"My Name Is Yon Yonson"

When I read the title of this book, Slaughterhouse Five, I couldn't imagine anything else but a fiction book, probably about ninjas (I am not particularly a big fan of them) so I was not really looking forward to it. However, after reading the first few pages I really couldn’t stop. The technique Kurt Vonnegut uses to narrate the story really appealed to me. The way he wrote the first sentence "All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his (…)” really hooked me up and I really wanted to know what else had happened there. The word Dresden, really stroke out, I had heard it a few times, in the World War II books I had read in the past, which by the way are my favorite. I also remembered going to Dresden, when I went to Europe two summers ago, however, I couldn't remember the actual city, just like the narrator, he remembered being in Dresden, however he could not remember many things about it.

I wonder what the song:
“My name is Yon Yonson,
I work in Wisconsin,
I work in a lumbermill there.
The people I meet when I walk down the street,

They say, “What’s your name?”
And I say,
“My name is Yon Yonson
I work in Wisconsin””

Means. I am predicting it will have something to do with the end… like a clue or something. Like in I am the cheese by Robert Cormier. The kid, Adam, sang a song about the cheese being alone, and at the end he understands he is the cheese (because he is lonely), and the story gives an unexpected turn. I think something like that will happen in Slaughterhouse – five. I just can’t figure it out right now. 

Maybe it will have something to do with the post war effect he seems to have. However, I think he does not want to accept it. I mean how can’t a person who has killed people, who has enjoyed killing them (sadly, but true), who has been rewarded for killing the “enemies” not have a post war depression or something? His drinking problem is probably, no, certainly, an effect on the war. I remember my Sociales teacher once read an article about a soldier who had been sent out of the war to Bogota because he had suffered a severe injury, he said he didn’t particularly enjoy killing guerrilleros, but killing one meant a piece of grilled chicken with rice and potato (An example of war promotion, I will talk about it further on). He had come to Bogota, but he was not able to get another job so he stayed home and became a drug addict. He wandered down the streets every night, high, and was not able to do anything with his life. He had gone to post war therapy but it didn’t work so he gave up. No one had heard about him in the past two years…

I really can’t imagine how horrible that depression must be, not being able to sleep at night, having to drink to feel better, the nightmares. I really hope no one I know has to pass through that situation. I mean being able to survive war and then being so depressed you commit suicide, God!

Mary, O’Hare’s wife, must have been a major influence, I mean, he dedicated the book to her, I wonder if she will have anything else to do through the novel. Talking about Mary, she made me have a flashback of my Global Studies class last year when we saw how leaders worked hard on propaganda and to justify war in the eyes of common people. The way she talked about the movies promoting war and being propaganda for little kids. She mentions they were babies when they were sent to fight and they had to act like grown ups, she thinks about her sons. Imagine having to loose all your innocence because you had to go fight, playing with guns instead of cars, instead of playing tag actually running away from the real enemies, instead of eating chocolates, having to eat bugs because there is no more food supply. It is so depressing just thinking about it.