Billy’s Longest, Darkest, Blackest Evening

Why Billy? Still emotionless and weird as always, Billy has been kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians for the first time and he doesn’t understand why. I don’t understand either. One of the aliens said, “Only on Earth is there any talk of free will” and he tells Billy he is with them because that’s his fate. Like predestination maybe. I think what the alien said to Billy is very ironic because even though Billy has freedom of will he is careless about it. Another example of irony is a prayer that Billy has framed 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”.

That was Pilgrim’s method to keep going, but again, he seems to be thinking on his aliens or his accidents or maybe he simply doesn’t think, just goes on.

The fourth chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five brought Weary’s life an end but possibly we can still get to know him in what’s left of the story with Kurt Vonnegut’s pacing or Billy’s time traveling. As crazy as always, Weary argued that he was dying because of Billy Pilgrim’s fault. He had gangrene. Weary didn’t just argue. He wanted the other prisoners to avenge him. As the story progresses it has presented very interesting characters and I hope this keeps happening. First came Billy, then Ronald Weary, then the aliens, so who’s coming up next? It would be hilarious reading about Weary’s supposed avenger actually trying to kill Billy, who is almost defenseless.

When Billy was in the showers of the prisoner camp the narrator says “Reproduction was not the main business of the evening.” I think that doesn’t only apply to the showers where men where only tired, hurt, sick, and without females, but to all the war. The long evening that went from 1939 to 1945 was not meant for reproduction. It was quite the other way around. In Pilgrim’s episode we have already witnessed at least three deaths. Valencia’s (Billy’s wife) death, Wild Bob’s (a colonel in the train), and Weary’s death. So when will Billy’s death come? How will it be? Or will Vonnegut leave him alive since maybe he was alive when he wrote the book?

I was just inventing my tittle for this entry and remembered Green Lantern. Probably World War II was Billy’s blackest night and his voyages with the Tralfamadorians where his brightest day. My oath for Billy is this one:

“In Tralfamadore, In World War II,

No emotion shall wonder through my mind

Let those emotion-full thoughts,

Beware my power… Tralfamadore’s 4-D sight!”