"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward." --Kurt Vonnegut
This quote signifies that Vonnegut has a optimistic personality. He would rather laugh than cry. We can see this in his novel Slaughter House five. Vonnegut was in Dresden when it was fire bombed. And he had to clean up the corpses after the bombing. After a firestorm, the flesh on people's body is probably cooked, and the body probably fell apart as soon as it is moved. So Vonnegut was probably forced to look at bloody human gore. But he decides not to cry about that, instead, he write a book about it, and fill the book with humor. I think that humor is the way the Vonnegut deals with the sadness and horror of war.
You're right about Vonnegut's exposure to hard living during the war. Also, remember that he experienced many sad events during his life i.e. his mother's suicide. Maybe laughter is less about laughing and more about scaring the sadness away.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Ray, I think that Vonnegut uses laughter to mask his true emotions and how he feels. But in all honesty, I don't think that "true" laughter can be grouped together with crying when it comes to responses to frustration and exhaustion. If one laughs during a time of anger and exhaustion, I believe the individual is just accepting the situation that they're in and pitying themself.
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