SlaughterHouse 5 Book

[Jamman]

I've been reading this book called Slaughterhouse Five lately, and just finished it this evening. It's an anti-war book. After I read it, I watched the movie, (which is terrible, don't do both), and I am still having a hard time with the theme of the book.

He uses these symbols like Poo-tee-weet and Colors of Blue and Ivory to describe there's nothing anyone can say about war and the view of death seen by the world?

Main Character, Billy, His life is told in no chronological order whatsoever. Jumping from being abducted by aliens to a planet called, Traflamadore (or something like that), and being put in a zoo for them to see. Then back to the War in Dredson. And then back to his life at home. All different moments in his life?

The aliens teach him something about time. Humans see time as a way to explain things and why they happen? But they teach him that all time is just moments. There is no time. We, humans, in the 3rd dimension cant see it because that's the 4th dimension they see. No one ever dies, in the past or future, they are always alive in moments...
When hes abducted he asks the aliens, Why me? and they tell him that's the thing with humans, they always need to know why. And that they ask why for a sense of comfort. But there is no Why at all in the universe. Its all through moments. Everything happens in moments and everything is fate. That nothing can be controlled, nothing can be prevented, everything will happen because that's the way the moment was set.

Then there's the author, Kurt Vonnegut. Now throughout the book, he talks about Billy in a 3rd person POV. Though through random sentences every couple chapters, is goes to first person talking about Billy, I think that's the author putting himself in it...but why?

Is Kurt Vonnegut Billy?
Is Billy trying to make sense with his life after seeing horrible things in Dredson, by using physiological time travel to different moments?
He does actually go to this planet, that's not psychological, he can see into the future, he knows when he will die, and by always using "So it goes" is he there saying that it doesn't need explaining, and that its just a moment in time that must happen?

As I said, I just finished reading this book earlier, and this will bother me time knows how long until I understand it. If anyone read the book and gets it, post back please.   

[tirpider]

The Children's Crusade.
I love that book. Haven't read it in a cpl of decades though. This is what I got out of it.

Most all of the story is implied and told through a cynical lens.
"So it goes" being a sarcastic refrain to the stupidity of our self destructive societies and the people that haunt/create/perpetuate them. Big decisions are made by men with great power, but other men are the ones left in the wake of these decisions. Being a man caught in the wake of others myself, I understand the sarcasm perfectly.

Billy may represent a piece of Mr Vonnegut, but probably in nothing more than a metaphorical sense. (Could wiki his name and see what he was up to during the war.)

I'm guessing the 1st and 3rd person perspective changes were Vonnegut trying to get the reader in and out of Billy's mind.

I don't believe he was suggesting actual travel to Trafaldmore, but it was a place Billy's mind was diverging to in order to protect his psyche from the rediculous horrors of war he was surrounded by.  Perhaps trying to escape or explain it through fantastical dream like metaphore.  It's never stated, but one could imply that Billy was a victim of post tramatic stress.  Or he could have been laying in a cold field dying (Poo-tee-weet).  Or a hospital bed near a window (Poo-tee-weet).  Mr Vonnegut never says, and war is hell.  The convulsions of death or mind wrecking trauma could definately send your mind reeling from memory to fantasy without warning.

In a nutshell, the book tells us that anyones life can be turned upside down through the stupid actions of others at any moment.  Wars happen, minds and lives are lost alongside the societies, cities, and mistakes they create.  Sometimes you can do something about it.  Sometimes you are powerless against it.

So it goes.