Once again, I have connected my blog to the negative aspects of war since I feel like it is a theme of the novel. Vonnegut shares the reality of war which is that "people are discouraged from being characters" (164). Therefore, the novel contains few characters in Vonnegut's opinion. One phrase that I could relate to the Twilight Saga: Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer is "most of the people in it [war] are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces" (164). Although the Twilight Saga is often the subject of ridicule, blatant parallels exist between this statement in chapter eight and Eclipse. In the third installment of Bella and Edward's love story, a vengeful vampire named Victoria creates a bloodthirsty army (literally!) in order to kill Bella. Her army of newborn vampires can only recognize their addiction to human blood since they have just been created. Because the army is consumed with their thirst, they are in a state of bedlam and consternation. None of the newborns are aware that their purpose is to unite as an army. Manipulating the newborns who will do anything to satisfy their insatiable thirst, Victoria is the mastermind behind this entire plan. Hence she is an "enormous force" just as the warring nations in WWII are enormous forces that use soldiers to achieve the end goal of victory without realizing the gruesome consequences.
I never thought of it that way, but you are exactly right. Just as the "newborns" in "Eclipse" were forced into war, many young adults were drafted into WWII. Some of the new vampires were children. Vonnegut often spoke about how they were just out of childhood when they joined WWII.
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