Real Fairy Tales

Slaughter-House Five
Kurt Vonnegut


         Since the first homo sapiens settled within communities and formed cultures, there has been no peace. We are constantly in battle. The human race has always judged an discriminated their own kind, even if we define ourselves as one specie, we manage to become enemies of our own people.

          War can be defined as two or more separate groups that engage in conflict. Nevertheless, it is contradicting when society invokes the human race as "one team." However, if we plan to live among war, who is our opponent? Who is the "enemy?" Who is our challenger? The truth is, we have no enemies. This has led us to  create our "pretend" offenders.  This situation can be perceived as a children's imagination game. Where their must be the "witch," there must be the "prince charming" and he must always save the "damsel princess in distress." Although, at the end of the game, the children leave their play house, remove their costumes, and go to the kitchen for some cake.

        Why can't real life be a children's game? Where we enjoy playing the bad witch, or the good princess, however after the game is finished, we take off our costumes. For some reason, humans have always had the urge to fight, like children we to create our own "fairy tales." However, when we obtain the desire to fight, we don't let go. We stick to our mythical character and forget we are someone else. This is the reason why humans describe themselves as "cold hearted." This is the reason why all of the Hollywood movies today portray the message of the movie "Avatar." Society has come to a point where it identifies itself with violence and war. Our favorite childish game has become war.

<<"So-" said Billy gropingly, "I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too."
"Of course."
"But you do have a peaceful planet here."
"Today we do. On other days we have wars as horrible as any you've ever seen or read about. There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments-like today at the zoo. Isn't this a nice moment?"
"Yes.">> (pg. 120)

          Would humanity have been more peaceful if we had ignored savage-like actions? Are the Tralfamadorians correct, when they say they ignore the violence and focuse on the positive side of their flawed four dimensional world? However, how can one witness a dark incident and simply ignore it? Wouldn't one want to form part of this battle, where one is fighting against evil? Nevertheless, how is one sure one is preventing the world from the villains? How does one prove, one is not the villain. This situation reminds me of the Broadway play, "Wicked," where the play explains that the "Witch of the West" from the film "The Wizard of Oz" is not the "bad witch," and the "Witch of the East," is not at all the "good witch." If we play the war game and are not sure if we are part of the good side, how can we keep on fighting?

      We enjoy creating wars because their will always be a hero. So if humans need to feel satisfied and reassured when a "good witch" saves the day, why would we ignore war? Tralfamadorians say that to find peace on Earth, one must ignore the violence and continue thinking happy thoughts. One must look at war as a children's game and not part of reality.

      How can we even consider war being a children's game? Murder is one-hundred percent real. So if humanity has come to view war as reality, we must not ignore it. If humans will accept that war is not a game, then we must recognize we are responsible for the real crimes.

     Tralafamadorians are wrong, we must never ignore war to find peace of mind. Peace of mind is very different from the actual peace of action.