Dick: Nope . . . twenty minutes to go.
Deadeye: Hey, what'd you get on the last quiz?
Dick: Don't ask.
Deadeye: Yeah, I got a 0.5, too. How was I supposed to know that there wasn't an actual bird in Jailbird?
Dick: I know! Ugh, I'm sick of this class. Why doesn't the teacher ever ask what I think about the book? I want a chance to share my thoughts, fears and opinions in regards to contemporary literature.
Deadeye: And why aren't there, like, more opportunities to earn a good grade? What if there was a place on the blog where we could — optionally, mind you — say one last thing about the book that we didn't have a chance to say in class?
Dick: That would be great, but this guy just doesn't care about his students! Lucky for him, I'm not planning on showing up on the day we do evaluations. Or, like, at all for the next two weeks!
Deadeye: Hey, were we supposed to sign up for a presentation or something?
[ scene ]
The recipes scattered throughout Deadeye Dick are an example of Vonnegut using metafiction to expand on our perception of characters and atmospheres. Rudy Waltz is a meek and quiet man, and his ruminations on various recipes help to make him a foil to his older brother, Felix. With his deep voice, natural leadership qualities and his successes in academics, the military, and his career, Felix seems like a polar opposite to his passive brother, who would rather be left alone to cook and clean. Some of the recipes mentioned also serve to establish the mood in various scenes. For instance, the sauerbraten (a dish invented by Germans to get back at America for winning the war by making their refrigerators smell like death for months on end) that Rudy serves to his parents before telling them he's going to New York to produce his play seems representative of his inner-tension at breaking routine in his life. For Rudy, cooking is a way of coping with his stress, and the involved process of marinating and roasting that hunk of rancid German meat for days on end tells us he is still apprehensive about upsetting his routine of "perfect, subservient son" that he has developed, even years after he commited the double murder that emotionally crippled him. Also, sauerbraten is really gross and I would not recommend it.
ReplyDelete-Nick Bading
In the Epilogue of the novel, Bernard Ketchum asked a farmer who had given the group the "leaflets", or the group that was responsible for neutron-bombing the city. After guessing such things as CIA, the Mafia, etc... The farmer tells him to pick one, which ever one sounds good. The government does not want to give a name, because with a name there is someone to blame. The farmers quote, "If you ask me, they don't know any more'n I do about who's really running things, what's really going on" (264). When it comes down to it, who really knows who has the capability to make such large decisions, like the destroying of Midland City for example. Most people would just say, "the government". Well, the government is not a small group of people or someone to blame, it is just a figurative spoken term to put a label on it. I think Vonnegut is conveying, like all of his novels, especially the instance of "Ice-9", that a lot of powerful things that occur are mysterious. If the American people cannot blame an individual they say, well its the government's work. Then it quickly fades away and people just accept it the things are. Vonnegut wants people to question the decisions of instances that might be accidents by the government, perhaps an abuse of power because they know the people simply cannot blame an individual.
ReplyDelete-Kyle Murway
After reading this novel, and analyzing the book in quite depth, I can't help but to think how Vonnegut would have continued the book if Rudy and his father did go along with Police Chief Morissey when at first he wants to hush up the child's involvement. Morissey is someone who's life can be compared to Rudy's. Later Vonnegut reveals why. The most famous unsolved murder in the area is that of August Gunther and years later Rudy finds out that Gunther was accidentally shot by Morissey, who never revealed his role in the murder. If Rudy covered up his actions would the Waltz family still be an infamous member of the community or would miserable unluckiness still come their way?
