannon fire, and contrasts it with the fate of the Frauenkirche, which withstood the bombs. The Frauenkirche would be destroyed during the bombing in WWII, of course

• Liked this quote: “We went to the New York World’s Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors.” A light critique of the forces governing American society at that time. I wonder if we’ll see more of this. (18)

• Poo-tee-weet. That’s all there is to say about a massacre, because “there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre” (19). Is that why Billy can’t write his book, and why he and O’Hare can barely recall the war? Was it all just too senseless?

• “No art is possible without a dance with death.” (21) Does the best art grow out of hardship and trauma?

• The allusion to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah at the end of the chapter whose “great destruction” parallels that of Dresden. Their downfall is brought about by divine judgment as opposed to cold wartime calculation

• “And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.” Is it human nature to always look back? Must we?

• (Side not, the “looking taboo” trope is one of my favorite in all of storytelling, my favorite example of such being the Broadway show Hadestown, which retells the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice). IYKYK.

• And Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time.

Chapter 2

• We shift from the first person to the third person, now in the midst of the narrator’s finished war book and the story of Billy Pilgrim. It begins just as he tells us it would: “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”

• Billy’s father dies in a hunting accident, Billy is the only survivor of a plane crash, and his wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning in a hospital of all places. All of these are met with “So it goes.” Suggesting resignation, the futility of questioning such tragedies

• Billy’s status as an optometrist has to say something about perception, and what we’re willing to see. Do you think his occupation is intended to symbolize something about him?

• The introduction of Tralfamadore complicates things a bit, to say the least. Their teachings, in which past, present, and future all muddle together, reject time as linear

• “So it goes” is revealed to be what the Tralfamadorians say about the dead. The past is alive to them.

• Something tells me Billy and his Tralfamadore stories would be a huge hit on Rogan

• Billy as a chaplain is an interesting choice, “powerless to harm the enemy or to help his friends.” In other words, he has no place in war. Yet at war he is, not with a rifle but with the word of God and a portable altar manufactured by a vacuum company. It’s all so twisted, but that seems to be the point

• Love the introduction of Roland Weary, who I first thought was a grizzled vet until it was revealed that he was only eighteen. That his whole gun crew was killed by a Tiger tank except calls to mind Billy’s future status as the only survivor of a plane crash. Are these men connected in some deeper way?

• Weary’s obsession with torture is strange but it’s definitely his dad’s fault, who had a collection of all sorts of fucked up shit. We all had that kid in school who was just a little too enthusiastic about knives

• Still, Weary, at only 18, is still innocent. He probably played too much Call of Duty and one day might have to realize that it takes more than just right stick to knife somebody

• That the description of an especially nasty triangular blade is followed up Billy’s own memories of gore—a particularly gruesome crucifix that hung on the wall of his childhood bedroom—is a bold revelation. The crucifix is oppressive to Billy, assaulting him as a child and attacking his innocence, himself a victim of the cross just as the child crusaders were

• “Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops,” the narrator says of Billy’s mom and her crucifix (39). What do you think he means by this?

• About Weary on page 41: “His vision of the outside world was limited to what he could see through a narrow slit between the rim of his helmet and his scarf from home, which concealed his baby face…” Weary’s vision is restricted by both his military training and his life at home. His vision is narrowed, seen only through these two strands of life. In other words, he’s a baby, and he has no concept of war.

• Weary’s story of the “The Three Musketeers” further displays his childlike fantasy

• Billy’s mom whispering to Billy while sick: “How did I get so old?” This seems to be speaking to an anxiety evident in the text surrounding aging and the passing of time, a perspective that opposes that of the Tralfamadorians who are existing on a different plane

• I feel like the detail of Billy cheating with his wife at a New Year’s Party was somewhat glossed over, at least for now. I wonder if it will be a source of conflict for Billy in the future

• Billy going by “Billy” instead of “William” for business reasons, but also because there weren’t “any other grown Billys around” contributes to the image of Billy as childlike. The night that he cheats he struggles to find the steering wheel but was in the backseat and not the driver’s seat adds to this imagery of a powerless child, unable to drive

• Weary does come back for Billy when he slips out of time (47). For all his flaws, that is undeniably soldierly

• The scouts ditching Billy and Weary was a cold touch. Weary can’t escape the schoolyard (49)

• And it is the schoolyard the Germans stumble into when they find Weary beating Billy’s ass, and Billy, laughing, still stuck somewhere else in time (51)

Chapter 3

• I appreciated the subversion of what was thought to be a fierce, barking military dog into a German shepherd borrowed from a nearby farm, who “had never been to war before” and “had no idea which game was being played,” much like how Weary thinks he is running quads in Warzone. Another example of an innocent being swept up into history.

• The golden calvary boots worn by the corporal, were taken from a dead Hungarian colonel. “So it goes,” says Vonnegut. It’s just another part of war, just like the looting of diamonds and rubies.

• Adam and Eve in the corporal boots, and the fifteen-year-old German soldier, “beautiful as Eve” further contributes to this development of innocence, but is it one of only momentary innocence, of one destined to be destroyed?

