Thursday, December 17, 2015
Memories That Keep Replaying
There are many times in Billy's mind where memories repeat each other. Whenever he time travels, his memories are related to something that he is doing in the present. In chapter three when Billy is put in a tight box car, it says "Billy Pilgrim nestled like a spoon with the hobo on Christmas night...and he traveled in time to 1967 again." (pg. 71) Then on the next page, when Billy is back in the present, the book says "Billy and his wife, Valencia, nestled like spoons in their double bed." (pg. 72) Billy's memories of the war are triggered when his present day life is like his life in the war. This happens often, so instead of dealing with the fact that life in the sixties is similar to his life in war, he calls it time traveling. He keeps reliving his memories because they keep repeating twenty years later. He is in denial and a Tramalfadorians are an easy way to ignore what is happening to his mind. I wonder if Billy will ever realize that he can't time travel, but that only his memories are replaying themselves. He can't move past the war, so he blames it on aliens. Will Billy ever realize that he created a virtual world in his mind?
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I think that the tralfamadorians are a way for Billy to escape his mind, and find an excuse for what id going on in his mind. He needs an explanation and I think that, being captured by the tralfamadorians is his explanations. I also think that it may be possible for him to realize it was his imagination, it would have to be much later in time. Given, in chapter one, when Billy was explaining the book after he had written it, he still believed that he had been captured.
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