Like Bugs Trapped in Amber?

"Are our lives predetermined or are we free to make our own choices?" Is it just me, or is this question awkwardly similar to the one about the chicken and the egg? In truth, there is no way to know. Answers will vary person to person as everyone is free to choose for themselves. In my personal opinion, everything is fated in some way. I do not see fate as a means to an end, but as an end in itself: all the decisions we make will lead us to a predetermined destination.

Fate is a word that gets thrown around a lot. To some it is a way of life. To others it is just another word in the dictionary. It gets used as an excuse for a misfortune. It even puts money in the pockets of astrologers and fortune tellers. In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, fate is used to explain any and every event that takes place. Among those who beleive in fate are the Tralfamadorians, who try to convince Billy that "There is no why...It simply is" (77-88). Billy even admits that "among the things [he can] not change [are] the past, present, and future" (60), due to the fact that "[a]ll moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, [and] always will exist" (27).

My interpretation of fate differs from that of Vonnegut, as I beleive that fate only refers to destination, rather than the journey. In my opinion, only the major events in our lives are predetermined and inevitable, while we get to choose the outcome of all minor life choices.

-Arshdeep

Who's the crazy one?

If Billy isn't brain damaged into hallucinations, than I must be the one who is crazy!

Poor Billy- One moment he's being beaten up by a psychopath, then suddenly reappearing as an optometrist decades later, and next he's being captured by the Tralfmadorians in their space ship to be sent to their zoo. I really sympathize with the guy, but I think all these strange excursions are happening inside Poor Billy's own head. Could Vonnegut be actually telling us that this is happening for real? I suppose so, but one would have to ignore a lot of evidence pointing that Billy is crazier than rhino poo.

I don't think that this fantasy is real because Vonnegut gave a mountain of evidence to why its phony: most importantly that Billy was in an airplane accident where he sustained severe head trauma and was suspected of being crazy by his family. And the reason why his family thought he had lost his grip was because he "thought the time was ripe" to reveal that he had been captured by aliens, Tralfmadorians, who had taken him light years away to show him how time really worked. Here, Vonnegut throws us another clue to why Billy's world is not reality. He explains the weird aliens very calmly with no kind of skepticism, indicating that there is no surprise as he's just looking through the eyes of a crazy man.

Lets analyze Billy some more. His willingness to die at war, acceptance of abuse, unquestioning acceptance of aliens, watching a war movie backwards, all indicate to a person without sanity. 

In the introduction of the book, Vonnegut also hints that Billy is the self-portrayal of himself in his own past, indicating that the story has some truth behind it- Vonnegut did serve in the war and was found behind enemy lines just like our main character Billy. Seeing that Billy's world is based on the real word tells us that quite a few things aren't parallel. Either Vonnegut is telling us that he was as crazy as rhino poo, just like Billy, or else he is telling us a story of a crazed man. Could Vonnegut perhaps be the crazy one??

-Daniel