What and Jeff?

The sentence from chapter one of Slaughterhouse-Five that states, "We were Mutt and Jeff in the war" is accompanied by my enthusiastic annotation of "Yes, Mutt and Jeff!!! I kind of know what that alludes to." (The excitement of feeling smart lead to all those exclamation points.) But since I only "kind of" knew what it was referring to, I decided to look it up. I've only heard of the term once before, when a longtime friend of mine's mother decided to start calling the two of us Mutt and Jeff, since we vary in height by about five inches. We were both really confused, and she explained to us that Mutt and Jeff was an old comic strip with one character that's ridiculously tall and lanky, and the other short and squat. The names stuck.

Wikipedia informed me that the American comic strip written by Bud Fisher was extremely popular in the early 1900s. It was something of a slapstick comedy that followed the adventures of two friends. Interestingly enough, Mutt and Jeff were also codenames for two WWII spies who worked for the UK and lead Germans to think that the 1944 D-Day landings would be in Calais, not Normandy. It seems that Vonnegut would be aware of this connection, but I'm not sure if it was intentional.

The comic strip version. But Britain did have an airborne division in the D-Day invasion...

Death of a Puppy

When I originally read “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” I interpreted the narrator to be an animal. Yes, I did realize that a ball turret gunner would probably be a really messed-up creature if it actually did exist and later learned that the name refers to a type of airplane. However, it interested me that the poem seemed to impact me differently if I interpreted it to be narrated by an animal (something that seemed more vulnerable) instead by a human, a more common point of view. I was reminded of conversations from AP Composition about The Things They Carried, a book about the Vietnam War with several scenes in which animals found themselves in unfortunate violent situations (a puppy strapped to a mine, a baby water buffalo attacked by a soldier). The indignation expressed by the class after reading these passages was understandable; I won’t deny that the acts were shocking. Still, it was interesting that these incidents seemed to demand more of the class’s attention than the sufferings of the people who were involved.


Stories of human casualties far outnumber those of animals killed in war—are we simply taken by surprise when they pop up and react accordingly? Maybe the animals' innocence is what affects us—they are harmed by something that they play no part in, that they do not understand. Of course, some people in Vietnam did not become involved by choice and many people in war (at least in that war) do/did not completely understand it. It seems that we should then logically be just as concered about those people as the occasional animals encountered in the stories.

An Important Word

In chapter one of Metamorphosis, I noticed the word "pain" came up numerous times, seemingly always referring to Gregor. He felt physical pain when he fell off the bed, when he opened the door, and when was shoved by his father back into his room at the end of the chapter (which left him "bleeding profusely," a strange part I thought). It seems as though Gregor is not new to pain, as he meditated on the "torture of traveling" at the beginning of the chapter. This pain for Gregor--not just physical, he will likely deal with emotional pain as well--may not go away. It seems as though it will continue throughout the book, possibly changing as Gregor changes and deals with his isolation.

Mulling over Modern Art

The news that we would be analyzing art in the second day of class provoked a happy little pang of nostalgia in me. The activity was a nice transition back into school life from a recent trip to Mexico City, one in which I and fellow Academic Decathletes spent much time perusing various works of art located throughout the city. The works ranged from Diego Rivera murals adorning the Palacio Nacional to unusual modern art pieces residing in the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo. Initially I had the brilliant idea to post pictures of several modern art pieces that captured our attention and ask what your intrepretations were, but it had escaped my mind that the pieces were part of a display and were under stringent rules to not be available for viewing by the general public. In other words, I couldn't take pictures of them there and I can't find any here online. Alas, I will continue my search to see if anything can be dug up. But until then, in lieu of the funky modern things I know you are all interested in, here are several substitute pieces for your viewing pleasure. Let me know your artistic interpretations.



You know about as much as I do regarding this piece. It was standing free from any type of signage (yes, that is actually a word) in the center of a road near the Museo Tamayo, the modern art museum. The sidewalks and median along this entire road are home to displays of various sculptures, paintings, and photographs. My theory on this (considering that Mexico is very Catholic) is that the sculpture may be a Biblical reference to the story about feeding a crowd of people from just a few fish and loaves of bread. Maybe it symbolizes a dream for the future of Mexico, which is currently a country with an extremely high percentage of people living in poverty. It may show hope for Mexico one day being able to use what materials it has (scarce as they may be--one fish in the sculpture) and make something more of them so they can be fairly distributed to everyone.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z9HpuuBFGY
A link to a video that follows the journey of two bouncy balls through Mexico City to the Museo Tamayo. It's interesting, that's for sure, but I have yet to decide whether it is actually saying something or if it is just an advertisement for the museum.