CHAPTER SIX- FOIL CHARACTER

In Chapter six, we find a true foil character to Billy Pilgrim. That character would be Paul Lazzaro. In comparison with Billy, Lazzaro is clearly an opposite. His personality and values are much more intense and cruel than those of Billy. Paul speaks on and on of how he was going to have many people killed after the war and how revenge is his most prized possession. "Lazzaro was talking to himself about the people he was going to have killed after the war, and rackets he was going to work" (p 143). His thoughts and rants about who is going to kill and torture are really freakin people out. He goes on to say he would have ANYONE killed for one thousand dollars. This shows Lazzaro has no people who are close to him and he is almost proving his insanity. "If he had been a dog in a city, a policeman would have shot him and sent his head to a laboratory, to see if he had rabies. So it goes" (p 144). Paul Lazzaro locks himself up in this chapter as the role of Billy's foil character.

CHAPTER FIVE- SITUATIONAL IRONY IN BASEBALL

One prime example of situational irony was in Armando Galarraga's "perfect game" on June 2nd, 2010. Armando Galarraga had thrown a perfect game up through two outs in the ninth. He faces Cleveland Indian Jason Donald. Donald hits a grounder towards first. Miguel Cabrera is there to field the ball and get it to Armando who is covering first. The throw was in time to get the runner out for the third and final out of the game. Once Galarraga catches the ball, he looks over to Jim Joyce, first base umpire to make sure the runner is out. Here is where the situational irony places in. The play was close, but everyone in the stadium, including the Indians, knew Donald was out. However, Joyce makes the gesture that Donald was safe. Everyone was looking for and expecting Joyce to call him out because it is the final out of a perfect game. No matter who it is, people tend to begin rooting for pitchers who are close to completing no-hitters and perfect games. This is why it is ironic. Everyone expected him to call the runner out and Galarraga gets his perfect game. What really happened, Jim Joyce made a stand-alone call and was heckled horrendously for it.

CHAPTER FIVE- SITUATIONAL IRONY

Chapter Five is full of situational irony. Billy is watching a production of Cinderella by the British prisoners when his laughs turn into "shrieks". The Germans move him into a prisoner's hospital where he is chained to a hospital bed and drugged with morphine. It was believed they did this because they wanted him well enough to work when they move him to a Dresden labor camp. The situational irony comes in play through the character of Edgar Derby. Derby was considered by many too old to be fighting in the war. However, he found a way to fight. Anyway, Edgar Derby accompanies Billy Pilgrim while he is placed in this prisoner's hospital. It is situationally ironic to Billy because he can never forget seeing the way Edgar will die. Edgar Derby was to be put in front of a firing squad and shot to death. Billy never could tell Edgar this though. This is ironic because Billy was always tormented  by trying to find a way to tell Derby, but he couldn't. He wanted to help Derby, but he knew there was no way. Like the Tralfamadorians told Billy, the future was going to happen no matter what. Derby remained at his side, fighting with Billy the whole time. "'How nice- to feel nothing, and still get the full credit of being alive.' Derby now came to lugubrious attention" (p 105).

CHAPTER FOUR- WWII

Billy Pilgrim's experience with the German's in prison reminded me of a project I once did over Maximilian Kolbe. Kolbe was sent to a concentration camp after he had been hiding Jews in his monastery in Poland. He was then sent to an extermination camp. Billy's experience of being in the boxcar for days without food reminded me of Kolbe's punishment. He volunteered to take the place of another person to be tortured through starvation. He and ten other men were placed in a cell and held without food for days. Billy also never fought back against the Nazi's.  He never protested in any way for his freedom. Maximilian Kolbe never did either. His impact was through keeping the hopes of the imprisoned Jews up. His enthusiasm kept the hopes for freedom alive all throughout the camp. Billy Pilgrim and Maximilian Kolbe are connected because they made impacts without physically revolting against authority.

CHAPTER FOUR- ANTIHERO

Throughout this chapter, we really discover how much of an antihero that Billy Pilgrim really is. The common hero of a story has some kind of courage, strength, or wit to their personality. However, Billy seems to not display any of these. After the Tralfamadorians abduct him, it says the acceleration of the ship causes him to go back to the war. Now he and the other prisoners are being transported from the traincar to the prison. Billy is stripped of this clothes and put in a scolding hot shower. Throughout this whole process, Billy shows no sign of revolt. He does not have the courage, strength, or wisdom to fight back to the guards. The same goes with his abduction. He goes right along with the Tralfamadorians without refusal. The only thing he does is ask them why he was the chosen one. "It would take another Earthling to explain it to you. Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided. I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber" (p 86).

