As I continued to read the third chapter of Slaughter House-Five, I stop for a moment and went back to observe some details that I didn’t understand so much at the beginning, but that began to make a lot of sense now.
I realized that what made Billy so special was his ability to travel back and forth through time living in his past and in his future, while in his present, meaning that he omitted the present of his life. For me this is very illogical because through out the different conflicts in my life I have learned one valuable lesson: “Seize the day.” Due to the fact that Billy is actually sacrificing in a way his present for distant or future memories is absurd to me. Then when I analyzed it more profoundly I considered the possibility that what Billy is doing is not traveling through time but living in his memories and dreams. This I suspected after reading the following line, “This wasn’t time travel. It had never happened, never would happen. It was the craziness of a dying young man with his shoes full of snow….The cheering went on, but its tone was altered as the hallucination gave way to time-travel.”(49). After doing a close reading to this part I could conclude that he had two types a hallucinations. One that was cause by pain that took him to the future, and another one within the future that because of a mid-life crisis, made him have visions about his past. Maybe the hallucinations that take him to the future also create images that relate to his past, but it is all in one big delusion that takes place during the present.
Again, religious topics begin to appear at the beginning of the chapter. Adam and Eve are mentioned as an image within a guy’s boots. This we can see it in the following segment, “If you look in there deeply enough, you’ll see Adam and Eve….they were naked, they were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently. Billy Pilgrim loved them.”(53) Here I could observe those religious elements that I had already mentioned in my last entry. The book has this great influence of Christianity, and the author creates this antiwar novel with the purpose of criticizing religion. Religion, as I had already said, is the major cause of most wars, especially the Christian Church. It is evident who the author uses Billy to make his judgments about this organization clear to the reader. By making Billy a person who uses Old Testament characters as the perfect example of human nature and admires how they never follow God’s instructions, the author succeeds to show what a paradoxical mind Billy has, and how he has been influenced by this religious institution and society. Later on in the third chapter, I observed other details like the bullet proof bible.
After reading some more pages I found the following fragment,
I realized that what made Billy so special was his ability to travel back and forth through time living in his past and in his future, while in his present, meaning that he omitted the present of his life. For me this is very illogical because through out the different conflicts in my life I have learned one valuable lesson: “Seize the day.” Due to the fact that Billy is actually sacrificing in a way his present for distant or future memories is absurd to me. Then when I analyzed it more profoundly I considered the possibility that what Billy is doing is not traveling through time but living in his memories and dreams. This I suspected after reading the following line, “This wasn’t time travel. It had never happened, never would happen. It was the craziness of a dying young man with his shoes full of snow….The cheering went on, but its tone was altered as the hallucination gave way to time-travel.”(49). After doing a close reading to this part I could conclude that he had two types a hallucinations. One that was cause by pain that took him to the future, and another one within the future that because of a mid-life crisis, made him have visions about his past. Maybe the hallucinations that take him to the future also create images that relate to his past, but it is all in one big delusion that takes place during the present.
Again, religious topics begin to appear at the beginning of the chapter. Adam and Eve are mentioned as an image within a guy’s boots. This we can see it in the following segment, “If you look in there deeply enough, you’ll see Adam and Eve….they were naked, they were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently. Billy Pilgrim loved them.”(53) Here I could observe those religious elements that I had already mentioned in my last entry. The book has this great influence of Christianity, and the author creates this antiwar novel with the purpose of criticizing religion. Religion, as I had already said, is the major cause of most wars, especially the Christian Church. It is evident who the author uses Billy to make his judgments about this organization clear to the reader. By making Billy a person who uses Old Testament characters as the perfect example of human nature and admires how they never follow God’s instructions, the author succeeds to show what a paradoxical mind Billy has, and how he has been influenced by this religious institution and society. Later on in the third chapter, I observed other details like the bullet proof bible.
After reading some more pages I found the following fragment,
“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.”(60)
As soon as I read it, a bell rang inside my head. This quote was very familiar to me and I was sure I had heard it many times. I probably read it in another text, maybe another book or just in religion class. I am almost positive that my mother read it to me along time ago trying to teach me some lesson that I probably ignored. For me, this citation is going to be significant in the novel. Maybe I will see it later on and fully understand its meaning with relation to the text. The narrator mentions that Billy applied this stanza to his life in relation to the things we could not change, which were his past, present and future. One of the reasons of why he might say that could have been connected to my theory of Billy fantasizing about his past and future within a momentary dream in his present. The time games that Billy’s mind has created, could have been provoked by a traumatic experience, which he probably had at war. This resembles once again to the author’s great criticism towards war in this novel.
Finally I would like to address the following question:
Why is Billy weeping during certain hours of the day? Is this related some way with the possible trauma he could have had during war and that is leading his mind to create these hallucinations?
the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change,
courage
to change the things I can,
and wisdom always
to tell the
difference.”(60)
As soon as I read it, a bell rang inside my head. This quote was very familiar to me and I was sure I had heard it many times. I probably read it in another text, maybe another book or just in religion class. I am almost positive that my mother read it to me along time ago trying to teach me some lesson that I probably ignored. For me, this citation is going to be significant in the novel. Maybe I will see it later on and fully understand its meaning with relation to the text. The narrator mentions that Billy applied this stanza to his life in relation to the things we could not change, which were his past, present and future. One of the reasons of why he might say that could have been connected to my theory of Billy fantasizing about his past and future within a momentary dream in his present. The time games that Billy’s mind has created, could have been provoked by a traumatic experience, which he probably had at war. This resembles once again to the author’s great criticism towards war in this novel.
Finally I would like to address the following question:
Why is Billy weeping during certain hours of the day? Is this related some way with the possible trauma he could have had during war and that is leading his mind to create these hallucinations?
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