Slaughterhouse-Five Chapter 3 - 4
Billy and Weary find themselves in the custody of a handful of German irregulars. Their belongings are confiscated, revealing a lewd photograph in Weary’s possession. As Billy reclines in the snow, he perceives a vision of the first man and woman mirrored in the commander’s polished boots. Weary is compelled to trade his boots with a young German soldier, receiving the soldier’s wooden clogs in return. The duo are escorted to a dwelling teeming with other captives. Billy succumbs to sleep, only to awaken in 1967, while conducting an eye examination. It is revealed that he has been prone to dozing off at work. He completes the examination and attempts, without success, to engage himself in an article on optometry. Billy’s eyes close, and he is once again a captive. He is awakened and commanded to move. He merges into a continuous procession of POWs marching on the road outside. A German war photographer orchestrates a staged scene of Billy emerging from a bush, and surrendering to armed Germans. Billy slips back into 1967. He is en route to a Lions Club luncheon, driving through Ilium’s black ghetto, still smoldering from recent riots, and then through an area devastated for urban renewal. The destruction he observes outside the car evokes memories of the aftermath of the Dresden firebombing. He drives a Cadillac adorned with John Birch Society bumper stickers. His son, Robert, serves as a Green Beret in Vietnam. His daughter, Barbara, is on the verge of marriage. He is considerably affluent.
At the Lions Club gathering, a marine major discusses the bombing in North Vietnam. Billy remains neutral on this topic. He has a plaque on his office wall that serves as a guide through such apathy. It reads: “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.”
After the luncheon, Billy returns to his grand home. He lies down for a nap and finds himself in tears. A bed vibrator named “Magic Fingers” purchased to aid Billy’s sleep, vibrates him as he cries. He closes his eyes and is back in Luxembourg, marching. The wind causes his eyes to water. Weary marches ahead of him, his feet raw and bloody from his ill-fitting clogs. The prisoners march into Germany and are taken to a railroad yard. A mentally unstable colonel who has lost his entire regiment inquires if Billy is one of his men. The colonel, who prefers to be addressed as “Wild Bob,” tells Billy, “If you’re ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob!” The soldiers are sorted by rank and crammed into boxcars. They alternate between sleeping and standing, and they pass a helmet to use as a chamber pot. Billy is separated from Weary. His train remains stationary for two days. When the train finally begins to move towards the interior, Billy travels to the night he is abducted by the Tralfamadorians. On the night of his daughter’s wedding day, Billy is unable to sleep. Because he has already experienced time travel, he knows he will be abducted by the Tralfamadorians’ flying saucer in an hour. Billy rises from his bed under the light of a full moon and meanders down the hallway and into his daughter’s vacant bedroom. The phone rings, and Billy hears the voice of a drunk who has dialed the wrong number. He can almost detect the scent of mustard gas and roses on the man’s breath.
Downstairs, Billy picks up a half-empty bottle of champagne from a table. He watches a late-night documentary on American bombers and their gallant pilots in World War II. Slightly unstuck in time, Billy watches the movie forward and backward. Planes fly backward, magically quelling flames, drawing their fragmented bombs into steel containers, and sucking them back up into their bellies. Guns on the ground suck metal fragments from the pilots, crew, and planes. Weapons are shipped back to factories, where they are carefully disassembled and broken down into their constituent minerals. The minerals are shipped to specialists all over the world who “hide them cleverly” in the ground, “so they never hurt anybody ever.” In Billy’s mind, Hitler becomes a baby and all of humanity works toward creating two perfect people named Adam and Eve. Billy heads out to the backyard to meet the saucer that will arrive soon. A sound like a melodious owl heralds the arrival of the spacecraft, which is 100 feet in diameter. Once on board, Billy is asked if he has any questions. He asks, “Why me?”—a question that his captors think very typical of earthlings to ask. They tell him that there is no why, since the moment simply is, and since all of them are trapped in the moment, like bugs in amber.
Analysis
The Serenity Prayer, etched on Billy’s office plaque, is a beacon of optimism, yet it’s undermined by the narrative’s assertion that Billy is powerless to alter his past, present, and future. This highlights the futility of attempting to change life’s course in Slaughterhouse-Five. Despite the illusion of free will and a life filled with elements of happiness, Billy’s life remains devoid of meaning. It’s not until his alien abduction that he realizes his life choices were as involuntary as his birth. The narrative wittily lists the past, present, and future as unchangeable, neither by Billy nor God.
At this juncture, Billy exhibits signs of war-induced strain. He struggles to control his time-tripping and is prone to inexplicable bouts of weeping. He also suffers from severe sleep disorders. Historically, war trauma often leads to mental disorders in returning soldiers, manifesting as post-traumatic stress disorder. Billy’s mental issues cast a shadow of unreliability over his perspective. However, Billy’s potential mental illness doesn’t invalidate the novel’s events and stories. Insanity permeates beyond Billy, infiltrating his world. Vonnegut intermittently appears as a character, blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Billy’s hallucination of Adam and Eve in his commander’s boots is not entirely his own; the commander himself invokes the primordial couple. This suggests a shared realm of dementia among characters.
The Tralfamadorian concept of time underscores fate’s role in shaping existence and outright rejects free will. Upon his abduction, Billy understands that all beings are trapped in life’s moments, like bugs in amber. His question, “Why me?” exposes human consciousness’s limitations. The Tralfamadorians wouldn’t ask such a question, knowing time’s structure is beyond control. Thus, the interpretation of life’s events becomes crucial, which certainly changes for Billy post-war. Billy’s predetermined death supports the Tralfamadorian argument of fate’s inevitability. Roland Weary dies blaming Billy, ensuring everyone in his boxcar knows Billy Pilgrim’s name. Billy’s death, as we see it, is a result of one man’s stupidity and pride, mirroring war’s mass mortality resulting from large-scale ignorance and pride.
One of the novel’s subtle mockeries of war occurs when Billy watches a war movie backward due to his time perception. The events, when viewed in reverse, take on a different meaning. Billy’s backward viewing of the movie contradicts the idea that moments are structured a certain way, lending weight to Vonnegut’s decision to manipulate time in Slaughterhouse-Five, where the meaning changes according to the order of events.
