"Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.”

The way Kurt Vonnegut writes a book with hundreds of interpretations is mind blowing. The ongoing questioning of his existence in the book is exhilarating. He has a way of integrating the complex plot with the ongoing mystery of his existence. The merging between them is just genius. In chapter four he states how he is a fellow soldier of Billy’s. Is he just a character, or is he a narrator too? As I read on, I find certain key words that take me one step closer to solving the mystery, “Billy Pilgrim says he went to Dresden, Germany…” This aphorism is written at the beginning of Chapter 6, making emphasis on it. Now the narrator clearly has become an existing character, whereas in the beginning he clearly was omniscient. This new perspective is as if Billy had told the narrator his story, and the narrator had made it into a book, Slaughterhouse Five. However the author can be narrator, character, and Billy Pilgrim could be his shadow. What I mean is, Vonnegut might have invented Billy to give his story room to grow. They were both born in the same year 1922, and both where soldiers who were present in the bombing of Dresden. He could have easily turned his own life into the life of a crazy war veteran optometrist.

The prevailing theme throughout this chapter was death just around the corner. This novel has the ongoing theme of death, with the constant so it goes and the title itself. This was different. The theme in the chapter was that, death was nearly here. The book explains how Billy has a tape in safe deposit box that says, “I Billy Pilgrim, the tape begins, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976”. After this, he explains in a speech he is giving in Chicago on that day of his death, how he will only die for a moment in time but yet will continue to live in other points in time. “Now he closes his speech as he closes every speech-with these words: Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.” The way death is described in this book by the Tralfamadorians reminds me of the movie Source Code featuring Jake Gyllenhaal. His character must go back in time to stop a bomb from going off on a train. To go back in time he must in person a victim in the train wreck, by using a device that can recreate dead people’s memories. He has a limited amount of time until the train blows up again. He constantly relieves the last moments of that person’s life, as Billy, he dies repeatedly.

The importance of title is shown at last. In the previous chapters, we were told why the book was titled Slaughterhouse Five, yet the actual moment hadn’t occurred. The title resembles what stood as shelter for the American soldiers in Dresden. How the old pig corals saved the one hundred soldier’s lives. Vonnegut plays with the structure of his book in a humorous way with bombing of Dresden. Back in the camp, one of the Englishmen tells his fellow Americans’ how, “You needn’t worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden is an open city.” Dresden was actually bombed and it is ironic. Nevertheless it appears this Englishman’s words, aren’t true, they were added by Vonnegut for humor, he indicates so by overdoing the irony in the story.

As we are approaching the end of the book, I am thrilled to learn the ending of this incredible novel.