{"id":833,"date":"2009-11-15T19:36:01","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T00:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/?p=833"},"modified":"2009-11-15T19:37:52","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T00:37:52","slug":"safari-in-dresden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/archives\/833","title":{"rendered":"Safari in Dresden"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this point I have only read up through page 217 of EL&IC<\/em>, so I don\u2019t have a full view of Tuesday\u2019s reading to apply to this post.\u00a0 Instead, I want to look closely at one section, the one headed \u201cWhy I\u2019m Not Where You Are\u201d (208-216).\u00a0 Ignoring for now the red ink corrections, I want to look at the section describing the killing of the zoo animals (213).\u00a0 Frankly, I found this part ridiculous.\u00a0 It came across to me as so incredibly over-sensationalized in its attempt to produce an emotional response that it was flatly absurd.\u00a0 Obviously, the narrative has countless examples of subtle emotional appeals that do <\/em>make you sympathize with the characters and grasp the immensity of loss \/ chaos.\u00a0 But this was not one of them:\u00a0 \u201cI passed the zoo\u2026 one of the keepers was calling out for help\u2026 his eyes had been burnt closed, he grabbed my armed and asked me if I knew how to fire a gun\u2026 he handed me his rifle and said, \u2018You\u2019ve got to find the carnivores\u2019\u201d (213).\u00a0 \u00a0Now, the Dresden zoo was <\/em>actually bombed, and for all I know there were uncaged lions wandering the streets of Dresden that day (hmm).\u00a0 But the image of this man wandering around terminating rhinos and monkeys amidst the flames of Allied bombs just left me boggled.\u00a0 I understand that this tries to illustrate the extent of the chaos and the senselessness and absurdity of that day.\u00a0 But really all I get is the absurdity of the passage.\u00a0 To say the least, my disbelief came unsuspended.\u00a0 Regardless, there are other possible authorial intentions or subtexts which can be read into the scene.\u00a0 In some ways, the indiscriminatory nature of the animal executions mirrors the arbitrary or indiscriminatory nature of the firebombing itself.\u00a0 The narrator expresses a desire to kill everything, even things he suspects aren\u2019t carnivores.\u00a0 I can\u2019t tell if this is supposed to be him venting some kind of rage and confusion or if he\u2019s just trying to cover all the bases and guarantee there will be no carnivorous zoo animals left in Dresden.<\/p>\n

I realize immense violence and death is something that is incredibly hard to portray in a nuanced way that even remotely communicates the experience of those who have gone through it.\u00a0 Nonetheless, the zoo debacle just doesn\u2019t do it for me.\u00a0 Having read Slaughterhouse-Five<\/em>, I know it\u2019s possible for an author to address the tragedy of Dresden in a way that is nuanced and sympathetic, while still communicating the extreme level of destruction and loss.\u00a0 Maybe this is because Vonnegut chose to view the atrocity through the lens of satire.\u00a0 Extreme violence like that seen in Dresden is almost incomprehensible to the human mind, and this incomprehensibility naturally lends itself to absurd portrayals.\u00a0 Vonnegut was aware of this and utilizes satire to communicate an authentic sense of what it was like to be there in the aftermath of Dresden.\u00a0 Foer, on the other hand, tries to play a scene of violent absurdity with a straight face, and frankly this why I feel that his description of the firebombing comes across (to me, anyways) as misdirected and emotionally exploitative.\u00a0 \u00a0Then again, maybe I\u2019m just voicing the typical intolerance for retellings like these voiced by people who did not experience them directly.\u00a0 There are a number of other aspects of the book which I find well written and compelling.\u00a0 Just not elephant hunting in the melted streets of Dresden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this point I have only read up through page 217 of EL&IC, so I don\u2019t have a full view of Tuesday\u2019s reading to apply to this post.\u00a0 Instead, I want to look closely at one section, the one headed \u201cWhy I\u2019m Not Where You Are\u201d (208-216).\u00a0 Ignoring for now the red ink corrections, I… Continue reading Safari in Dresden<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions\/838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}