I saw a huge steam roller, It blotted out the sun. The people all lay down, lay down; They did not try to run. My love and I, we looked amazed Upon the gory mystery. "Lie down, lie down!" the people cried. "The great machine is history!" My love and I, we ran away, The engine did not find us. We ran up to a mountain top, Left history far behind us. Perhaps we should have stayed and died, But somehow we don't think so. We went to see where history'd been, And my, the dead did stink so.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the inevitability of history and the choices we make in response to it.
In this quote, Kurt Vonnegut explores the relationship between humanity and the overwhelming forces of history and society, represented by the steamroller that blots out the sun. The imagery of people lying down in resignation juxtaposed with the speaker's choice to run away signifies a conscious decision to break free from the weight of historical predestination, suggesting a tension between acceptance and rebellion against fate.
In practice
During a graduation speech, one might reflect on the lessons of history and the importance of choosing one's path.
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.
How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year.
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
To be convinced in our hearts that we have forgiveness of sins and peace with God by grace alone is the hardest thing.
When the calamity we feared is already arrived, or when the expectation of it is so certain as to shut out hope, there seems to be a principle within us by which we look with misanthropic composure on the state to which we are reduced, and the heart sullenly contracts and accommodates itself to what it most abhorred.
The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives.
When feminism does not explicitly oppose racism, and when anti-racism does not incorporate opposition to patriarchy, race and gender politics often end up being antagonistic to each other, and both interests lose.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.
The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas.
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