Past, Present, Future

“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future”. This quote from the book appears contradicting seeing as Billy Pilgrim is seemingly able to travel in time. In this chapter, Vonnegut treats the past and present as if they were insignificant, somehow merged together. He writes them as though the limits between them were blurred. Billy’s life is a mixture of past, future, and present. He spends his time falling asleep while he should be awake but finds that sleep doesn’t come to him when he has the time for it. Throughout this chapter it is easy to see that Billy Pilgrim finds his life unfulfilling. As a war veteran and wealthy optometrist this seems hard to imagine, but that’s the way it is. His daughter thinks he is a liar, he was a war prisoner in Germany, he falls asleep during his work meetings and nothing seems to fill him up.

The fact that he seems to be crazy and is unable to sleep may lead to the reader believing that Billy Pilgrim has post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the war, and I must say, to me, that is the most likely explanation for his behavior and his idea of being kidnaped by aliens. The Tralfamadorians seem to be his way of getting over what he saw in the war. They believe that every moment has always been the same way and thus it could have never been changed. This probably helps Billy live over the regret of war. This ideology probably is the one thing that keeps him sane, or at least relatively so.  He is certainly a troubled man and I think some of this confusion may be due to the war and possibly to the bombing of Dresden which is what the book is supposed to be about.   

Something that struck as very interesting to me in this chapter was the plaque in Billy’s office which stated: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” This plaque seems to tie up with the quote I mentioned at the beginning, it states that there are certain things that cannot be changed, and we must accept that, but in a way it also contradicts it by saying that some things must be changed if they can be. I have noticed that Vonnegut seems to contradict himself a lot in his writing, even if it is with little things such as this. To me this is part of what makes him such a brilliant author, his book is fascinating to read because it is complex. You find yourself rereading pieces of it, just to make sure you understood right. The novel is extremely well written and the situation is so bizarre it is hard to put it down.