Billy Pilgrim's Slaughterhouse Five

everybody has their opinion on war and if it's good or bad in society. billy pilgrim's opinion on war it not about if it's good or bad but if it's necessary in human life. in the book slaughterhouse 5 billy's psychological and moral traits are shaped by his experience with war and the tralfamadorians

Billy pilgrim is effected by his cultural surrounding that shape his psychological traits. when billy meets the tralfamadorians he learns many thing from their society and culture that changes his beliefs of life. one of the many things he learned was time is divided in particular moments not one constant phenomenon. billy explains this when he said, “When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now,

after the bombs fell on dresden billy frequently compared the destroyed city to the moon like in this quote when he said,”Nobody talked much as the expedition crossed the moon. There was nothing appropriate to say. One thing was clear: Absolutely everybody in the city was supposed to be dead, regardless of what they were, and that anybody that moved in it represented a flaw in the design. There were to be no moon men at all” (8.26.2). this quote really brings up the devastation and destruction part of war. how billy compares it to the moon is a perfect comparison because the moon is lifeless, dark, and dusty just like dresden. this shapes billy’s psychological traits by ending billy’s war experience with one final tragedy. it showed him that life was precision and could be taken away in a minute even if that one moment was bad for those soldiers and civilians, just the fact that they all got wiped out with one little bomb shows that war always goes too far and a people are people and instead of destroying each other they should work