In the upcoming chapters Billy evolves, revealing more of him and his life to the reader than in the first few pages. It's like actually meeting a real person. As he tells his experience in war, I realize he is not a war like person, he never was, is or will be. He went throught it as one goes through a street, jus t accepting what crosses it, and what runs through it, non stop.
"It's all just crazy. None of it's true!" "It's all true." Billy's anger was not going to rise with hers." (SHV pg 29). With this it is perspicuously seen that Billy's thoughts have no argument. He is convinced of what he saw, and will never be proven otherwise. He doesn't have the need to argue, hence, he has no point to prove it to anyone, not even his daughter. He was abducted by Trafalmadorians. For sure.
In the war, in the chilly lake it is ironic how Billy has no problem being beaten up by an American. After all he is prepared to face death any moment in his delirius life. He just lets the kicks pass trhough his body as the cold passes through his feet in the freezing lake. Inevitable.
"The soldiers blue eyes were filled with a bleary civilian curiosity as to why one American would try to murder another one so far from home, and why the victim should laugh." (SHV pg 51).
As far as I have read in the novel no religius aspects have been mentioned. Pilgrim is not exactly a religius man, and does not seek salvation in God's arms. So, It is curius how Vonnegut mentions, or at least insinuates tha the "bullet proof bible" is seen more as actually bulletproof, as if when you put it in your left side coat pocket, as if it were to save you from a deadly shot to the heart. "A bullet proof Bible is a bible small enough to be slipped into a soldiers breast pocket, over his heart. It is sheathed in steel." (SHV pg 54). It could be taken more deeply, as if soldiers where only to use it to save their skins, not even bothering to read it.
Another irony in the novel (and more yet to be found...) is the following: "Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future." (SHV pg 60). For off course Billy can do this! He does it all the time. Maybe not physically, but he sails through time, every second. blinks and goes from POW camps, to warm beds and marriages in New York. Perhaps he can't actually change destiny when he does it, but rather lives parts of his life not in the corresponding, natuarl order. The past can't be changed, but for the present and the future, it can be easily done. You just have to turn a round in the street to change the present, and be prepared to live the future. Nut yes, the point is made. What is meant to happen, happens. the future, The present, and the past are unchangable, because they happen the way they happen and are meant to be that way. Time is unchangable, he lives on.
Even though Billy's life had not been based on the war, he sees it everywhere. Not ina paranoic and lunatic sense. But with what I think is a metaphore: "The wedding had taken place that afternoon in a gaily striped tent in Billy's backyard. The stripes were orange and black." (SHV pg 72), he demonstrates how subtle life can be. Ironic. A merry weding day, turned to a prisoner of war banner. A coincidence in nature. A stabbing one. Life and war are bothe hard. like the old saying goes: "Life is a battlefield".
Finally I am convinced that Billy is definitively not a soldier and not supposed to be in war, and all heavens point to it. "They were soldiers' coats. Billy was the only one who had a coat from a dead civilian. So it goes." (SHV pg 82). He is not meant not be in war, but somehow it is relevant for what happens in his life, for his type of person.
And so it goes.
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