Enclosed In The Past

We are introduced to very "senile" man in chapter two of SlaughterHouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim. Vonnegut describes this man in the most peculiar way, "Billy has gone to sleep in a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941." My best guess is that, this strategy of describing a protagonist is very interesting because, were used to reading a brief summary of the protagonist life. Vonnegut tries to confuse us, by portraying this very strange man. He then proceeds to express to us the meaning behind the first paragraph. If you read the chapter, then youll know that "Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next." (page 23) We then are introduced to the idea of Billy have been abducted by extraterrestrial beings, Tralmafadores, and was took to their home land Tralmafadore. He feels priveledged to have had that experience because he said, "the creatures were friendly" and they could see in four demensions. They pitied and saw above the Earthlings because they were ignorant to the fourth dimension.

I found this anecdote quite flabbergasting, "The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die." Its "silly" for people to mourn their peers death. I wanted to comment on this because I found it ironic that Billy actually encouraged this ideal "when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug." (pg. 27) In my opinion, Vonnegut is trying to illustrate how the Tralmafafores try to dehumanize humans by exempting the "right" to mourn a loved one.

I might have found a glimpse of Billy having a moment of agnorisis, when he realizes what being unstuck meant, "He first came unstuck in time in 1944...The Tralmafadores didn't have anything to do with his coming unstuck. They were simply able to give me insights into what was really going on." Evidently, Billy was ambigious to what was really occuring before he met the Tralmafaorians, and they englightened him on what was really happening everytime he was transported from one event to the other.