It's Not His Fault.

Many times I ask myself if there is role for man in the world. Why God did put us here? Had he planned a special goal he wanted us to achieve? Who knows we will never know but we do know that many years ago man was placed on this earth and started evolving not because of God but be cause of himself. We are used to blame God for the things that happen, good or bad we find ourselves saying “if god wants to” or “because god wanted it to happen”. This is not true, things happen because we make them happen, in the end it is no one else fault but ours.

Pangloss believes how all “was designed for the best” but James did not agree with him and I agree with James. “Men, he said must have somewhat altered the course of nature; for they were not born wolves, yet they have become wolves.” We are not given our role for life when we are born but it is up to us to create one. We have the liberty to choose weather it be good or bad meaning that if something happens, it happened because of us, because we chose to be that way, we were not forced to and no one chose for us. “God did not give them twenty-four pounders or bayonets, yet they have made themselves bayonets and guns to destroy each other.” (Page 31). We have the tendency to create evil thinking that it is for the best. We create guns for our protection but because of the creation of these, war and conflict arises since we have the resources to create it.

Those people that think that the world is a horrible place should think twice because it is in part their fault. As Jean Paul Sartre said “Everything has been figured out, except how to live life.” We were never given a handbook on how to live life on earth still we have to live it some way or the other. Unfortunately men trying to think for the best most of the times make decisions that lead to the worst. I am not saying that everything in life is bad and that all the choices made by men lead to the worst. We have made some great progress and discoveries we should be proud of. The way man has handled evolution is something that impresses me greatly. Nevertheless I cant help thinking how most of the times in order to me precautionary and protective we create ides that tend to shift and instead of proetecting us end up destroying us.

The World Is All Right, But

Some say this world we live in is a perfect one. Others say it is the worst, and then there are the ones that don’t care because for them this world is fine. To all of those people I say wake up. It is important to know that we don’t live in a perfect world. It is up to us to make our own world, the way we live perfect not forgetting that there are problems and bad things happening everyday that may affect us. Pretending that all is wonderful is worst for us because we are not prepared when bad comes to us.

Candid’s tutor Pangloss has the way of thinking that this world is perfect. Since God created the world, God is perfect, therefore the world is perfect. He taught to Candide “that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything is made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.”(Page 20). It’s funny how some people believe this and think that “all is for the best”. Voltaire is making fun of these people and their optimistic philosophy of viewing life. By thinking this way they omit the part that evil occurs in the world. God is perfect right, so why could he create evil? This proofs my point, every human being knows there is evil then, the world is not perfect. We deny this because of fear of facing the actual things that happen the bad ones.

It is absurd to believe the world is perfect when right now while I am writing this blog people are dying and families are suffering. Even if facing the real world is hard, it is better because you cannot go on your whole thinking nothing wrong can happen, because when it will the only person that will get hit by it is you.

Embrace Simplicity

Once I remembered a man telling me, “Every man must decide weather he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” As I heard these words in my mind I started to think, which would, I choose. The right one would be to go through the light of creative altruism, being unselfish and thinking of others. But I ask you, is it really that simple? I could say that my goal in life is not to be selfish, to think of others before myself but, when the time comes to put this decision at use, we realize it’s hard and most of us switch from one light to the other.

There are two types of selfish people. The ones that were raised selfish, the ones that won’t even lend you a pair of shoes. And the other, is inside all of us. The difference between these two depends on the situation, the selfish person will always be like that never generous, always think of himself, when the other one will be selfish when it is someone that is having a problem. Suppose your friends’ dog has dies, you feel sad for them maybe, but you probably say, that’s life and we have to move on. Now be really honest with me, would you react the same way if it was your dog the one that had died? No, of course you wouldn’t, what you would really be thinking is poor me, I am all alone without my dog, poor me. This is when that selfish person that is inside all of us comes out. It can come out, it is naturally for us to feel sad about something that has happened “But we should have remembered how we feel when we hear of the same thing about others.”(Section 26) Epictetus and I feel the same about this. There is nothing wrong in feeling sorry or sad for yourself, as long as when something terrible happens to someone else you remember how you felt when that happened to you instead of pretending you care and actually help that person. We may think that since everyone is like that they won’t mind if you’re attitude is apathetic, but they will and think that you simply don’t care about them.

