Part I

1. Vonnegut includes a number of actual texts (in italics) related to World War
II. Why? What effect does this have on the reader?

Vonnegut includes actual texts related to World War II in his book in

order to remind readers that this is, in fact, not just a made up story, that this is a
real life tragedy that happened to people. It’s yet another nod to the promise that
he made to Mary O’Hare, wherein he vowed not to make this a book about
glorifying the war. It becomes easy to be lost in Billy's detached account of the
event, and to view things through the lens that he provides as the narrator. The
book takes on the quality of a story: it’s entertaining and easy to read, and
contains science fiction elements such as extraterrestrial beings and time travel,
and is so often referred to by Vonnegut as a mere ‘tale’, which he then
contradicts by shocking readers back into reality by providing these real life
texts either glorifying or berating the occasion, all the while providing a
personal retelling.
It provides a stark contrast between how government officials and
authors, and how people from the outside in general, perceived the whole
ordeal, and how it actually was. Most of the texts use very formal language,
boiling down the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians into numbers and
statistics and war strategies, and different people have different opinions on it,
whether it was a good or a bad thing, etc. But despite all these in-depth analyses
and deep dives into the effectiveness and the figures of it all, none of these
people were actually there, none of them know what really happened, and
Vonnegut provides these accounts to bring a piece of the real world into this
story that he has created, that we as viewers read as fictional. It jolts us into
looking past the funny-looking aliens and the crazy time traveling man. In a
manner of speaking, these passages are sort of a veil into actuality, into our own
realities. It forces us to see it as the very real event that killed all of those very
real people and affected all of those very real people who had to witness it
happen. It makes it more than just a war story, it brings the event to life.

Part II
6. When Billy thinks back at the time he was happiest, what does he think
about? How is this ironic?

The Tralfamdorians don’t witness time in the same way that humans do,
they see it all at once. When Billy Pilgrim comes to learn of this philosophy,
they tell him that he should focus on the pretty or happy moments of his life,
and to ignore all the bad things that come in between, and in that way he could
be happy forever. After Dresden is bombed, the Americans return to the
slaughterhouse in order to forage for spoils of war. Once they arrive and
everyone gets out to look for things to keep, Billy stays in the wagon, basking in
the sunlight. He says that if he had the ability to choose what moments to focus
on like the Tralfamadorians do, he’d choose this moment as his happiest one.
This is ironic because his happiest moment is in the midst of so much
death and destruction and horror. He has just been through one of the most
traumatic events a person could go through, even going so far as to say that he
was sat in a “coffin-shaped green wagon” (p.248), and yet he’s happy. He has
very narrowly avoided death in what is essentially one of his first proper war
experiences, not having really been a part of it until he was captured. Him and
all the other Americans were meant to be dead, the bombing was orchestrated in
such a way that no one was supposed to live to tell the tale, and now he’s sat
casually in a wagon that’s shaped like a coffin that was used to transport over a
hundred men who were supposed to have died who hadn't, including himself.
Throughout the book a lot of his narration is quite detached, but in this moment
specifically, he describes the ruins of Dresden in a cozy and warm way. He is
comfortable, and this is most likely due to his strange perception of time, and
the countless times that he has witnessed this moment through his being unstuck
in time. We know from the very beginning that his adoption of the
Tralfamadorian view of the universe has allowed him to be very content with
the fact that there is nothing that one can do about the events of one’s life but sit
back and witness them happen. He is comfortable with his own death, and to
him, and the Tralfamadorians, all of Dresden is still alive and well in plenty of
other moments, so he has no real reason to be so distressed now.
It's sort of a cliche mentality, but it seems that through his being
unstuck in time, Billy understands this idea of happiness coming from within
oneself rather than from the environment around you. In this moment, he has
everything he could possibly want, peace and quiet, food and wine, and a warm
sun shining down on him. Regardless of the world around him, he is able to find
satisfaction.

Part III
11. How might a Tralfamadorian reader read and understand this book?
A Tralfamadorian wouldn't actually read this book, they would simply look at it
and see it for what it is and witness it all at once. However, in the way that we
comprehend it: Vonnegut incorporates the Tralfamadorians’ writing style into
‘Slaughterhouse-Five’, by using a non-linear timeline and writing in sections
separated from one another by three dots, which echoes the Tralfamadorians’
literature which uses small clusters of symbols separated by three little stars.
The whole book comes together in one big thing, that tells the story in
its entirety without having to go in a specific order or follow a specific formula
in order to get the tale across. In a way, it shows that we, too, are capable of
understanding time in the way the Tralfmadorians do, and we see Vonnegut
echoing Billy’s laters years, when he would write letters and articles and give
speeches on his time with the aliens ,here, in showing us that no one state of
anything is permanent. In showing the readers Billy’s non-linear exposure to
time, he makes us reflect on how we ourselves view time.
If a Tralfamadorian were to look at this book, they would see all the
moments that we have to read individually at once, and it would be easier for
them to wrap their toilet plunger heads around the timeline or the order of
things, as they don't have to wonder what the story would be like if it were
linear, as some people might. They just see it, and it just is to them. They would
also probably see a lot more to the story than we can, since they see in four
dimensions, which would then in turn allow them a more profound
understanding of the book.