How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
We saw a Veterans' Day parade down Fifth Avenue, and I heard Resi's laugh for the first time. It was nothing like Helga's laugh, which was a rustling thing. Resi's laugh was bright, melodious. What struck her so funny was the drum majorettes, kicking at the moon, twitching their behinds, and twirling chromium dildos. 'I've never seen such a thing before,' she said to me. 'War must be a very sexy thing to Americans.' (24.60-61)
This comment is actually a bigger zinger than it seems at first glance. Think about it: Vonnegut fought in WWII. Other than Pearl Harbor, the U.S. was basically untouched by warfare stateside. If war seems sexy to Americans at home who didn't participate in it, it's because they only got the see the parades, not the hangings, rapes, starvation, bombing, and gunfire. The scantily clad women kicking up a storm in a war pageant indicate that the population has no clue—or that it wants to forget—the real face of war.
Quote #8
Watching Kraft pop away at that target, I understood its popularity for the first time. The amateurishness of it made it look like something drawn on the wall of a public lavatory; it recalled the stink, diseased twilight, humid resonance, and vile privacy of a stall in a public lavatory—echoed exactly the soul's condition in a man at war. (28.10)
Did Campbell just compare the human soul in wartime to a poo-stained public restroom? He did. That observation accompanies his realization about why the target he designed using Jewish stereotypes was so successful. Why else would people be so on board if their souls hadn't been turned to toilets during the war?
Quote #9
Colonel Frank Wirtanen had the impudent pink-baby look that victory and an American combat uniform seemed to produce in so many older men.
He beamed at me and he shook my hand warmly, and he said, 'Well—what did you think of that war, Campbell?'
'I would just as soon have stayed out of it' I said.
'Congratulations,' he said. 'You lived through it, anyway. A lot of people didn't you know.'
'I know,' I said. 'My wife, for instance.' (32.14-18)
It takes all kinds to make warfare go 'round, and Wirtanen embodies the happy sort that thrives in war. Not that he's happy about the carnage, but he's the sort of man who fell out of a Currier and Ives painting and into an army uniform. He's the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed version of war.