The right thing is not the easiest thing to do, even so it should be the path we take in order to live a fine life. With simply caring more about people’s problems we come closer to that path we have been destined to follow since the very beginning of life. When being selfish, we are not living as we wish to live: we are asking others to live how we wish to live. We shouldn't punish others for our own choices, but just remember how we feel about them.

Dear Mr. Frost.

Dear Mr. Frost,

Many times in life you encounter a situation where you have to make a decision. A decision that is not easy to make because you may regret the thing you decide or because it will mark you for the rest of your life. Having read your poem The Path Not Taken made me think about this because the story you narrate represents how humans actually make their own decisions, in this case having to choose between two options. When the time comes for us two choose many things take over us and create an impact in the decisions we choose: our emotions, our rationality, and our freewill. In the end the decision we make is our own choice, even if some things affected us, we are the ones that make the decision because we are capable of it. As I said in my handbook “the things that are not up to us, are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own.” Our decisions are up to us, that is why we must think well before deciding but in then end the choice we make is the one we want because our choice and judgment made us chose it. We should not worry about our decision and if we ever regret it we should remember that is was our own choice, therefore blame nobody but ourselves. Hope you find this letter enriching and up to some point agree with me.

Kind Regards,

Epictetus.

It's All Up To You.

When you look at a situation you always decide if it is negative or positive. When you are not sure, it is up to you the way you want to look at it. Some people are optimist others pessimists, and some say they are realist (which I find irrelevant). The way you decide to view at the situation depends only on you and your personality.

When people are always pessimists in the end its worse for them, because even the things that are possible they see them as impossible, so if they don’t help themselves first you will? When people are very optimistic it can get annoying and unintelligent because they believe anything can be done even when you know that the worst is ahead. Those people that at funerals say that you have to look at the bright side and think the person that has died is going to be with god. That can bother some people, especially me. I do not see the realist category as a real one because realists are positive people that have good judgment and know when something is possible or not.

Falling into extremes is bad that’s why Epictetus handbook says that “make yourself appear so to yourself, and you will be capable of it.” ( Section 23). The way Epictetus wants us to view this is that based on our judgment and the situation we decide how we look at it. It does not depend on weather you are negative or positive it depends on how much you want the situation to happen (or goal to be achieved). Rationality and emotion both play an important role with this, because in order to make the right choice you have to think real but in order to actually achieve it you have to want it.

Nobody is capable of making the perfect decision. Emotion may have a stronger effect one time or vice versa. That is human nature, something that is bound to happen, in some cases if things turn right you may feel as if the decision was perfect, to that I say it was luck or just maybe not a tough decision. The important thing is you make yourself believe you can do it in order to accomplish, never forgetting to be realistic.

Courage, Wisdom Or Both?

When we are born, our life starts to follow a path. While on that path there are things that depend on us and others that don’t. We have the power upon ourselves to change the things we can depending what we want. The other things, the ones that don’t depend on us we can’t change “You are foolish if you want your children and your wife and your friends to live forever.”(Section 14). Circumstances like the one just mentioned are things we have to accept, especially this one because death is the one thing we know for sure will happen.

Every man wants to achieve success, in order to do so we must stop focusing in the things we can’t change and give more importance to those we can. By doing so we learn to identify our strengths and weaknesses, learn from our mistakes, and set a goal we want to achieve. This thought rarely passes through our minds because most of us think of ourselves as flawless human beings, think we don’t make mistakes but other people make them and they simply affect us. So we don’t know what we need to change from ourselves in order to succeed. The first step we need to take for our goal to be achieved is accept we do have weaknesses, look past our pride, accept that the mistakes we have made in the past, have been because of us and no one else. Then look for possible ways not to make that mistakes again or correct it if the opportunity is still available. By doing so, we will grow as people and obtain greater success in our emotional and physical aspects.

All of this varies depending on the personality of the individual. For some people it is easy to accept their mistakes, others have so much pride that they think they are perfect are and what goes wrong is never because of them but always because of something else. These people never ask for forgiveness because we have the mentally that it was not our fault. In the end it’s harder for them because they are one step behind the others, and in order to accept their mistakes, they first of all, must learn that they do make them.

There are three situations in life: the ones you can’t change, the one you can and the ones that are not up to you. Reading section 14 made me recall this prayer I often hear: “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.” (SH 209). Even if it’s hard we must remember to live according to that prayer, and identify the things we can and can’t change and to know that neither too much courage nor too much wisdom is the best way to look at situations in life but instead a mixture of both.

