Billy Pilgrim says...

To be honest, I didn’t enjoy “Chapter 6” as I have enjoyed the rest of the book. During this chapter I had the feeling, again, that Billy’s story branched out from a central plotline, which is his war story. Unlike the rest of the book, where that sensation was completely lost in the Tralfamadorian-like entanglement of ideas. Although, what did interest me pretty much in this chapter, was how the narration seemed different than the other chapters. In the past chapters it was Vonnegut telling us Billy’s story, as if it was a Tralfamadorian book, giving us details about it, making us question everything we thought about the book, and most interestingly, making himself part of the book, without ever making it autobiographical. But during this chapter, although Vonnegut does mention himself when they arrive at Dresden, he was more distant from the story. That is absolutely clear when he writes “Billy Pilgrim says…” twice. He makes it clear to the reader, that what he is writing, is Billy’s opinion, is what Billy claims happened, as if he were directly quoting Billy. That detail makes me think that Vonnegut doesn’t really believe in that part of the story, as if he was implying Billy was crazy, and frankly, I agree. I know that it is a pretty crazy idea that Billy was kidnapped by aliens, and that he is unstuck in time, and so on. But I didn’t have a problem with that: maybe because it might or might not be in Billy’s head, we’ll never know: or maybe because of the way Vonnegut wrote it, we never doubted it: or finally, because neither I nor anyone has lived what Billy claimed to live, so we are able to imagine it, but in this chapter, Billy talks about the future of the REAL world. He says there are zap guns, Chicago has a hydrogen bomb dropped in it, and that he becomes famous. Those things mess with my reality, because I know none of those are true. That’s why I think Billy is more delusional than ever, I can’t imagine any of those details about the “future” real world, because I know how the real world was and is.

Another interesting detail that caught my eye was the hatred and wrath that consumed Paul Lazzaro (he is a coward, HE never takes revenge, he sends someone to do it for him), which led him to always want to take revenge. I know that he is a “bone and flesh” character like Billy, or Vonnegut, but, couldn't it be possible, that all of them aren’t actually real? That Vonnegut is the only real character of the book. And that the rest of the characters represent different aspects of Vonnegut’s mind which were affected by war. I know it’s a bit of an abstract idea, but it could actually be possible that Vonnegut created all those characters to represent different things of Vonnegut that were affected by war, and the story revolves around his brief appearances in the book. In this order of ideas, Lazzaro could represent Vonnegut’s hate towards the Germans, and his feelings of revenge towards them.

I don’t believe in that interpretation of the book 100%, it’s rather complex, and I don’t have any true foundations to support the theory (maybe for now). But I thought it was important to mention that this thought came to mind.