ReplyDelete-Megan Obermeyer
As stated before me by Megan, Police Chief Morissey is ironically similar to Rudy in the fact that they both shot and killed someone by accident at a young age. However, branching off of her question, I'd rather look at the specific character of Police Chief Morissey, instead of his involvement with the arrest of Rudy and Otto. I thought that Vonnegut did an interesting thing with Morissey's character, by making him the person to shoot Otto's "art teacher" in the head while out on a shooting trip, who then becomes a man of the law later in his life. It made me wonder if Morissey chose the profession of a Police Chief as atonement for his childhood shooting. I can only imagine that when met with the situation of Rudy shooting the woman who was with child on Mother's Day (I forgot her name at the moment), history surely seemed to be repeating it's self for Morissey. I would have enjoyed delving more into the mind of Morissey.
ReplyDelete-Rachel Kuhn
I really found the recipes to be an interesting addition to the story. Espeically when the recipes were used mainly for special occasions, such as when Rudy tells his parents about his play or when Eleanor Roosevelt visits. The recipes seem to represent the way Vonnegut felt about the events that happened as well. Even the chitlins that were served the day of the accident seemed to be a foretelling of sorts. Even though the day was special there was still something horrible that happened and it seems the same with the recipe served. It's something that people don't usually eat, at least here in America. Similar to the fact that most people don't usually shoot and kill another human.
ReplyDeleteIn Deadeye Dick we see a character that has been a common theme in the books of Kurt Vonnegut. In some of his more recent books we have seen some female characters with a little more to offer the world around them than just their looks. However in this book there is one character that goes back to Kurt Vonnegut's old theme with women. That would be Rudy's mother. Because Vonnegut tells us that this book specifically relates back to his life possibly more than any of the others. This could mean that the portrayal of Rudy's mother in this book is how he saw his own mother but this woman definitely goes back to his old portrayal of women as not really being good for anything and getting by with their looks by marrying someone with more money than them.
ReplyDelete-Elliot Shouse-
One of the things Vonnegut seems to play at is the human perception. He then takes our perception of how things are and offers something to contradict that and make us think about why we are believing what we do. This can be seen in all of the novels, some examples are Jonah, in Cat's Cradle, believing Mona was the most wonderful woman on earth, until she didn't want to have sex then she didn't seem quite as appealing. In Player Piano Paul believes that owning a farm will solve all of his problems, it will be just like the old days, but we he does this he is sadly mistaken and gives up quickly. In God Bless you mister Rosewater and Slaughterhouse-Five Vonnegut changes it up and plays with the readers perception of sanity where one might actually believe that person is sane because their thoughts seem so rational when viewed from their eyes and world. The main thing I am referring to in terms of Jailbird is Hitler, we all have similar perceptions of how evil Hitler was and how he sucks and what not. But when we see Hitler from Otto's eyes, we see a starving (literally) artist trying to make his way in the world. We can all relate to that in some way or another, trying to do something and failing, being told you won't make it. Its part of life. I personally saw no reason Otto shouldn't support Hitler, after all he was his friend and fellow artist (the news about concentration camps probably hadn't come out back then). Its just interesting to see how Vonnegut challenges the readers reality, when you put it in a different context, your whole perception can/will change.
ReplyDeleteMariah Acord
Within the novel “Deadeye Dick,” obviously one of the most memorable scenes occurs when young Rudy Waltz accidently shot the pregnant Mrs. Metzger right between the eyes. After police chief Morissey knocked on the Waltz’s door, Otto proceeded to confess, “The boy did it, but it is I who am to blame!” (Vonnegut 68). After Otto’s dramatic confession, including destroying his gun collection and running through his family’s home shouting for anyone to hear that he was the one to blame, both Otto and Rudy were taken to jail. As explained in the novel, Rudy and his brother, Felix, later came to the conclusion that Otto “was sufficiently adrift to image that wrecking the guns and decapitating the house would somehow settle everything” – this suggested to readers that Otto Waltz was utterly shocked when he was carted off to jail (Vonnegut 71). Why was it that Otto was so adamant to confess his involvement and fault in the death of Eloise Metzger, but was so very shocked at the fact that he was then taken and incarcerated? Linking appropriately to Vonnegut’s other novels, I believe that this particular section of the novel requires a definite question of Otto’s sanity.