• The bullet proof Bible, sheathed in steel and protecting the heart, is a provocative image. That a Bible must be sheathed in steel might indicate that it has no place in a warzone, yet in a warzone it is, its presence incongruous with the bloodshed it bears witness to, a naive insertion of religion and meaning into a senseless and violent place

• In the stone cottage, where Billy is placed with other POWs: “Nobody talked. Nobody had any good war stories to tell.” (55) This ties back to what is likely a main theme: the insufficiency of words in the face of devastation, the impossibility of making sense of it

• The rabbi chaplain shot through the hand with which he once blessed crowds sure seems to be making a statement (55)

• During Billy’s time jump to his office where he surveys the parking lot, he asks the same question his mother did: Where have all the years gone?

• The siren going off and scaring Billy, who is “expecting World War Three at any time,” (hey, us too!) is the first revelation that he may be more damaged by his experiences in the war than he realizes

• On page 59, Billy drives through Ilium’s “black ghetto” which he likens to war. The sidewalks, crushed by National Gard tanks, remind him of the destroyed towns in Europe. The town where Billy grew up “looked like Dresden after it was fire-bombed,” the neighborhood surrounding his house now empty. Why does Vonnegut make the link from Dresden’s destruction to the decline of American communities?

• The description of the major giving the speech at the Lions Club mirrors the American attachment to the bomb and its indiscriminate destruction, exhibited in Dresden and now Vietnam, which the major favors bombing back into the Stone Age (60). It is a similar sentiment to that of the professor who brushed off the author’s experience at Dresden because the Holocaust was so depraved. These evils—Nazism, Communism—are used by Americans as blank checks for their own unchecked brutality

• On page 60: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…” I’m glad Billy found solace in this quote, but this has shitty rib tattoo written all over it

• It’s compelling that Billy only weeps in front of the doctor. (61) It suggests a disconnect with his own feelings and an unresolved trauma that’s still buried deep inside. This image called to mind the “operating table” at which the narrator and O’Hare attempted to reminisce about the war. Their memories are not stories but a sickness.

• The cripples selling magazines for a rich guy in a Buick seems to be an intentional perversion of the American ethos of hard work, once epitomized by the door-to-door salesman. That he is scam artist, working for a richer man, and may have been injured in one of the wars seems to pervert this image even further. There seems to be some commentary on the American dream here, but what?

• Colonel Wild Bob, like Weary, is a man sustained by his delusions. He lost 4500 men, “a lot of them children.” (66) He tells of a great victory, and dreams of a regimental reunion, and dies of pneumonia a few pages later. So it goes.

• While Billy shares the railroad car with privates “at the end of childhood” there is one hobo there whose perspective is different, who thinks it isn’t so bad, considering what he’s lived through. I’d like to trace this theme of perspective and how it informs our opinion on right and wrong.

• On eating in the rail cars: “When the food came in, the hum beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.” (70) Are we sure we aren’t reading Steinbeck?

• We end just as this really begins to go off the rails, with Billy time traveling to the day in 1967, when he was abducted by Tralfamadorians. Buckle up.

That ends our notes on chapters 1-3 of Slaughterhouse Five. I said this before with Steinbeck, but this is just the stuff I pulled out on my first read, and I’m sure I missed a lot. Vonnegut’s style alongside the chronology made it even harder to completely take in, but I did my best to try to outline where I think this might be going. Right now we seem to be tracing themes of childhood and innocence, unspeakable destruction, perception, and how trauma can distort it. We are also going to space.

If you’re new to the The Great American Book Club, please make sure you drop some knowledge in the comments below. You can go off any of my points or say something totally different—that’s totally up to you. We’re not seeing a ton of specific commentary on the American experience yet, but it’s definitely there, bubbling under the surface, specifically with regard to the terror that was rained down on Dresden by American bombers, but we’re also seeing some quieter critiques too, about life at home after the war and how it can unfold.

Our next reading assignment will be for chapters 4-5, and will be posted on Sunday March 9. This is about 70 pages.

See you guys in the comments.

The results are in, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five will be our next read. This 1969 novel tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier in WWII, who survives the firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war. It features aliens, time travel, and satirical and post-modern elements that make it a sharp departure from The Grapes of Wrath, but it’s a meditation on American meaning and identity all the same.

Our first discussion post for Slaughterhouse-Five will be for chapters 1-3 (around 70 pages) and will be posted on Tuesday, March 4. This should give everybody the necessary time to obtain the book and get the reading started. I won’t burden you with any specific prompts but keep in mind our overarching goal of understanding the American Dream and unpacking the American experience. With that being said, all observations are welcome, whether they be about character or plot or theme or something completely different.

If you didn’t vote for Slaughterhouse-Five, please consider still reading! It’s a shorter book with a ton to unpack and it’s also just a lot of fun. I’m aiming for around 2-3 weeks for this read, after which we will vote for our next title. Our second place finishers, The Underground Railroad and A Visit from the Goon Squad, will be back on that ballot! The results for this read’s poll are below.

Thanks again for everybody who signed up over the past few weeks, whether you’re an old friend or an internet stranger. The Great American Book Club was conceived as a community and public forum first and foremost, and that is why your participation is essential.

Also, if you have anybody in your life who you think might be interested, please let them know about The Great American Book Club. It’s difficult to promote the club when we are mid-read, so these times between books are the best chances I have to grow the community.

That’s all for now. Let’s get ready for some Vonnegut. See you Tuesday!