My name is yon yonson slaughterhouse-five

Q: What is the significance of Yon yonson?

In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Yon Yonson is used as a motif, ultimately serving as a model for the recursive, time-repeating structure of the book.

Q: Is Slaughterhouse

This fictional account almost perfectly mirrors Vonneguts real experience in the war. In WWII, Vonnegut was imprisoned in Dresden, was beaten, and made a prisoner in Schlachthof Fünf or Slaughterhouse Five, a real slaughterhouse in Dresden.

Independent Reading Dialectical Journal Name: Trevor von Hake Date: 9/25/14 Period: 8 Title of Novel: Slaughterhouse-Five Author: Kurt Vonnegut No. Pg. # “Quote” Response Classification 1 1 “who took us to the slaughter house where he had been locked up at night as a prisoner of war.” In this passage, the reader discovers that the “Slaughterhouse” in the title Slaughterhouse-Five is the camps in which the Germans held prisoners of war. This will obviously serve as a significant setting throughout the course of the novel. Now the reader needs only to discover the significance of the number “five”. Perhaps it is the number of people the narrator was associated with in the camp. TI 2 3 “And I’m reminded, too, of the song that goes: My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumber mill there… ‘My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin’” This song is referred to multiple times in the very beginning of the novel. It’s a possibility that this repetition is due to the fact that the narrator relates to the Yon Yonson mentioned in the song. Yon Yonson lives a very repetitive life, and the narrator may very well feel he lives the same kind of life. TI 3 4 “Even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.” This quote and the passage before it recalling a conversation the narrator once had with Harrison Starr are significant in defining the tone of the novel. The narrator explains to Starr that he is writing an “anti-war” novel,

by Kurt Vonnegut when I first began reading the text. It took me three attempts to actually begin reading more than the first few pages, and I took about ten breaks before I finally finished reading chapter one.

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What is the significance of Yon yonson?
Is Slaughterhouse
Why does the narrator of Slaughterhouse
What is the first chapter of Slaughterhouse

However, once I did get through the excruciating pain of chapter one, I began to submit to the text mostly because the content became more interesting. The Symbolic Code can be found throughout the novel after taking a look at the way the narrator generates unresolvable oppositions between being sane or being completely delusional. It is honestly hard to tell the difference between the two after submitting to this text.

First of all, the story begins by the narrator expressing his purpose, which is to remember what happened to him while he was a prisoner of war in Dresden during World War II. The narrator expresses his interest in writing a book about it. For whatever reason, the narrator cannot remember anything of significance from that period of his life other than being held captive in Dresden. Devon (in her first blog post about the book) explains in her analysis of the controlling values of the text that the narrator may not want to remember what happened during his time as a POW due to unpleasant, suppressed memories. I want to propose, instead, that maybe he can’t remember because he is actually going crazy in his old age. In chapter one, the narrator talks about how he can’t remember anything significant enough to write a book about his experience as POW, and then the rest of the time is spent talking about irrelevant things that, in my opinion, have nothing to do with the story that unfolds in future chapters (other than magnifying to the possibility that he is utterly losing his mind.) For example, on page three, the narrator recites a poem that apparently reminds him of the war, which is the infinite “Yon Yonson” poem. Then on page 7, the he says, “I’m an old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls. My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumbermill there.” Another example: “And I let the dog out, or I let him in, and we talk some. I let him know I like him, and he lets me know he likes me,” (7.) This is why it took me so long to get through chapter one. There’s a bunch of jumbled up babble that doesn’t have anything to do with the story that follows throughout the rest of the book.

In chapter two, it becomes a whole different story. I believe that it’s the novel the narrator in chapter one finally wrote about WWII. Why didn’t Vonnegut just start out with this, and save us the burden of getting through that useless ramble of chapter one? The main character in chapter two is named Billy Pilgrim, and the story is told in third person. This could possibly be the name of the narrator from chapter one, retelling his story in third person, but it’s not clear since the narrator from chapter one went unnamed.

Now, getting back to the Symbolic Code: maybe the narrator is sane since he was finally able to remember enough to write a book about WWII. But wait…there are aliens and flying saucers in Billy Pilgrim’s story. Oh boy.

Billy is completely convinced that he can travel through time, just like the aliens (the Tralfamadorians) can. Throughout the rest of the novel, Billy travels back and forth through time to different events of his life and also to and from his time at Tralfamadore. Billy’s daughter, Barbara, is convinced that her father is crazy. On page 29, she asks him why he’s making stuff up about aliens and flying saucers. He responds saying that “it’s all true,” (29.)

Billy even knows how he is going to die. “As a time-traveler, he has seen his own death many times,” (141.) He has apparently re-lived that scene numerous times. For this reason, there is no big revelation at the end of the book: no big mystery. We already knew that Billy was going to make it out alive after being a POW, and then readers even find out how Billy dies before the story even ends. (I will not reveal this just incase my reading

group members have not reached this far in the book yet.)

The reader is left wondering whether or not this man’s story is truly factual or if he’s just crazy and stuck in his own imagination. The narrator does start the book off by saying, “all this happened, more or less,” (1.) It’s the readers choice whether to submit or resist.

What is the significance of Yon yonson?

In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, "Yon Yonson" is used as a motif, ultimately serving as a model for the recursive, time-repeating structure of the book.

Is Slaughterhouse

This fictional account almost perfectly mirrors Vonnegut's real experience in the war. In WWII, Vonnegut was imprisoned in Dresden, was beaten, and made a prisoner in Schlachthof Fünf or Slaughterhouse Five, a real slaughterhouse in Dresden.

Why does the narrator of Slaughterhouse

The narrator is caught up in this contradiction: he was at the firebombing at Dresden (see "In a Nutshell"), he saw it, and yet, because it is so personally enormous to him, he can't find the words to write about it.

What is the first chapter of Slaughterhouse

The narrator begins Slaughterhouse-Five by explaining a number of details about the novel, primarily how he came to write it. He maintains, by and large, that the parts about the war are true, although he admits that he has changed people's names.