As I was struggling to come up with ideas for what to write
about for my event outreach blog post, I decided to revisit a past essay I had written
where I explored Vonnegut’s anti-war messages in Slaughterhouse-Five. In
Slaughterhouse-Five, we follow the life and experiences of Billy Pilgrim,
honing-in on his time as a chaplain’s assistant during World War II. In my
thesis for the piece, I make the argument that Slaughterhouse-Five has a
“universal” anti-war message that “war is dehumanizing.” Additionally, I
comment on how the relationship between sex, power, and violence depicted in
the novel “attempts to comment on the baseless, primal motivations which
dictate war decision-making instead of pure intellectual reasoning,” and I
highlight the effect of the “war’s lack of free will which dispels people’s
freedom of choice.”
I handed
in this essay on March 4th. At this time, the COVID-19 pandemic was just
beginning to find its bearings, but not yet did it reach its full-force effect.
Classes were still in session and life was running as normally scheduled. It
was only 5 days after on March 9 where we received our first email from the
Office of the President detailing how classes were to be brought online, and
life at Fordham was about to get a whole lot different. The reality of the situation
had not yet cemented itself into what is now the “new normal” for American
life.
As I reread this essay a month
later, and a month into living in this outbreak, it is shocking to me how my
language used in this essay to describe the horrors and limitations of war is
so unintendedly applicable to our current reality under the coronavirus pandemic.
In originally writing this essay, I was so focused on how these ideas apply to
traditional wartime efforts filled with guns, violence, and primal power trips.
Reflecting on this essay now under the lens of corona, I realize how the
pandemic is our generation’s world war where we are globally combatting a
common enemy: COVID-19. The idea of war has taken a new form which most of us
had never expected. This global war against COVID-19 truly bleeds with irony as
a history that has not only repeated itself, but rewrites itself as it takes a
new, unassuming shape.
One of the first points I make in
my essay is that “war is dehumanizing.” Under corona, our new way of life of being
restricted to staying home and social distancing is very similarly dehumanizing.
The most central part of human life is the relationships we build and the
interactions we have with others, and by forcing ourselves into isolation, we harm
a vital part of our emotional wellbeing.
Additionally, in my essay I discuss
the “baseless, primal motivations which dictate war decision-making instead of
pure intellectual reasoning.” Immediately, thoughts rush into my head of the nationwide
toilet paper shortage we experienced due to people baselessly buying it in mass
quantities upon hearing about the outbreak. Although this situation was
laughable, realizing how war makes people think and act irrationally really
cemented with this connection.
Finally, in my essay I highlighted
how “war’s lack of free will dispels people’s freedom of choice.” Although we
are not drafted into a traditional war where we must fight and carry out orders
given by our commanders, we are definitely drafted into a new way of life where
we forced to live under the orders given out by our mayors, governors, and
president. Simple freedom’s to even be able to go outside and take a walk or go
to the park are being extinguished. Our freedom to choose what we want to do is
no longer an option, and instead, we must adhere to the rules set by our
government in order to ensure safety.
The language I used in my original
essay is so ironic to our current situation that it actually makes me laugh. Who
am I to kid myself and act so shocked at how people are reacting to this virus
when these reactions are so embedded into the very history of human nature? When
I originally wrote my essay, my scope for what war had meant to me was so
limited, but reflecting on it now, COVID-19 has opened that idea up tremendously.
By realizing that corona is yet another war for us to face, I am comforted in
the sense that this is a history that we have experienced before. Although this
history is being rewritten into a new, unknown semblance that we have not dealt
with before, I am confident that similarly to wars and hardships we have faced in
the past, we will overcome and win again.
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