War is Not For Babies, Not For Anyone

“Werner Gluck, who had never seen a naked woman before, closed the door. Billy had never seen one, either. It was nothing new to Derby.” (Vonnegut, pg. 159) As the narrator mentions in the beginning of the book during his conversation with Mary O’Hare, the men fighting in the war were simply babies. I think the importance of this passage is to show that Billy and the other men were just that, babies. For men, sexuality had always been very important since they are very young, and if the men in the war have never seen naked women then this means that they are very young. This proves, in my way of seeing it, that the book IS an anti-war book because it keeps on hinting that men like Edgar Derby, who was a middle aged man, where more apt for the war, and that using small kids like Billy and Werner was not appropriate. I think that what Mary said about war books and movies encouraging war is very true. When I see a movie that shows middle aged men, experienced men, wise men, fighting in a war I get sad and I get angry, but I also understand that the people that are there are ready to fight in the war. Very few show the cruelty of the situation and not the romanticized part of history, and in these such as The Patriot by Mel Gibson, I start to cry with anger at the atrocities that humans allow to come upon them and their equals. I wish this book was somewhat harder on the war descriptions because I think that with real, strong imagery of what was going on it will be possible for humanity to realize how utterly crazy and terrible wars are, and that dialogue is the real way to solve conflicts, not violence.