Princess is Going to War

While reading the novel, I realized how unstable the order of the events is. I decided Vonnegut´s writing makes it difficult for the reader, or at least for me, to understand what is happening. I can´t be sure when the present is, since Billy Pilgrim is always "jumping" to and fro between moments in his life.

 

Now, the golden boots. I can´t imagine how uncomfortable a pair of golden boots can be, or why the former owner wore them for war, but they were included in the story for a reason. It may be their symbolism, which can only be inferred. I believe they represent the foolishness of the poor when it comes to participation in war, or maybe purity and temptation. The way that Billy "travels" though time in the story, publically shared his "expiriences" in Trafalmadore, and the fact he saw Adam and Eve in a pair of boots make Billy seem demented.

I used to watch a series called Taken, and I´ve seen many movies on alien abductions but this is the one I relate the most to, because one of the main characters, Russell Keys, was a veteran from WWII and had recurring nightmares in which aliens adbucted him. The story was science fiction and in it´s context Russell was abducted, so he becomes a homeless person in order to avoid being taken again. A very important difference between these stories is that Billy seems to have liked being abducted, while Russell is mortified when contemplating the fact of being taken another time. 

Another relationship I make is how farmers formed groups to "collect" Americans who would be handed in as war prisioners with the XVI century, when the need for slaves led African´s to round up their fellow Africans and sell them to slave commercants, who traveled through the Middle Passage.

The fact that the narrator is omniscient and tells details he couldn´t know were happening seems queer. For example, how could he know that while the irregulars were taking Billy and Weary, the other Musketeers were being murdered? This characteristic of the narrator is important for the reader to understand events that willlater be introduced in a deeper way. It´s also siginifcant that the narrator finally makes a connection between himself, Billy Pilgrim, and Bernard O´Hare, attesting they were in war together. While in boxcars, prisoners are refered to as "human beings", and leaves an option for the reader to decide what the guards were, whether more or less than them, this depending on the readers train of thought.