Slaughter-House Five Chapter 3

In this chapter Billy Pilgrim doesn´t jump around in time as much but stays a lot of time in the present and most time in WWII. It is very clear the cruelty of the war in which a sick major is not treated and is left to death and in which all prisoners of war are stuffed into a train for two days. In the book the sense of misery and death is seen as a simple common thing that is meant to happen and that will not change even if one tries to evade it.

The narrator sees death as a common happening thing that is inevitable and will happen to all no matter when or how. This thinking is proved by the lines in which a dead occurs and ends in “as it goes”. The death that shocked me the most for the show of lack of importance in the novel was the one of Wild Bob as described in the following sentences. “There were just six live colonels- and one dead one. The Germans carried the corpse out. The corpse was Wild Bob. So it goes.” (Pg 69)

Also the amount of symbolic presence made me think on a lot of different things. For example the presence of Adam and Eve that are very religous symbols being present in a pair of boots that are made for war and the massive killing of people. And the fact that this are very important for their owner and cause an effect on Billy for he says. "They were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently. Billy Pilgrim loved them." (Pg 53)