Inside Knives

In chapter six there was one special event that amazed me yet still terrified me. When Lazzaro tells the story of how he took revenge on a dog that bit it was one of those parts that you want the whole information the page has gets into your head right away because you cannot wait to see what happens. Lazzaro tells this story when he is mentioning how sweet revenge is. It says the following:

"When he was gone, Lazzaro promised Billy and poor old Edgar Derby that he was going to have revenge, and that revenge was sweet.

'It's the sweetest thing there is'" (P.138 Vonnegut)

The theme in this part is clearly revenge because it is mentioned so much and so emphasized. When telling this story, Lazzaro tells it with such tranquility that it can even transmit a feeling of irony. In some kind there is poetic justice for the dog because while he wanted to eat Lazzaro from his physical outside, he wanted to eat his inside and then he reflected it outside because "Blood started coming out of his mouth. He started crying, and he rolled on the ground, as though the knives were on the outside of him instead of the inside of him. The he tried to bite out his own insides" (P.139 Vonnegut). The way Lazzaro tell the story shows his sadism and how he is willing to have revenge even with an animal that cannot think, this shows the bitterness of his life.

It is stated clearly that Lazzaro has an obsession with revenge. An explanation to this could be some grave event in his childhood that could've affected him for life for him to end up thinking this way. At the end he says, "Anybody ever asks you what the sweetest thing in life is, it's revenge" (P. 139 Vonnegut)