I choose the quote "Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day" (23) because it showed a reversal. He has gone back in time thus having experiences as a widow before even getting married. The word senile or perhaps just our suspicions of him being senile shows up a lot in the book. Some examples, "[Billy's daughter] thought her father was senile" ( 28). Besides the word senile, I think Billy being called senile makes him inferior to others and this is also shown many times throughout pages 25 to 72. For example, Weary says to Billy, "Shit, what do you know? what the hell they teach in college" (37). This implies that Weary has not gone to college because he does not know what college teaches and he is only eighteen years old, yet he still acts as if he is superior in terms of intelligence. My partner, using her quote, concluded that he was trying to find salvation, which was a part of the hero's journey. I believe that Billy becoming senile, forgetting things and making up story's was his way of gaining salvation from his experiences at war. "Billy first came unstuck while World War Two was in progress" ( 30). "Unstuck" refers to him being able to time travel, which is the start of his craziness and the Tralfamadorian story. PTSD is what I think he has, but maybe its is different for Billy. For Billy to cope with the stress of war and the memories, I think he removed himself from reality thus becoming "unstuck" where he can time travel to the past to explore his past memories that are not tainted with death or war, like his wedding day. Since writing this post, there were new ideas that showed up. Like Billy’s experience of war might also be his experiences with the Tralfamadorians. For example, Billy talks about being naked, watched and kept in a zoo on the Tralfamadorians planet and this parallels with Billy’s experience at war where he was striped of his clothing and the natives watched him as he showered. I may be a little off but I think some of Billy’s experiences could be made up or that he was hallucinating the whole time and it was all fake.
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