Guido 1

Grace Guido

Mr.Smith

ELA

09 March, 2023

How We Cope

Imagine waking up to your city being burned to the ground by air strikes, you’ve lost

your family and your home. Or perhaps you’re actively in battle, your ears still ringing from the

sound of bombs and gunfire years later. Warfare holds immense trauma over people and can

greatly impact its victims, even years later. In the novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five”, by Kurt

Vonnegut, and the poem “Aubade with Burning City”, by Ocean Vuong, war-influenced trauma

is shown through the many different mechanisms of how people cope. Vonnegut mainly focuses

on PTSD, specifically through his character Billy Pilgrim, a former WWII veteran who lived

through the bombing of Dresden city. On the other hand, Vuong's poem focuses on the impact

war has on children, specifically, the evacuation of Vietnamese children during the fall of

Saigon. Though both authors write about the traumas of war by displaying different coping

mechanisms in their writing, how they write about trauma differs; Vuong’s poem uses a child's

point of view to represent innocence, while Vonnegut’s novel trivializes the war through his

PTSD-ridden character, Billy Pilgrim.

Though both authors write about the traumas of war by displaying different coping

mechanisms in their writing, how they write about trauma differs; Vuong’s poem uses a child's

point of view to represent innocence, while Vonnegut’s novel trivializes the war through his

PTSD-ridden character, Billy Pilgrim. In the fourth chapter of “Slaughterhouse-Five”, Billy

Pilgrim is taken to a prison camp with other POWs. While walking through the camp they are
 Guido 2

stripped and shoved into a small room where, “An unseen hand turned a master valve. Out of the

showerheads gushed scalding rain…It jazzed and jangled Billy’s skin without thawing the ice in

the marrow of his long bones. The Americans’ clothes were meanwhile passing through poison

gas…So it goes. And Billy zoomed back in time to his infancy. He was a baby who had just been

bathed by his mother. Now his mother wrapped him in a towel,...Her palm on his little jelly belly

made potching sounds. Billy gurgled and cooed”(Vonnegut 84-85). Throughout the novel,

Billy’s character time travels into the past, future, and, at some points, a dystopian world called

Tralfamadoria. Here, Billy is showered down at the prison camp, Vonnegut specifically travels

Billy back to him being bathed by his mother, his memory being triggered by the shower water.

While Vonnegut writes from the perspective of a middle-aged war veteran, Vuong's pieces are

written through the eyes of children. In his poem, “Aubade with Burning City”, Vuong writes

about the evacuation of Vietnamese refugees during the fall of Saigon. As the operation began,

the Armed Forces Radio played, “White Christmas”, by Irving Berlin. Throughout the poem, the

stanzas switch from the child's POV to the lines of Berlin's song. As the child watches the

military trucks speed down the street the poem reads, “The treetops glisten and children listen,

the chief of police facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola. A palm-sized photo of his father soaking

beside his left ear” (Vuong 23-24). To show the impact on children at a deeper level, Vuong

writes his poem from a child’s point of view. While they watch the mayhem unfold on the streets

in front of them, their innocence can’t help but surface in front of them. They watch their friends

and family getting taken away, they see a police officer sitting in his own pool of blood. All the

trauma that is sprawled in front of them is lessened by the soft words Vuong writes. Both

Vonnegut and Vuong use children and childhood as a safe, nurturing, space to speak on the

violence and trauma that is war. Each time pulling the innocence of the child into the lines of
 Guido 3

their writing. As we reach the end of “Slaughterhouse-Five”, it becomes somewhat clear that

Billy Pilgrim is really just a veteran dealing with severe PTSD, and his dissociation from reality

is his way of coping with it. While in “Aubade with Burning City”, the terror that’s displayed for

the children of South Vietnam to see, is overtaken by the innocence they all still hold.

Though both authors describe the trauma through different POVs’ in their writing, the

style of their pieces is what represents what they’ve been through and how they’ve coped.

Vonnegut, a former WWII veteran himself, uses ‘dry’, seemingly meaningless, words throughout

his novel. Downplaying the extent of the war trauma. Though, Vuong's pieces are written with

much ‘softer’ words, making the events he writes about feel less brutal than they really are. In

Vuongs’ short novel “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, he uses traditional Vietnamese words

and phrases to soften the trauma he writes about. In an interview with Seth Meyers, Vuong

speaks on his novel's main character, “Little Dog”. When asked about the reasoning behind this

name, Vuong says, “In our village in Vietnam, the tradition is to name the child, the weakest,

smallest child, after the most despicable things. And sometimes we call them Little Dog, Pig

Face, as a way to deter evil spirits who come hunting for children…. So a name becomes a cloak,

becomes a shield” (Vuong). Aside from bringing his culture into his novel, Vuong also allows

readers to see a side of him in his writing. Further into the interview, it is said that Vuong wrote

the rough draft of his novel inside his college dorm closet. He mentions that at first, it felt like a

prison to him, cold and dark, but as he continued to write, it became a safe space where he could

express his emotions without judgment or fear. He called it his “beautiful place”. Vuong's

character, Little Dog, uses his nickname as his ‘safe space’ in the novel. Protecting him from the

horrors and realities of war. Although, there are many different ways authors can change the

emotions of their writing through their style/word choice. Vonnegut tends to use words
 Guido 4

throughout his novel that almost downplay the reality and emotions of war. Specifically, when

