A Bizarre War (SHV chps. 1-2)

The very first slice of the novel is extremely excentric. You excpect a war novel with blood, death, and destruction but it is really a novel that is rather self analyzing in the sense that it doesn't describe war in the big picture, but in a very specific point of view form one single man. 

One of the most interesting themes is time. Time runs and doesn't stop. A second ago is history. We are history, the past. In the novel I could sense the loss of time being critical, and even more loosing it in war. "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time"(pg 23). 

When the author talks about the alien kidnapping and time in the alien land being years and yaers, but on Earth only a milisecond, it basically means how hard life has been, but how quick and brief it can be described avoiding all pain and unecessary details that only make the story longer and boring. Finally, until now the other observed theme is how everything in life became simple, swift, not mattering. 

Refering to the novel in the part where birds are first introduced: "Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is except for the birds." (pg 19). This could be compared to many Holocaust novels, where even when the people were suffering in the labour and death camps, and were hungry, the sun was shining bright, and the weather was splendid. It is the same as with the birds. They don't care if there is a massacre or not , the birds will always sing. Even after war, the memory lives on, and hunts each and every one of them down in a certain way. After it ends it lives on with you and changes the way you are. This is why it is a bizarre war.