Slaughterhouse Five - pgs 72-96

Following Billy's packing in a boxcar, the new chapter talks to us about Billy's abduction form earth by the Trafalmadorians. A strange part of this event is that somehow Billy has complete knowledge of his abduction. "Billy now shuffled down his upstairs hallway, knowing he was about to be kidnapped by a flying saucer." (pg 72) Billy's character is so different from any I have met that I wasn't at all surprised at this. As Billy walked down his house to be abducted he saw a movie while being unstuck in time so he saw the movie backwards. Here Vonnegut does an interesting thing by showing the war backwards, "The bombers exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes." (pg 74) This made me sense a certain irony in the passage as what sounded nice and harmless was never gonna happen, instead the exact opposite would occur. Maybe Vonnegut used this as more anti-war appeals, showing how the exact opposite of war seemed perfectly natural and logical.

After Billy left his house and was lifted into the saucer that was waiting for him, he was told by his captors not to worry of the reasons why he was there, he just had to accept that it had occured. Then his trip to Trafalmadore began. An interesting message by a Trafalmadorian was, "Only on Earth is there any talk of free will." (pg 86) This is curious as then I started thinking about free will as I read along and found that the alien was right, at least in war, free will doesn't exist. In Billy's case, he couldn't even choose to sleep as the rest of the soldiers in the boxcar wouldn't permit him. When a German hit an American in the mouth, the American asked, "Why me?" and the German answered, "Vy you? Vy anybody?" (pg 91) This inmediately reminded me of what the Trafalmadorian said, there is no free will. I think this might be one of the ongoing themes throughout the novel. A great example of how this is shown over and over is the phrase "So it goes" which is used every time death is mentioned. It tries to give the reader the feeling that there's nothing that can be done about death, it will just happen. "A slave laborer form Poland had done the stamping. He was dead now. So it goes." (pg 91)

A part of the text I found interesting was the first encounter with the English POW's. They were singing "Hail, Hail, the Gang's all Here". That happy ambient does a sharp contrast with what it encounters almost directly in front of them: Death, starvation nad pain. It shows what the early war had been and how the war evlolved into the worst humanity could offer, extermination camps, racism, lack of moral values. This is one of those vivid images that Vonnegut clearly chose for its great potential to be remembered and reflected upon.