ReplyDeleteKelsie Wilson
I just want to say that I thought that Rudy was a very interesting character. To me, Vonnegut almost portrayed him as if he had some sort of disability. It seemed like he could have had autism based on some of the behaviors that he had. He would sing to himself and he just didn't appear to be a very social person. I think that Vonnegut was trying to make it a point that Rudy changed whenever he accidentally shot the pregnant woman. However, maybe Rudy had some sort of problem before he even shot the woman!
ReplyDelete-Adrienne Biggers
I couldn't get over that feeling I could imagine Rudy was feeling while he was sitting there with the gun and just not having a care in the world. Just that innocent feeling of euphoria like everything was so fantastic and the naive ignorance of what could happen if he were to shoot someone, ya know? Then surly enough he goes off and kills a pregnant woman by accident and does not fully understand what that meant or what the consequences would have been. That blissful feeling of nothing could go wrong and no one was evil just seemed like it would be amazing to experience with all the crap going on nowadays.
ReplyDelete-Alexis Wharton
“I found myself smiling at a funeral…I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. One person had…He was wearing large sunglasses with mirrored lenses. He could have been anyone.” (198)
ReplyDeleteI’ve not read Breakfast Of Champions, but doesn’t Vonnegut appear in that book as a man with large silver reflective sunglasses?
Either way, I think Vonnegut writes often times (as we saw as one main P.O.V in Slaughterhouse-Five) as an observer of his characters. He always seems to be part of the scene as an observer in the corner. He materializes his scenes by inserting himself into the fictious moment- a technique that makes it easy and enjoyable for his readers to do the same.
Whether Vonnegut is the man in sunglasses or not, it is fun to think of Vonnegut as being a faceless observer in the scenes of his own books…
He seems to have a different purpose for each time he puts himself in the book. In slaughterhouse 5, he was in the book I think he wants to remind us he was actually there. In the scene you're looking at, it's almost as if he's there to judge to main character. Does he not like his own character? Rudy may be another representation of Vonnegut, so maybe he's trying to look at himself in a more meaningful way.
DeletePatrick Schwarz
"The bullet was a symbol, and nobody was ever hurt by a symbol. It was a farewell to my childhood and a confirmation of my manhood. Why didn't I use a blank cartridge? What kind of symbol would that have been?" (70). I think the idea of the bullet as a symbol is an interesting take on the whole ordeal because Rudy says the statement above before he realizes that he shot Eloise Metzger. The bullet was in fact a symbol of Rudy's loss of a childhood because after the murders he is forced to turn into a man my his own standards, his family's standards, and society's standards. Rudy's transformation into "Deadeye Dick" was symbolically and literally set by the bullet that he shot off. Vonnegut's symbols always seem to have these kind of meanings. Literal and symbolic...
ReplyDeleteIn correlation with Slaughterhouse-Five, there is a certain notion of coping that flows through Deadeye Dick. With Slaughterhouse, it was a little more extant - we established pretty early on that Billy was obviously struggling to cope with what he experienced in the war, and that Vonnegut wrote the book as a coping exercise - but it's cast in a slightly different light in Deadeye. First, obviously, there is Rudy's coping with his killing of Louise Metzger, which arguably drives the book. His method, too, is the book, but on a more micro level it is removing himself from his relevance, so to speak, of being a human. So there's that. And there is of course more to say about it. But what I found more interesting was Otto's coping mechanisms. He failed as an artist, and as dense as he could sometimes be, he had to know that on a gut level. In fact, maybe that's why he was so dense about things - he shut out the truth of life that it, for a pessimist at least, is a big failure. Also Hitler's coping mechanisms. He chose a slightly more conspicuous method. And Kurt writes Otto, Rudy, and even Hitler to a small degree, as sympathetic characters. It is because Vonnegut understands what it is to cope, what it is to deceive, what it is to view things subjectively to create the best and most inhabitable world for oneself.
