up. The Americans are assembled outside for photographs. The photographer
takes pictures of Billy's and Weary's feet as evidence of how poorly
equipped the American troops are. They stage photos of Billy being
captured. Billy then returns to 1967, driving to the Lion's club. He drives
through a black ghetto, an area recovering from recent riots and fires. He
largely ignores what he sees there. At the Lion's club, a marine major
talks about the need to continue the fight in Vietnam. He advocates bombing
North Vietnam into the Stone Age, if necessary, and Billy does not think of
the horror of bombing, which he has witnessed himself. He is simply having
lunch. The narrator mentions that he has a prayer on the wall of his
office: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the
difference."
The narrator tells us that Billy cannot change past, present, or future.
After lunch, Billy goes home. He is a wealthy man now, with a son in the
Green Berets and a daughter about to get married; he also is seized
occasionally by sudden and inexplicable bouts of weeping. During one of
these spells, he closes his eyes and finds himself back in World War II. He
is marching with an ever-growing line of Americans making their way through
Luxembourg. They cross into Germany, being filmed by the Germans who want a
record of their great victory. Weary's feet are sore and bloody from
marching on the German boy's clogs. The Americans are sorted by rank, and a
colonel tries to talk with Billy. The colonel is dying; he tries to be
chummy with Billy. He has always wanted to be called "Wild Bob" by his men.
He dreams of having a reunion of his men in his hometown of Cody, Wyoming.
He invites Billy and the other men to come. Vonnegut mentions that he and
Bernard O'Hare were there when the colonel gave his invitation. All of the
POWs are put into train cars. The train does not leave for two days; during
that time Wild Bob dies. The boxcars are so crowded that to sleep the men
have to take turns lying down. When the train finally begins its trek
deeper into Germany, Billy jumps through time again. It is 1967, and he is
about to be kidnapped for the first time by the Trafalmadorians.
Chapter Four. Summary:
In 1967, on his daughter's wedding night, Billy cannot sleep. Because he is
unstuck in time, he knows that he will soon be kidnapped by a
Trafalmadorian flying saucer. He kills time unproductively in the meantime.
He watches a war movie, and because he is unstuck in time the movie goes
forward and then backward. He goes out to meet the ship, and he is taken as
planned. As the ship shoots out into space, Billy is jarred back to 1944.
In the boxcar, none of the men want Billy to sleep next to them because he
yells and thrashes in his sleep. He is forced to sleep while standing. In
another car, Weary dies of gangrene in his feet. As he slowly dies over the
course of days, he tells people again and again about the Three Musketeers.
He also asks that someone get revenge for him on the man who caused his
death. He blames Billy Pilgrim, of course.
The train finally arrives at a camp, and Billy and the other men are pushed
and prodded along. The camp is full of dying Russian POWs. At points,
Vonnegut likens the Russians' faces to radium dials. The Americans are all
given coats; Billy's is too small. They go into a delousing station, where
all of the men strip naked. Billy has one of the worst bodies there; he is
skinny and weak, and a German soldier comments on that fact. We are
introduced briefly to Edgar Derby and Paul Lazarro. Derby is the oldest POW
there, a man who pulled strings to get into the army. He is a high school
teacher from Indianapolis, and he is physically sturdy despite his forty-
four years of age. He will be shot after the Dresden bombing for trying to
steal a teapot.
Paul Lazarro is a car thief from Illinois. His body is even weaker and
less healthy than Billy's. He was in Roland Weary's boxcar, and he vowed
solemnly to Weary that he would find and kill Billy Pilgrim. When the
scalding water turns on, Billy leaps back to his infancy. His mother has
just finished giving him a bath. He then leaps forward to a Sunday game of
golf, played with three other optometrists. Then, he leaps in time to the
space ship, on his first trip to Trafalmadore. He talks with one of his
captors about time, and he says that the Trafalmadorians sound like they do
not believe in free will. The alien replies that in all of the inhabited
planets of the galaxy, Earth is the only one whose people believe in the
concept of free will.
