My initial reaction to the story was that this is a very weird story. I thought it was hard to understand how Billy was time-traveling and how his life worked out like this. When he kept going to the future and back to the past, knowing what will happen it became kind of confusing how he would just do whatever he was doing in that moment, and I guess this fits the Trafalmadorians philosophy in that every event that occurs in our live is like a bug stuck in amber, whereas we can't change anything in the present because it is the things that we do and the events that occur that shape our lives.
This helped me to kind of understand their viewpoint on how they cannot do anything about the universe ending or how Billy can't do anything about Derby dying. They can't do anything about it because it has already happened, the lives have already been lived, therefore the choices have already been made. The hard part about conceiving the truth and understanding in what the Trafalmadorians truly see and live like as Vonegut describes is that he tried to touch upon ideas of the fabric of space-time which weren't truly discovered (scientifically) until the late nineties, and even now scientists don't know everything about the whole concept.
In all, I really enjoy reading this book, but just find it hard to understand in parts. Also, it reminds me somewhat of the movie "Click" where Adam Sandler travels through time as Billy does. They are similar because while traveling to the future they don't get to experience the things in the middle of the two events taking place. I hope everything turns out all right for Billy as it did for Adam.
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2 comments:
Your post reminds me of the old saying "All's well that ends well", meaning that if you're satisfied with your present life, all of the previous events in your life were necessary in creating that contentment. Maybe Billy see's the past as a necessary sarcrifice for creating his life, and even if he could change it he wouldn't.
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