Semester #2 Blog #13

Quote: "Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting."

Source: Chapter 1, Pg.8, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Original context: At this point in the book, we notice how the author is mostly reflecting back on everything and what happened in the process of trying to figure out what to write for this book. He talks about what he did after the war, and write before he says this quote, he is telling the reader that he went to the University of Chicago and was a student in the Department of Anthropology. He was talking about the things they had taught him, which were that there is no difference between anybody, and that there is nobody that "was ridiculous or bad or disgusting." (The quote above.) He then says that before his father died he told him that he never wrote a story with a villain in it and the author tells him that that is what he learned in college after war. Letting us know that he believed what it says in the quote above and that is why he doesn't have any villains in his story, because he believes nobody is "bad."

I chose this quote because it stood out to me a lot while I was reading this book. In the first few pages we know it is going to be a book about war, specifically WWII and Dresden, and in wars there always has to be a "bad" side or person but in this quote he is saying that nobody is bad. Usually when you hear the word "World War 2" you automatically think about Hitler and the many, many Jews that were killed but what about the other bad people, what about the other thousands of soldiers that were killing each other and killing civilians. I think what he is trying to make people get out of this quote is that there is not one person that is "bad", we are all bad because we are all not perfect and no matter what, we have all done something wrong at some point in our lives. That is why before this quote he says that something else that he learned was that there was no difference between nobody.

Artistic Vision/ Ideas/ Plans: I was thinking of probably either doing a stencil or some sort of small poster. I was thinking of having probably a cartoonish picture of Hitler in the middle and about 2 or 3 soldiers on the sides of him and at the bottom and sort of on the top of it have the quote. Everything will be in black and white and probably some gray. The reason I will have Hitler and some soldiers will be to show how everyone thinks about Hitler when you talk about WWII and the "bad" people. But this quote is saying that there is nobody that is "bad" so it will connect with the overall quote.