Monday, April 23, 2012

Change - Novel Blog 5 (Slaughterhouse-Five)

"Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next."

~ Slaughterhouse-Five, page 23

Okay, so I know that Billy has no way to stick himself back in time, but it seems like he isn't doing anything to try to provoke any change at all. He says he has to act in whatever part of his life he is in, but does he really? This is my question. Is Billy limited to a certain, predestined life that he must live a particular way, or could he change his actions? What if he did something completely drastic during the war that changed the whole course of his future? Is that going to be a plot later in the book? He has a mediocre life, but could he have done something differently to make it better? He could at least make it interesting, even if the repercussions were severe and negative. I don't know. I just think his lack of resistance is unsettling. I want him to do something different.

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