Reading blog chapter 2

Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughter House-Five

23-53
Chapter 2

When Billy Pilgrim was first introduced, I thought that he wasn’t going to be important on the novel. I thought he was just part of another anecdote like the ones told in the first chapter. However, Billy Pilgrim caught my attention more than the other characters because he could travel in time. This chapter seemed longer than the first one and so I thought Billy Pilgrim was more important than the rest of the previous characters. The kidnapping of Billy and the story of the Tralfamadores seemed as if Billy had gone insane after his wife’s death. Maybe the war had made him insane and the symptoms had just appeared after his wife’s death.

The Tralfamadores’ view on death was very interesting; maybe it was a way for Billy to accept the death of his wife. As the chapter continued, I realized Billy was going to be the main character of the story; his life had already been summarized and told. Now there were just anecdotes about him in war, with his family, at school, etc. It would be a great asset to travel in time when you are planning to tell a story about war. You could travel back any time you wanted and remember more useful stories, descriptions, feelings and situations to write about. It would be just like having it filmed on your head like a movie. You could rewind your life to the place you wanted, to live it again, learn from it and maybe even change it. This reminded me to the Butterfly Effect movie, maybe Billy will try to change the mistakes in his life and end up learning that he has to accept life with its ups and downs.

The continuous changes in time in the novel, made it difficult to understand because scenes were cut all the time and you ended up in a different place and in a different time. However, maybe they will be easier to understand after I have finished the book and read all the different scenes; maybe they are connected in some way (different from war). Ronald Weary appears to be a potential main character but I will have to wait and see if he really becomes that important. Also, I have to pay close attention to the continuous “so it goes” which are temporarily changed to “and so on”. Why does the writer pick those words to close up his unfinished anecdotes? Will he continue them later? What will happen to Ronald Weary?