There Is No Light Without The Dark.

People have different ways of viewing life. There are some that focus and try to create a way to achieve happiness and how to live a pure life. Epictetus was a Greek Philosopher that believed that “philosophy was a way of life and not just a theoretical difference.” (Wikipedia). To Epictetus all events were created by fate, we can’t control them, but we can accept them in a tranquil way.

When you’re life begins you start learning new things everyday. You see how people act and learn the values they teach you at home. Based on what you learn you start living life according to what you think it is right. I find interesting how some people, usually a long time ago, like Epictetus look at life based on their own perspective and by that they create a “handbook” or some rules we could that if followed you give you the result of a well lived life. It is up to you if you decide to follow this or not. By the way we have been raised, we follow some of these “rules” in a broad way because I see most of them as the basic of an educated life. However when reading the Handbook you understand more some mistakes you may make. In section 5 it states “What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgment about things. ” (Section 5) Many times we get upset with something or someone but we never seem to think that what may affect us is the result of the thing. If we actually take that into account we could avoid problems and conflicts in our life.

“The things that are not up to us are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own.” (Section 1) We have the power to do what we want and create our life the way we think is right, which can be wrong. We have power over ourselves, so we must not let anything take over and force us to do what we don’t want to do. These people, in our case Epictetus what they do is to try and make us understand how we humans have enough power in order to live life the right way but it depends on how we use that power. It all comes down to a choice between right and wrong.

When we read Slaughter House-Five, we get to know Billy Pilgrim as a character. He fits into the teachings that Epictetus tries and make us learn because Billy has the power to choose right from wrong, for him he had chosen right but afetrward he realized it was wromg because he he did not agree with the decesion he had taken and was not satisfied with the life he was living. Billy does not blame himself for hating his life at the moment, which he should because he was the one that made those decision. Instead he blames the outcome of his life, that is exactly what the handbook says we must learn not do because in the end the outcome of the problem in this case Billy lifes is caused becasue of Billy so in the end it is the same thing as blaming himself.

The End Does Not Justify The Means.

Slaughter House-Five was a book that makes you realize how war does not make sense. Vonnegut tells this story in a different way not using the usual structure of climax, introduction, etc. Throughout the ten chapters of the book he skips from time and place narrating different experiences that happen to Billy during and after war. “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 22). The first time I read that sentence I did not understand what it meant, know I now that is was Vonnegut way of warning us that he was going to narrate the novel in a nonlinear way.

Billy had come unstuck in time because of the impact war had left on him. When it was over he was lost in his life because he saw no meaning in it. By narrating the novel in a nonlinear way Vonnegut gives Billy a “second” chance to give meaning to some of the moments in his life, allowing him to travel back and forth to them.

“So it goes” appears too many times in this novel. I noticed how almost always when something that was related with death was mentioned, the paragraph ended with “so it goes.” “ In the next moment, Billy Pilgrim is dead. So it goes” (Vonnegut 143). I was told this is an anti war a book but then I asked myself: if this is an anti war book why does Vonnegut talk so carelessly about war? It is another way to show us how war I pointless because even if war does happen and many people die and cities get destroyed life will go on. It’s kind of a way of saying whatever, it does not matter. What the point of having war if life still goes about after it.

I finally understood why the called it an antiwar book. With the way Vonnegut writes his novel. The details he includes in it and how he gives more importance to insignifact things like going to New York to talk on the radio instead of the actual bombing of Dresden sends that message that war does not make sense because life goes on after war.

In the end whatever happens life goes on. “So it goes.”

There Is No Good War Or Bad Peace.

All throughout history we have seen how disagreements between countries usually end up in war. When it’s over we realize the damages they cause and sometimes even regret that we started it. Then again another argument comes along and we fight causing damage, again. Society knows that war is bad but somehow we see it as the only way to make a point. People today are so greedy that they always want more. For them, war is a way to show how much power they have so every time they have a chance to show that they’re going to use it.

If someone asked me the question: is war justified? I would say no it’s not. The way I see it war is useless because even if the problem at the end is resolved the damages it leaves after it are much larger. Not only that but innocent people or even countries that have nothing to do it may end up jeopardized. Of course it is easier to say this than to do actually do it, because what could be simpler than throwing a bomb at a country that does not want to agree with you? It is the easiest way and apart from that if you win you end up with more power. Still I feel there has to be a way in which we could try to avoid war and violence.

