Showing Hope One Way or Another

I wouldn’t open for business, or would I? Would I close to pay respect to the thousands of people that had just died or would I open my business to survive in hard times? This is one of the questions that is very hard to answer, similar but not as hard as the typical question: If you were starving to death on a deserted island and the other person that was there with you was much weaker and could not fight back and you had one more day to live if you did not eat, what would you do? When I read that the innkeepers had opened the inn, had polished the silver, had turned down the beds, my first reaction was that of anger towards them because they were going about like a normal day. However, later on I reflected upon this and thought that maybe the reason they were acting like any other day was because it was their way to show hope. If they were open it was because they thought that maybe people were going to show up, kind of as if they were keeping their doors open to survivors they hoped were out there. I think that in grim situations there are probably more than one hundred ways to show hope and strength, and to keep one self going even when the circumstances are trying hard to tip the balance the other way. Again, Vonnegut probably had some motive to include this, and I think it had to do with the fact that everyone, even the keepers of an inn, was affected by the bombing of Dresden.