ReplyDeleteAustin Baurichter
I question a lot the reoccurring themes in Kurt Vonnegut's novels. I feel as if the military, or war must have played a larger part in his everyday life or somehow affected him growing up because he mentions war/bombs in every novel so far. There seems to always be a war going on, whether it is between machines and humans way back from player piano or the mention of the neutron bomb that goes off in Midland City. Vonnegut also seems to put himself once again inside this novel by making the main character a failed playwright. This maybe somehow relates back to Vonnegut, who in some ways could have thought of himself as a failed writer, or perhaps this could be his imagination of what his life could have been like, if his novels were not successful.
ReplyDeleteIn the original story of Little Red Riding Hood, there is a single moment where Little Red
ReplyDeleteHiding Hood eats the flesh and blood of her Grandmother. She is tricked into doing this by the wolf. The wolf promotes a loss of innocence and a giving in to what freud called the ID. After she eats the flesh and blood of her Grand mother the cat in the room calls her a slut. The cat is said to be the "super ego" of the grandmother. Now Little Red Riding Hood does not trust all her natural impulses because she has been punished for acting on actions that were generated from her ID. To sum it all up Rudy was tricked out of his innocence by the wolf, in this case firearms, as the wolf was dressed up as grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood the wolf was dressed up like a noble hobby and industrial money maker, the collection and distribution of firearms. At the end of the folk tale, Little Red Riding Hood sleeps with the wolf and then runs home. Rudy spends the night in jail with a face covered in ink and from then on he begins the slow process of "neutering" himself so he doesn't have to worry about wrong and right impulsing because he has none.
One of my favorite quotes in this book is at the end of the first chapter, maybe this is when I was reading more intently, but it is highlighted and even after finishing the book, it still holds to be one of my favorite quotes. ---“That is my principal objection to life, I think: It’s too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.” This is Rudy Waltz talking about how for 1.) his father could be such good friends with the more horrific man and 2.) how one mistake, like killing a pregnant woman, could ruin your life. This is Vonnegut commenting on the concept of how our life is just a serious of little decisions that create our destiny, destiny is yet another concept that is discussed in many of his books. The fact that Vonnegut talks about life so easily becoming a horrible mistake makes me think about what mistakes Vonnegut has made and that is on his mind that makes him critical about other people’s mistakes they can make.
ReplyDelete-Rebekah Andrews
In Deadeye Dick I couldn't help but wonder if Vonnegut was expressing his feelings as an artist in society. Growing up, Vonnegut was forced to work for general electic and attend school from his dad, when really he wanted to write. Rudy was an artist too and nobody could get over the fact that he had shot and killed a woman when he was very young. Is Vonnegut showing his frustration of artists in society and the respect he didn't have when he was young?
ReplyDelete-McKenzie Moore
In the part where Rudy is describing a parade of his people, the neuters, he says that he would make a banner for them to carry down Fifth Avenue with "Egregious" printed across it. "Most people think that word means terrible or unheard of or unforgivable. It has a much more interesting story than that to tell. It means 'outside the heard'". This made me think of the "people on the edge" from Player Piano, and Vonnegut's way of looking at things from an unusual perspective.
ReplyDelete-Brooke Beery
Vonnegut always has much to say about a lot of things in his novels, one of the subjects he frequents is wealth. In Deadeye Dick, the Waltz family is forced to give their money to the Metzger family, which they did willingly; however, after they became broke, the Waltz family essentially falls apart. The Waltzs were a secluded family, they lived on the outskirts of town and did as they pleased. People knew who they were, but they weren't active in the community. Why did it matter that they were broke? It wasn't like they were going to be judged by the community. They towns people probably didn't even care about their wealth. Yet when they lost their money, they lost their identity. It seems Vonnegut thinks that wealth and identity go hand-in-hand. Can you be poor and have an identity?
ReplyDelete- Bryce Althen