Billy deals with death and violence throughout the entire book and uses multiple forms of figurative language to show it. One example of that is whenever somebody dies billy says “so it goes” and this phrase is repeated multiple times.“One hour later she was dead.” (pg.183) Billy experienced so much death in his life. Did he time travel to go back to when people were alive?
Maybe Billy was lonely. “Billy’s father is dead, you know.” (pg.103) Everyone around him kept dying. Old Edgar Derby, Billy’s dad, and Billy’s wife all died. Was time traveling Billy’s escape? All he had in his coma were his thoughts. Kurt Vonnegut used these quotes for a specific reason, to reflect on the thought of death in the story, and to perhaps change the way readers look at war and death.
Billys mind set was way different than others not in the war because he saw all this violence for a long period in his life. These images wouldn't leave his mind even when he was unconscious. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always exist.” (pg27) At many points in the story, Billy revisits his time in the war, the importance of Dresden and the aftermath of the war in his perspective and how it changed his view of time. Even after time passes important memories in your life, whether they're good or bad, don't leave your mind. In this story, the bad memories are overriding the good. But, billy tries to make light of the bad memories by altering them and then fast forwarding to another.
Therefore, Billy uses time travel in order to cope with the bad memories in his past.“People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.” Billy even in death will be able to look back on the moments in his life, good and bad. "If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice." (Pg.211) All billy wants is to go back and change all of the bad moments and violence. This is understandable for any human being. But, time cannot erase such moments..