Oh the Irony...

Howard W. Campbell Jr., the famous traitor of Vonnegut’s novel, comes to recruit the American prisoners of war at the time of very low morale. However, the morale was not low enough for Edgar Derby not to be riled by Campbell and his betrayal. He quickly moved from calling Campbell a snake to speaking of the American ideals of freedom, justice, opportunities, and fair play for all. Right as Derby was winding down his speech about fair play the air-raid sirens ironically began sounding. Although no bombs were dropped that day it foreshadowed the massacre which was to come the next day when the Americans would drop tons of gasoline on the city of Dresden and kill 135,000 people including innocent civilians and U.S. soldiers held captive. Although an aspect of war, many people would argue that this act was not technically “fair play” on the part of America. Later on in the same chapter, Vonnegut even compares the Americans to robots with no conscience as they drop the bombs and then leave with no thought of the people on the ground. Another ironic aspect of Derby’s speech came when he stated that “there wasn’t a man there who wouldn’t gladly die” for the ideals that he mentioned. However, the reader knows that Billy Pilgrim could care less about patriotism or much of anything else for that matter. Billy seems to be a man with very few ideals and has a hard time standing up for those so he would probably find it extremely hard to lay down his life for the ideals of America. Although pieces of Derby’s speech are ironic, the reader can’t help but to applaud him for standing up for our country against Campbell during a time where it would have been easier to give in.