Chapter Five. Summary:
En route to Trafalmadore, Billy asks for something to read. The only human
novel is Valley of the Dolls, and when Billy asks for a Trafalmadorian
novel, he learns that the aliens' novels are slim, sleek volumes. Because
they have a different concept of time, Trafalmadorians have novels arranged
by juxtaposition of marvelous moments. The books have no cause or effect or
chronology; their beauty is in the arrangement of events meant to be read
simultaneously. Billy jumps in time to a visit to the Grand Canyon taken
when he was twelve years old. He is terrified of the canyon. His mother
touches him and he wets his pants. He jumps forward in time just ten days,
to later in the same vacation. He is visiting Carlsbad Caverns. The ranger
turns the lights off, so that the tourists can experience total darkness.
But Billy sees a light nearby: the radium dial of his father's watch.
Billy jumps back to the war. The Germans think Billy is one of the funniest
creatures they've seen in all of the war. His coat is preposterously small,
and on his already awkward body it looks ridiculous. The Americans give
their names and serial numbers so that they can be reported to the Red
Cross, and then they are marched to sheds occupied by middle-aged British
POWs. The British welcome them with singing. These British POWs are
officers, some of the first Brits taken prisoner in the war. They have been
prisoners for four years. Due to a clerical error early in the war, the Red
Cross shipped them an incredible surplus of food, which they have hoarded
cleverly. Consequently, they are some of the best-fed people in Europe.
Their German captors adore them.
To prepare for their American guests, the Brits have cleaned and set out
party favors. Candles and soap, supplied by the Germans, are plentiful: the
British do not know that these items are made from the bodies of Holocaust
victims. They have prepared a huge dinner and a dramatic adaptation of
Cinderella. Billy is so unhinged that his laughter at the performance
becomes hysterical shrieking, and he is taken to the hospital and doped up
on morphine. Edgar Derby watches over him, reading The Red Badge of
Courage. He leaps in time to the mental ward where he recovered in 1948.
In the mental ward, Billy's bed is next to the bed of Elliot Rosewater.
Like Billy, he has little love for life, in part because of things he saw
and did in the war. He is the man who introduces Billy to the science
fiction of Kilgore Trout. Billy is enduring one of his mother's dreaded
visits. She is a simple, religious woman. She makes Billy feel worse just
by being there. Billy leaps back in time to the POW camp. A British colonel
talks to Derby; after the newly arrived Americans shaved, the British were
shocked by how young they all were. Derby tells of how he was captured: the
Americans were pushed back into a forest, and the Germans rained shells on
them until they surrendered.
Billy leaps back to the hospital. He is being visited by his ugly,
overweight fiancйe Valencia. He knew he was going crazy when he proposed to
her. He does not want to marry her. She is visiting now, eating a Three
Musketeers bar and wearing a diamond engagement ring that Billy found while
in Germany. Elliot tells her about The Gospel from Outer Space, a Kilgore
Trout book.
Valencia tries to talk to Billy about plans for their wedding and
marriage, but he is not too involved. He leaps forward in time to the zoo
on Trafalmadore, where he was on display when he was forty-four years old.
The habitat is furnished with Sears and Roebuck furniture. He is naked. He
answers questions posed by the Trafalmadorian tourists. He learns that
there are five sexes among the Trafalmadorians, but the sex difference is
only visible in the fourth dimension. On earth there are actually seven
sexes, all necessary to the production of children; earthlings just do not
notice the sex difference between themselves because many of the sex acts
occur in the fourth dimension. These ideas baffle Billy, and they in turn
are baffled by his linear concept of time. Billy expects the
Trafalmadorians to be concerned about or horrified by the wars on earth. He
worries that earthlings will eventually threaten all the other races in the
galaxy, causing the eventual destruction of the universe. The
Trafalmadorians put their hands over their eyes, which lets Billy know that
he is being stupid.
The Trafalmadorians already know how the universe will end: during
experiments with a new fuel, one of their test pilots pushes a button and
the entire universe will disappear. They cannot prevent it. It has always
happened that way. Billy correctly concludes that trying to prevent wars on
Earth is futile. The Trafalmadorians also have wars, but they choose to
ignore them. They spend their time looking at the pleasant moments rather
than the unpleasant ones; they suggest that humans learn to do the same.
Billy leaps back in time to his wedding night. It is six months after his
release from the mental ward. The narrator reminds us that Valencia and her
father are very rich, and Billy will benefit greatly from his marriage to
her. After they have sex, Valencia tries to ask Billy questions about the
Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60
