Reading Blog: Slaughter House Five (pg 23-51)

"Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time" ( Vonnegut, 23), interesting way to start a chapter. Although, when I first read this I though to myself that being unstuck in time meant being able to control time, and the flow of events; however, with Billy Pilgrim, as I read, was different, since he was really stil "stuck" in time, but with the slight defference that he could travel through it. Well yeah, maybe the fact that you can travel through the past the present, and the future may be to some people to be "unstuck" in time; however, in my perspective I see Billy Pilgrim still "stuck" in time, since he can't control his actions or events while he is traveling, but not stuck in the present. "Billy blinked in 1958, traveled in time to 1961. It was NEw Year's Eve, and BIlly was disgracefully drunk at a party where everybody was in optometry or married to an optometrist." (Vonnegut, 46).

Now, I also found quite interesting the fact that the name of "Billy Pilgrim" was repeated continously throught the whole chapter, and I wouldn't be shocked if it was repeated throughout the whole book, because, as I kept reading, I found an apparent reason for this matter. "He told Billyto encourage people to call him Billy-because it would stick in their memories. I would also make him seem slightly magical, since there weren't any other grown Billys around. It also compelled people to think of him as a friend right away." (Vonnegut, 46). This was in fact TRUE in my case, since reading the name continously as I read the book never bothered me, it just flowed smoothly with the rest of the text while another name, like Johnathan, would've make me pause everytime. Also, Billy is in fact a name that I, and maybe other people, associate with a friendly an humble person, which is in fact Billy's attitude so far.

I also noticed that Pilgrim, Billy's last name, may in fact have a much greater meaning that just his family's name. Well, at the beginning of this chapter, the book talked about the abduction that Billy experienced by the Tralfamadorians, and how he was explanied how time and death "should" be seen. This voyage Billy had to Talfamadore, was in fact similar with the Pilgrims to North America in the year 1608, and the Tralfamadorians are, in my opinion, the indians that recived them in peace, and tought them how to farm and harvest a crop, such as corn. Like the Pilgrims, Billy was completely new and neive about Tralfamadore, and the ability to travel through time, like the Pilgrims in North America, and the ability to farm.

"so it goes", every time death is mentioned, it is followed by the so it goes, which is according to Billy's explanation, what the Tralfamadorians say after they see a dead corpse. According to Billy, only see death as a state where a being isn't ok; however it is ok plenty of other times in the past. "when a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but the same person is just fine in plenty other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes." (Vonnegut, 26). But I really don't agree with the Tralfamadorian philosophy about that a dead person is just in a bad state and that he/she was fine before in many other times, because when a person is dead he/she is in that bad state for the rest of one's existance in the Earth. And, the fact that the Tralfamadorians say that the occurances in one's life don't have to be, as we see it, cronological, is wrong in my eyes, well I don't see in the fourth dimension of the Tralfamadorians, but I do know that every action has an equal reaction (Newton's third law of motion).

Finally, the fact that a motherfucker saved Billy's life is comic, and it can be interpretated as a word that shocks people so bad, that it saved Billy's life, "...and it did its job. It woke him up and got him off the road." (Vonnegut 34).