Backwards

And finally… let it be known that this book is a master piece.

I have become more familiar with the way Vonnegut writes. This has helped me understand the novel and I am now taking more out of each section I read. The time traveling Billy is subjected to is the reason for this novel’s hazy plotline. Said plotline only makes the book more interesting, each section leads to a new event, in a different year, and in completely different circumstances. As a reader I am still not sure what all these events have in common (maybe they don’t have anything at all) and where they are leading. Perhaps there is a bigger point behind all of the small memories Billy has. Perhaps they are just meant to give me more insight on Billy Pilgrim’s life. Perhaps the author used them just to fill pages. I wouldn’t know, but there they are, and they are thrilling.

Vonnegut manages to find the obscure line between excessive description and not enough description in this book. Every event is described perfectly. The author gives enough insight so the reader will get the exact image of the scene, but not so much that the reader will get bored through it.

This scene is a complete contradiction to the Tralfamadorian ideal which states that time is not linear. The way Vonnegut describes every detail of time (even if it is going backwards) clearly states that time is lineal. According to the Tralfamadorian way of thinking, time can’t go forwards or backwards, it just is. 

Furthermore this scene is just a mockery of war in general. It doesn’t illustrate war as something painful or even as something that has an effect in human lives. It just describes war as a comic book would, as if it were nothing more than a few pieces of scrap metal and some humans lying around crying melodramatically. It takes away the importance of war, which is also a contradiction seeing as it was this war that caused Billy all his suffering in the first place.  This is the main reason I loved the beginning of chapter 4.

I would like to begin by saying that the description of the movie seen backwards by Billy Pilgrim is easily the best scene I have ever read.   

(all confused readers please read the paragraphs from last to first)