Friday, June 8, 2012

From Gory to... Toy Story?

While reading Chapter Two of Slaughterhouse-Five, I had a sudden realization of a movie connection. I was able to connect a character of this book to a character of Toy Story. Yes, as foreshadowed by the picture above, I am connecting the life of Roland Weary to Sid Phillips, the toy bully.
 For example, on page 35, Vonnegut begins explaining the young life of Weary to begin to characterize him. The quote is, "It made Weary sick to be ditched. When Weary was ditched, he would find somebody who was even more unpopular than himself, and he would horse around with that person for a while, pretending to be friendly. And then he would find some pretext for beating the sh*t out of him."
This quote provides a reason for the motivation behind Weary's actions as a cruel, bullish person. Because Weary was unpopular as a child (due to his horrific, unavoidable aroma of bacon), he had to take out his anger on someone else. Weary was never satisfied with anyone's friendship, and he took out his grudge on innocent classmates. Consequently, from then on, Weary began to love torturing others in the most gruesome ways possible. (Exhibit A: the "triangular blade" he possesses would cause a wound to never close up. Yikes!)
And with his horrifying love of torturing others, he is very similar to Sid Phillips. Yes, I know, Sid was not necessarily a torturer of humans, but the point is still valid. Sid loved torturing toys, and he would not stop with a simple way of torture; instead, Sid opted for torture devices like "The Big One," to cause the largest explosion. Other examples of Sid Phillips' torture include performing a "double bypass brain transplant" surgery between his sister's Janie Doll and a pterodactyl, and he also took a magnifying glass to burn Woody's head. Clearly, this is one pretty messed up kid.
Weary and Sid have one main thing in common: a knack for painful torture. But Sid Phillips also had a reason for being so nasty: he must have been kicked out of summer camp. (I know this based on Hamm's comment of "They must have kicked him out of summer camp early this year.") Sid must have been angry because of the camp (or maybe just because he's an insane young psychopath) to take out his anger on his toys. In this way, he shares a bond with Roland Weary because each of the two takes out his anger on others and enjoy torturing with the most possible pain upon their victims. The two are each bullies, and I think there is a direct connection between them.

1 comment:

  1. I really like this post! After reading this, I realized the connection between Sid and Roland. They both love to see others in pain. In the movie, we never truly figure out why Sid is a bully. In the book, the author explains the purpose of why Roland is a bully.

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