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.