CHAPTER THREE- THE GREAT ESCAPE

This chapter reminded me of many scenes of a movie I once saw called The Great Escape. The 1963 movie is about many prisoners of war that are taken to a camp in Nazi-controlled Poland called Stalag Luft III. Many prisoners there take different roles in creating the great escape. The goal was to create a tunnel for them to crawl through to reach the wilderness beyond the fencing. Many begin working on the tunnel, while others create a prisoner-formed choir to block the sounds of construction. Many suffer long hours of labor in order to be made free. This reminds me of Billy Pilgrim because many POW's in the boxcars were struggling to make it work inside these boxcars in order not to be executed. When Billy sees Wild Bob dead and being carried away, he realizes that could easily be him. All of the prisoners make the tiny space inside the boxcar their home for two days while the car does not move. This is why this movie and Billy Pilgrim can relate. In both situations, people are forced to sacrifice for the greater good in the future.

CHAPTER THREE- STATIC CHARACTER

So far throughout Pilgrim's pilgrimage in time, his persona/character has not changed very much. This makes him more of a static character. All thoughout his travels, Billy Pilgrim has remained the same guy who is defenseless against where he will go next. He has no control over where he will appear next or how he must react to certain events. He cannot defend himself in situations, such as his imprisonment to the Germans. Pilgrim has no weapons or means of revolt. It is actually quite ironic that he has the framed prayer in 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" (p 60). It seems to me that he has been given more serenity than courage and wisdom combined.

CHAPTER TWO - BACK IN TIME

For some reason, the second half of this chapter reminded me of a song by Pitbull called "Back in Time". This song is the official song about the movie "Men in Black 3". In the song, Pitbull describes what it's like being a "man in black". The relevance between the song/movie and SH5 is this. When agent J (Will Smith) experiences time travel, he is very confused as to what's going on. He questions what has happened and tries to tell everyone that agent K (his partner) is still alive. Just like Barbara in SH5, no one believes him and tries to prove him wrong. Billy Pilgrim is trying to prove his sanity to Barbara through his letters, but she keeps looking down on him like he's insane. Agent O does the same to J. She tries to show him why he's wrong and explain to him what he has experienced. Both Agent J and Billy Pilgrim are experiencing a change in time.

CHAPTER TWO - MOTIVATION

Billy Pilgrim's "abduction" by  the Tralfamadorians has caused Billy to become unstuck in time. When they brought Billy back to their universe, they travelled so fast that he only appeared to be gone for a fraction of a second. However, he claims that while on the planet of Tralfamadore, he had been displayed in a zoo-like structure and mated with Montana Wildhack. It is through this "abduction" that Billy draws motivation. Billy is becoming more determined to let the public know about the Tralfamadorians. He is writing letters to a news station in New York about his experience.
Barbara, Billy's daughter, is becoming quite angry with Billy. She feels that all of this abduction nonsense started right after the plane crash that only Billy survived. Barbara feels he has gone insane. However, Billy is motivated to let everyone know about how advanced the Tralfamadorians are. He is trying to prove his sanity to Barbara when he is found writing his second letter in his freezing cold basement on an old typewriter. His motivation has infuriated Barbara. She questions why he never mentioned anything about this before the crash, he nonchalantly states: "I didn't think the time was ripe" (p 30)

CHAPTER ONE - INDECISION

Kurt Vonnegut uses the first chapter to reference how he has made many unsuccessful attempts to write about his experiences in Dresden during World War II. He and his friend Bernard O'Hare have been trying for twenty three years to create a reflection on their life as prisoners in Dresden. Throughout their efforts, many indecisions were had in regards of what to say. These time-consuming indecisions made me recall a quote. "In a minute, there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse" (T.S. Eliot). Eliot explains how it has taken Vonnegut so long to create this novel of Dresden. Vonnegut has experience many relapses of what happened during the bombings and cannot decide what to write. If there was one thing this chapter represented, it would be the "introduction" to the book that Vonnegut is creating.