In Slaughter House Five we come across the bombing of Dresden and how Vonnegut tells us about it. In chapter nine Billy is talking to a professor " 'It had to be done,' Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden. 'I know,' said Billy. 'That's war.' 'I know. I'm not complaining.' " this show how another point of my opinion. In some cases war does have to be fought because it’s really the only way to solve the issue, still this does not justify it. Just because it has to be done does not mean it should.

The way Vonnegut talks about war does not quite let us know if he (Billy) justifies or does not justifies it. By saying “so it goes” very often throughout the book he gives us the message as if he does not care, more like a way of saying “whatever” yes it happened but what can be done about it. Then again seeing the trauma that resembles in Billy because of the song (chapter 8) shows that Billy was affected by it, hence it can also mean that Billy does care about war in negative way only he does not know it.

You May Say I'm A Dreamer, But I'm Not The Only One

I’ve tried to keep my dreams alive as I journeyed through my life. But then I’ll find no difference between dreams and reality. There will be a moment in my life constructed by my dreams, or my dreams would be just part of my life. My conscience will constantly tell me. “Dream as if you’ll live forever, dream as if you’ll die today.” My death will never be a problem, for as when I am dead. My dreams and life will all be gone. With them gone, I’ll have no problem identifying the difference between these two parallel streams in my journey. The problem is, lately I’ve considered death as only a status of “illness” of the human beings and not the end. If I never die I won’t ever find the difference between dreams and reality. At least I don’t have to worry about a third character in my doubt, as Billy Pilgrim does.Not only does Billy lives and dreams but he also time travels. How can we know which of these are the actual moments of Billy’s life? Vonnegut creates a difference between the “true” time travel and the actual dreams. “Billy was unconscious for two days after that, and he dreamed millions of things, some of them were true. The true things were time travel. ” (Vonnegut, 157). It is as if his time travel were dreams of his true life, because they happen but at the same time they don’t. Billy does live these moments again when he travels in time, he knows he does and we know that too because he narrates it to us but then again time travel does not happen. In this case it is a part of Billy’s imagination and trauma caused by war that he wishes he could fix. And by time traveling he makes himself believe he can do it.If we look at it one way, we could say the whole book is one big dream in Billy’s head. One dream that has a mixture of both reality and fiction. He (Billy) is telling us his story at war but apart from that he includes or mentions things that don’t have to do with it. Meaning that part of it is true when some portion of it id not. That is why for Billy we could say it is more complicated. I only have to decide weather it’s a dream, did it really happen, or was it a mixture of both. When with Billy its hard to tell if he actually lived it the way he tells it, was it all just a real dream that did not happen, or was it time traveling because Billy wanted to give meaning to that part of his life? In some cases we may know the answer but in others we are left with the doubt to know what it really was. For me it could be a dream, and for you it could be the real thing. We only have memories of the past. Billy has memories of his past, present, and future “Billy with his memories of the future, knew that the city would be smashed to smithereens and then burned-in about thirty more days. ” ( Vonnegut.151) so its harder to know what he dreams or what he lives because what at first was a dreams could become a reality he could encounter later on. Was this all just a dream, or did it really happen?

A Secret's Past.

When we keep secrets to ourselves, they die. Throughout history many people might have died with a secret they have never revealed. This did not happen to Billy Pilgrim. In chapter 8 he reveals to us what may seem to be the books biggest secret: the bombing of Dresden. Billy is at his anniversary when he hears a song “Really-I’m O.K and he was, too, except that he could find no explanation for why the song had affected him so grotesquely. He had supposed for years that he had no secrets from himself. Here was proof that he had a great big secret somewhere inside, and he could not imagine what it was. ” (Vonnegut 173). Hearing the song made Billy realize that after all his life he was keeping secrets from himself because there were parts of his life he did not like or wanted to remember.

Billy Pilgrim knew perfectly that he had been a war prison in Dresden and that he was there when the city was bombed but he never realized that trauma it had left on him until this chapter. “They looked liked a silent film of a barbershop quartet. ” “So long forever they might have been singing. Old fellows and pals; so long forever, old sweethearts and pals-God bless’em-” (Vonnegut,178). Hearing this song made Billy remember the night Dresden was bombed and how the soldiers that were not killed could have been singing this song in mourning of all of those who had been killed.

