Insanity a New Reality

I was reading Pedro Thomas’s blog and he caught my attention with one of his entries, in which he compares Friedrich Nietzsche’s writing in The Gay Science to Kurt Vonnegut’s writing in Slaughterhouse-Five because he says both tell their stories or ideas through the eyes of a crazy man. I also read part of The Gay Science and now that I see it this way, people pay more attention to people with some kind of deficit or incapacity, than to people that look “normal”. In Nietzsche’s text we know he believes God was killed because throughout his story, he states his point of view regarding religion. And in Vonnegut’s book he tells us what happened to one POW that was with him in Dresden. When Billy was unconscious in Vermont after surviving a plane crash, he dreamt part of what he lived in his past, which Vonnegut declares was true. “The true things where time-travel.” In the eyes of a crazy American soldier Vonnegut depicts how Dresden and some of his experiences in WWII where. Again, Nietzsche scripts his non-religious beliefs in the eyes of a crazy man. Probably if we saw these stories in the perspective of more normal people, they wouldn’t be as appealing as they are because they show us something unexpected, that in a parallel way, shows us and idea (in Nietzsche’s case) or part of an autobiography (in Vonnegut’s case). Pedro says in his blog very strong claims like “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him” create a lot of polemic and give much to talk about due to the fact that these claims are very controversial ideas.

Rather than talking about God, Vonnegut writes, “All the real soldiers are dead”. A woman who was in Dresden too said that, but then Vonnegut’s narrator affirmed, “It was true. So it goes.” Chapter 7 isn’t very long, but it sure gives a controversial thought when it gives Vonnegut’s point of view regarding real soldiers. I actually don’t know what a real soldier, but I am sure a real soldier is different for Vonnegut to what a real soldier would be for me.