When I asked my sister, (who has read Slaughterhouse Five) to give me ideas for a blog post, she said, “write about feet.” I thought about it, and I realized that this book does have a lot of references to feet. Of course, there is the common phrase “blue and ivory,” used (seven times) to describe both Billy’s feet and the feet of dead people.
“Billy got out of bed in the moonlight….He looked down at his bare feet. They were ivory and blue"(Vonnegut 72).
“They saw the dead hobo again....Somebody had taken his boots. His bare feet were blue and ivory"(Vonnegut 148).
However there are also many other times when feet are featured at critical parts of the story. For example, the first thing Billy sees when he is captured are the golden boots and rag swaddled feet of the two German soldiers(pg 53). A photographer takes propaganda photos of Weary’s and Billy’s feet as “evidence of how miserably equipped the American Army often was”(Vonnegut 58). Roland Weary is in terrible pain from his feet and then dies of gangrene that starts there(pg 79). The horses pulling the wagon in Dresden are in pain from their broken feet (pg 196).
I started to think about what these references might mean. One thought I had was that feet are what connect a person to the Earth, something that anchors a person to life. Maybe when feet have turned to the dead color of “blue and ivory” it is showing how the connection to life has withered. Maybe Billy’s blue and ivory feet are showing his disconnection from the life he lives, and his removal from reality. Another thought I had was that feet that are bare and unprotected have a more direct connection with the earth, the world. Maybe the horses’ bare hooves and Billy's or Weary’s shoeless feet were indicating a direct connection with the suffering and pain of the world.
Am I reading too far into this? If not, do you have other thoughts about the importance of feet, particularly when related to the phrase “blue and ivory”? How could this be related to the relationship between life and death?
It is really interesting, how often the author writes about feet. I really like your idea about foot as a connection between human and Earth.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, the feet can represent the state in which body is located at that moment. During the war, the soldiers, but also other people were in awful conditions.
Maybe, the author wanted to emphasize the fact that the whole body suffered during the war, even the feet.