Quote by Kurt Vonnegut

American planes full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires gathered them into cylindrical steel containers and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though German fighters came up again made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America where factories were operating night and day dismantling the cylinders separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground to hide them cleverly so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

American planes full of holes and wounded men and corpses to

Summary

This quote, taken from Kurt Vonnegut's book "Slaughterhouse-Five," offers a satirical depiction of the absurdity and paradoxical nature of war. It describes a surreal scene in which American and German planes engage in a reversed and alternative form of combat. The notion of planes taking off backwards, warplanes miraculously healing damaged bombers, and bombs being magically gathered and stored depicts the futility of war and the destruction it inflicts. Vonnegut employs dark humor and irony to convey the senseless cycle of violence and the ultimate goal of peace and safety for all.

Topics

By Kurt Vonnegut

Liked the quote? Share it with your friends.

Random Quotations

Love is when the other person's happiness is more important

Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Man know much more than he understands.

Man know much more than he understands.

We're going to be focusing our science on things that will t

We're going to be focusing our science on things that will take us farther and longer into space. For many of those experiments, the crew members are human guinea pigs, which is fine; that's part of my job. I don't mind being a human guinea pig.

John L. Phillips

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Albert Einstein

The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.

The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car

And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.

To be worth making at all a journey has to be made in the mi

To be worth making at all a journey has to be made in the mind as much as in the world of objects and dimensions. What value can there be in seeing or experiencing anything for the first time unless it comes as a revelation? And for that to happen, some previously held thought or belief must be confounded, or enhanced, or even transcended. What difference can it make otherwise to see a redwood tree, a tiger, or a humming bird?

Ted Simon, Jupiter

It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut t

It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual.

Love Friendship Homosexuality

There's full consensus in the military that women shouldn't

There's full consensus in the military that women shouldn't be in person-to-person combat. I don't know if we have enough experience to know whether this is the right approach. But women can be elsewhere. We have mandatory military service in Chile. I pushed for women in all areas.

Michelle Bachelet

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their grati

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

Pain Revenge Mind Benefits

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opini

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger ye

And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!

Charles Dickens