So far in the book, Kurt Vonnegut has written his story with almost no logical order of events. Between paragraphs he switches from his experience in WWII, to his fantasy life of Billy Pilgrim. The character Billy, claims to the world that she was abducted by Aliens and was brought to a planet called Tralfalmadore. On Tralfalmadore, the people there can see in 4D. By this he means that they have a full dimension of comprehension greater than ours. Time is not a factor in their lives. Events don't happen in a linear order. They can take a life and look at it through all events at anytime. And so, being never die on Tralfalmadore. "When a Tralfalmadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments." (27) Slaughterhouse Five is written in the same way that the Tralfalmadorians see. There is no order in time of the book because there is no need for one. We are reading as a Tralfalmadorian would.
As Vonnegut leads us through this jumbled up book, I wonder where we will end up. There are a few different story lines going around. How will all these stories come together in the climax of the book?
I really like the way you put this! I agree that Vonnegut is telling the story like a Tralfalmadorian would. There is a part on page 88 where a Tralfalmadorian is talking about their books and says, “There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully.” There often is no relationship that we can see right now to the stories within Slaughterhouse Five, but Kurt has chosen them carefully. I wonder if the stories will actually come together though. In the same area on page 88 the Tralfalmadorian also says, “There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen at once.” This makes it seem like there will be no clear tieing up in the end. I hope it does come together, but maybe Kurt Vonnegut is just trying to show the many moments at once.
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