Initially published in , Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel that defies labels and genre conventions. It is at once a post-modernist science-fiction book set in an imaginary world, but also a semi-autobiographical anti-war treatise.
Billy is always going back-and-forth to the firebombing of Dresden in eastern Germany, on February 13, , an event he witnessed and from which. For example, Ofelia dies as gun point by her stepfather but is reunited with her dead bother and is granted immortality in her kingdom. For this scene, the powerful image of Ofelia looking lifeless after she falls, and a trail of blood leaves her nose. The randomness of the events suggests that free will has no effect on the ordering: Billy cannot choose the sequence; he must experience the events as they happen.
The interplay of past and future scenes occurs according to a predetermined pattern, although it is unclear who or what determines what that pattern will be, or when it will happen. On Earth, time is chronological, linear. One moment follows another like beads on a string. But the Tralfamadorian concept of time is that all events exist simultaneously. If a person views all time simultaneously, that person will have knowledge of all events.
Godlike, the Tralfamadorians seem to have transcended impermanence, never dying; they possess a capacity of omnipotence. Likewise, Billy, a prophet of the Tralfamadorian gospel, seems to be approaching a state of omnipotence. But no one, except the science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout, takes him seriously. Billy's daughter, Barbara, threatens to put him in a mental institution; on a radio talk show in New York City, he is ejected from the studios for his views.
During his ordeal behind enemy lines, Billy is often near death. According to Weary, the Three Musketeers — Weary and the two scouts — save Billy's life again and again. Billy's salvation in Luxembourg is but a preview of his ultimate salvation when he is executed in Chicago. After all, according to Tralfamadorian philosophy, all events, including death, are equally meaningful.
Therefore, death is not an end in itself: Death is simply one more event in a person's life to be lived and relived again and again. Army Special Forces outfit known for their heroic deeds during wartime; an elite troop of soldiers trained in counterinsurgency and guerrilla warfare.
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