All this time Billy had kept this big secret to himself, he could have seen it as escape, a way to avoid the war from hurting him more than it already had. In this case, the song made the secret come out from Billy letting us all know (the reader and the same Billy) that war had affected him more than what we though it had. It had left a trauma on him. “You looked as though you’d seen a ghost” (Vonnegut 173). The ghost of his past, the ghost of Dresden that will always haunt Billy.

Same Words Adressed Differently.

After reading this blog I remembered about something we had learned in class the other day, we learned about register or in other words the words choice you use when addressing a certain audience. In this blog they talk about two words: many and lots. By reading the examples stated in the blog I realized that these two words mean the same thing. What they are trying to show to us here is when to use either one of them. this is when register comes in, depending on the audience you were addressing you would either choose many or lots. I would say lost is more informal therefore would be used when addressing an informal audience like family of friends, when many is more formal so it would be used with a different audience. This can be easily understood with the word hi. If you were talking to your friends it would be hey compared to talking to a teacher it would be hello.

The Question Answered.

As life in this book has no beginning, middle, or end, there is no such possible way I can begin writing. Maybe I already started or ended now one will know. All through the book we know that Billy Pilgrims travels in time. You could be reading about Billy in an optometrist convention and then all of sudden he may be entering his Dresden Slaughter House. While I was reading I took this into account but I always thought that is what simply the authors way of writing the book to entertain his audience.

Why does Vonnegut choose to write his novel in an order that id not chronological? We knew there had to be a specific reason and not only because he felt like it. After thinking why Vonnegut would do that we came across a part of the novel. “ Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, has a shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking him for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European History, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes. So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help. ”( Vonnegut, 101). We knew already that Billy Pilgrim had gone to war and that this had caused a great effect on him. What we didn’t know what that this was the answer as to why Vonnegut wrote his novel in a none linear way. He wrote it in disorder to show the post war stress Billy had and how he felt his life had no meaning. So by making Billy travel in time from one moment of his life to another could be seen as a way that Billy is getting a second chance at his life in some aspects in order to give it a meaning.

This causes an impact to us as readers because at the beginning it was simply unusual and we did not understand why Vonnegut had done this. Now that we know or have a small idea of why he chose to write the novel this way we may see the story in a different way, and realize that what he may be narrating may mean something different to Billy therefore we as readers should understand it in a different way.

Narrating The Story Of A Narrator.

Generally when we read a book we know who the narrator is. While reading Slaughter House-Five I was confused because it seemed to me as if three people were narrating the same story. Those three different people were: the author, Billy in the present
(The one that lives the actual moments) “I like the way you are”(Vonnegut,121) and Billy in the past ( the one that tells the story of Billy in the present) He hadn’t told anybody about all the time traveling he’d done”(Vonnegut 121).

As I continued to read I recognized how the three narrators where really the same person. The author Kurt Vonnegut and how Billy Pilgrim may be a representation of him. “That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.” (Vonnegut, 125). This quote implies that he is the same person telling the story from three different points of view as if he (the author) did not want each of the three to interfere with each other because each of them saw life in a different way. From the beginning of the novel Vonnegut comes straight forward to say “All this happened, more or less. There war parts anyway, are pretty much true (Vonnegut 1) so he is saying that what he is about to tell us really did happen, more or less.

The main question that we ask ourselves then is why, why does Vonnegut change his story in war adding this weird things like aliens. I say that we won’t ever know the real answer of this we can say that it was maybe because he wanted to but that would be very simple. He may have done this because war for him was not a proud moment of his life not something he would want to remember but the again he is writing a book about it. So in order to change and in some way make more interesting or worthwhile for him that moment of his life Vonnegut may have added these weird aspects to his story.

The Curiosity Of Time

This is my 37th minute starring at my computer screen trying to figure out what to write my blog about. Time passes and I still don’t know what to write, I get the idea of time. Time, again time. Thus far in the four chapters I have read, time always appears in them creating a different effect. Throughout the chapter, time appears when Billy sits down to watch a war movie and he watches it backwards. While reading this part, my mind shifted to a movie I saw recently called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and how he is born an old man, and lives his life backwards then dies as a baby. Vonnegut takes us through the description of the movie as Billy sees it. If we were to watch it forward it would be a movie about American Bombers in World War Two but seeing it backwards gives it a whole new meaning. It changes the moments the reflect war so they can reflect peace. “The minerals were then shipped to specialist in remote areas. It was their business to put them into ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody again.”(Vonnegut 75). This is a part of the movie that Billy sees as he watches it backward so we can see how instead of using the minerals to fight and destroy their enemy, they are not going to use them: they are going to take them away so they can so no harm.

