"Here we are... trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

What would it be like to be abducted be mysterious beings and have them completely change your view on life? I don't know, Billy Pilgrim would, though.  After all, he was taken by the Tralfamadorians. It's funny because he was completely aware of the fact that a flying saucer would be coming for him that night. I was confused by this at first, but then remembered he is able to travel through time. So I concluded that Billy had already lived this night, but because he goes back and forth in time,  he is reliving it.

As Billy Pilgrim wandered through his house waiting for the Tralfamadorians to arrive, the phone rang. Why is somebody calling in the middle of the night? It was a drunk man. It is said in the book that "Billy could almost smell his breath - mustard gas and roses." Although I have no idea what this would smell like, this olfactory imagery was strangely familiar. After giving it much thought, I realized where I had heard this before. On chapter one, the narrator who seeks to write a book, admits getting drunk late at night and calling his ex-girlfriends. It seems like the narrator is the one calling Billy. He could've dialed the wrong number, or maybe Billy's wife was once his girlfriend. This is the second time that Billy's and the narrator's lives meet.

After hanging up on the drunk person, Pilgrim decides to watch a movie. He comes unstuck in time and watches the movie from the end to the beginning, completely distorting the plot. It's a war movie about the damage caused by Germans. However, by watching it this way, the story ends up being about how Germans saved everybody. This contradicts the Tralfamadorians' and Billy's idea that time is linear. It proves that cause and effect plays a huge role in time and that the order of events may completely change a story's meaning.

Billy travels to the past and to the future. There is a moment were he goes back to when he was a prisoner of war. He was taken to a prison and given a jacket of a dead civilian. This reminded me of a book called I Have Live a Thousand Years. This is a story about a Jewish girl in a concentration camp during World War II. One day, they are all given new clothes and she is ecstatic... that is, until she realizes the coat she was given belonged to murdered Jewish girl. This makes her loathe this piece of clothing forever, I would have too. However, in Slaughterhouse-Five, it seems like no soldier found it uncomfortable to be wearing coats that once belonged to a fellow soldier.

Once Billy met the Tralfamadorians, my theory was proven correct. On my last blog, I assumed Billy Pilgrim believed life has been planned out until the very end. Once Billy is on the flying saucer, a Tralfamadorian says "I see time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself with warnings or explanations. It simply is." 

This demonstrates that Tralfamadorians believe everything happens because it is meant to be. I in no way agree with this because I find it quite discouraging. According to them, beings have no control over what happens and there is no such thing as free will. They are convinced that choices don't exist because every life has already been planned out from birth to death.