IB English SL A2 written task
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The document reflects on how Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse-Five' influenced the author's views on war and time through the character Billy Pilgrim, who grapples with concepts of free will and a non-linear perception of time. The author creates imagined letters from Billy, exploring the philosophy of the Tralfamadorians and critiquing societal views on war and heroism, all while emulating Vonnegut's ironic and non-causal narrative style. The piece highlights the challenges of writing without traditional cause and effect while conveying a message about the destructive nature of war.
IB English SL A2 written task
- 1. Writing rationales: Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five inspired me and forced me to reconsider many of my personal ideas about war and time. Billy Pilgrim, the main character of the novel is an indifferent person who doesn’t have a free will. Billy is always seen by the other soldiers during the war as an idiot. However, Vonnegut shows us another side of Billy that the others were blinded to see. Billy wanted to change the world, to give people another way of looking to time and to be able to accept that there is no free will. His thoughts were expressed through radio programs that he attended and through the letters he was sending to a newspaper called News Leader. The book covers the contents of the first and the second letters. I developed this idea and wrote two extracts from two more letters that I imagined Billy wrote. I expressed my understanding of time and war through the personality of Billy. My ideas are inspired from Billy’s thoughts. In the first letter, Billy introduces himself and talks about being unstuck in time. He also talks about being kidnapped by a flying saucer and taken to a planet called Tralfamadore. He describes the creatures he met there and talks about their ability to see in four dimensions. Those creatures called Tralfamadorians. They have interesting things to teach Earthlings especially about time. Billy promises to tell more about them in his next letters. Billy’s daughter thinks that her father is losing his mind, while Billy insists on his new perspective of time. He believes in himself no matter what the others think. The second letter describes the view of time by Tralfamadorians and indicates that the past, the present and the future are already determined and that there is no free will. In my written piece I wrote the third and the fourth letter. The tone of my piece is ironic and critical and sometimes indifferent which is similar to the tone dominant in Slaughterhouse Five. There is no crisis, no cause and effect. It is just a story that moves from an idea to another. I tried to imitate the writer and managed to create the same effect on the reader of my essays. I write about the free will and the determined fate. I use the same descriptions used by the writer, for instance I describe children who were taken to War as angels. It is the same description given by Billy to some German children he met. I talk about dogs and farmers who never wanted to fight. Their fate was to fight and fight until they defeat or they are defeated. They are innocent and obliged to keep on fighting until the war is gone away. Billy is one of them. I make sure not to mention any cause that had consequences. All the events happen at different times and they don’t have any relation. There is no event that causes another one. To show the ironic tone I focused on the benefits of war and its importance to people. War never had any benefits but many people think about fighting as a heroic job that creates peace and realises victory. They think about soldiers as great fighters that deserve respect regardless to their crimes everywhere. Like Vonnegut, I criticized those people and demonstrated their empty belief that stands on nothing. Those people need to read such books again and again to see how the war destroys lives and towns. While writing, I find some difficulties concerning plotting my work and imitating Vonnegut’s style. It was a challenge to write a literature piece in which there is no cause and no effect. I think I have done good job in overcoming the challenge. I am proud of my written piece.