As Billy continues watching the movie he imagined “everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed” (Vonnegut 75). Even though this does not really happen in the movie it can also be understood as a way to see how watching the movie backwards changes the meaning of it, and how chronological order has it purposes for the cause and effects it creates. It also contradicts the thought that moments are organized a certain way and can’t be changed no matter how you watch them. This example proofs this wrong because Billy is watching the moments of the movie in a different way, and hence he is able to change the meaning of it by making war-like moments reflect the complete opposite.

Even if I still have more than half of this book to read this chapter made me realize how the author may try to play with time again in order to change the meaning of the events that will occurs in the novel. As it happened in the movie, this man lives his life backwards to the fullest that fact that he is born and old man does not affect him but does affect the lives of the people around him making it change the typical way in which we see life.

Destiny Is Written.

People often undergo situations in life that later marks them to what they may become in the future or what may become of their life. As I said in my last blog wars are events that may leave an impact on the people that go through them. Through war, Billy Pilgrim encounters indignity through the deaths he is close to suffer, and his tedious experience in the war floor.This indignity leads him to lose interest in life due to his inability to find what he is really looking for, causing him too look for that missing aspect in his past and future memories. “Billy wouldn’t do anything to save himself. Billy wanted to quit. ” (Vonnegut,34). This sense of apathy towards life is the cause of the constant recurrence of his memory flashbacks. Finding in them what he can not find in his life. He recurs to the past where he is more alive, where in the present he is living dead.

According to Billy “they can see how permanent all the moments are and they can look at any moments that interest them.” (Vonnegut.27) meanings they are the Tralfarmadorians and Billy shares there point of viewing at the world because he too can recur to any moment when he wants. I can infer that Billy belives that because in some way he is not content with his life at this moment and regrets some of the things that occurred to him. Even though moments are eternal, and once they're gone, are gone forever, Billy's fate in the real life won't be affected by the experiences lived in these memories. Because destiny is one thing that can't be changed: the bird's song at the end of the war is the destiny of the book, and therefore can't be otherwise.

In the movie The Butterfly Effect Evan, with the use of his diaries tries to change his destiny by going back into his memories. What he wants all the time is to be with the girl he loves but every time he manages to be with her something bad happens at the same time. This is because it is his destiny not to be with her and therefore he can’t change it. So at the end he realizes that the only way that his life is going to be at peace is if he is not with her. In Slaughter House-Five no matter how harsh or beautiful the war is the books destiny is already written. It will end with the birds singing.

Time Is Everything.

I am currently reading Slaughter House-Five. Even tough I am only up to chapter three I have really noticed how time plays an important part in the book I would even take the risk to say that the book revolves around time and the effect it creates on the character Billy Pilgrim. As we start reading we see how the book shifts from one place to another narrating different moment of the characters life. “Billy closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was back in World War Two again. ” (Vonnegut,58). I see this as a way for the author to show us that war and what Billy went through has marked him for the rest of his life because almost always when we reading about Billy’s life the author makes a connection (through time) to war.

The fact that the author includes the Tralfamadores also links to the matter of time. “He hadn’t been missed, he said, because the Tralfamadorians had taken him through a time wrap, so that he could be in Tralfamadore for years, and still be way from earth only for a microsecond. ”(Vonnegut 26). This gives us a view of what may be going on in the characters head and how he is not fully aware of the present time he is living in because for him he also live in the other planet where time is measured differently. So it is as if he lived in two different worlds at the same time.

Another detail that relates to time with this book is when Billy says “Where have all the years gone?”(Vonnegut,57). With this quote we can assume that Billy is not content with his life. Sure, he has lived and is aware of that but he still wonders why and where they have gone, because he does not like the outcome that became of those years. It is as throughout the book they are trying to show make us understand how Billy would like to change time, to go back and live again but he can’t change the past nor the future(his destiny) and has to live the present.