Billy Pilgrim is talking about the war he makes his trauma seem unimportant through his word

choice. In chapter three of the novel, Billy talks about the military operations that the German

Dogs were put through. As he describes the operation he says, “‘It is, in the imagination of

combat's fans, the divinely listless loveplay that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called

'mopping up’”(Vonnegut 52). Vonnegut's choice of the phrase ‘mopping up’ opens readers up to

multiple different reasons behind his word choice. It tells us that Vonnegut is familiar with

military phrases, which connects to his time spent in the war, and it opens the reader’s eyes to the

harsh realities of soldiers' lives. Living in war every day for years, soon enough the horror

becomes so regular that everything is a habit. To readers, it may seem as though Vonnegut's

writing is dismissive when in reality, he is reliving his wartime and representing that lingering

trauma through his character, Billy Pilgrim. Though their writing staples differ, Vonnegut and

Vuong, both surface built-up trauma that they relive through their writing. While Vuong tries to

protect innocence with ‘safe’ and ‘soft’ words, Vonnegut shows readers how normal the horrors

of war become.

Although they didn’t experience the same events, Vonnegut and Vuong cope with their

trauma by writing about it and bringing awareness to what war does to people. Through not only

just their characters and their POVs but also through their writing style and how they describe

the emotions of the traumatizing events. In not only “Slaughterhouse-Five'', but also in Vonneut's

many other war novels, he touches the hearts of his readers. Unlike many during his time,

Vonnegut didn’t glamourize war, instead, he wrote about the reality of war, about what really

happens and what can happen, when young men are forced to fight. Similarly, Vuong forces

readers to see through the eyes of our future, the eyes of children. He writes with the innocence
 Guido 5

and mindset of a young child, reminding those that wars don’t only affect soldiers, but also the

children of our world. Millions of people struggle with PTSD today. Ranging from war veterans

to victims of any traumatic events, the coping mechanisms for PTSD are different for everyone.

No matter the situation or event that caused these spirals, one's trauma should never be ignored,

or disregarded. In regards to the reasoning behind the project for this specific event, the people of

Vietnam tried to change the way that they were viewed and opinionated. People started to use

young victims as test subjects, they would probe them with needles and labs to see how the

radiation from the bombs affected them throughout the rest of their lives. They were stuck with

this traumatic event until they died, and many did. Most of the test subjects were faced with

either cancer or other diseases/medical conditions that were a result of the bombs. Because they

didn’t have the same medicine people have today, by the time they could get the medical care

they needed, it was too late. So many of the victims tried to forget about this tragic event in their

lives, but the repercussions of it and how they had to live carried it with them throughout the rest

their lives.
 Guido 6

Works Cited

Meyers , S. (2019, June 13). Ocean Vuong Wrote His Debut Novel in a Closet . Late Night

with Seth Meyers . other, NBC.

Vonnegut, K. (1991). Slaughterhouse-Five: Or The Children’s crusade. Laurel.

Vuong, O. (2021). On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A novel. Penguin Books.

 Guido 7

Skill Not Foundational Proficient Advanced

Yet
Identifies a topic Appears in first Thesis establishes a
paragraph complex claim

Thesis establishes a
topic and a claim
Addresses themes
from both texts
Thesis
Comments:
 Guido 8

Includes two or Includes evidence Includes specific,

fewer sources from at least 2 meaningful, and
sources that clearly well-chosen
Some evidence relate to the thesis evidence that relates
relates to the thesis to the thesis
Includes evidence
from the text to
Evidence support
understanding of
thematic element

Comments:

Summarizes sources Explains how Explains well-

evidence supports selected points of
topic sentence of comparison among
individual sources and
paragraphs evidence and their
connection to the
Analysis Explains how thesis
evidence supports
the thesis of the
essay

Comments:

Little connection Explains how the Clearly explains

between texts; texts/sources are relationships among
difficult for the related, though texts (how they are
reader to see how points could be similar and
the texts are related more selective or different, provide
better developed differing
Synthesis perspectives,
Includes multiple enhance
sources in each body understanding when
paragraph placed near each
other etc.)
 Guido 9

Comments:

Some elements Heading is correctly No errors in MLA

missing or some formatted format
errors in MLA format
Pages are numbered

In-text citations are

correctly formatted

Works Cited format:

hanging indent,
MLA Format double-spaced,
alphabetized, starts
on a new page

Works Cited: each

source entry is in
correct MLA format

Comments:

Shows evidence of Most quotes are All quotes are

basic proofreading correctly integrated correctly integrated

Follows essay Shows evidence of

Conventions organization careful proofreading

Shows evidence of
proofreading

Comments: