Literary Reflections

If I were to bring any character from any of the books we have read this year, I would probably bring Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse 5. I would meet Billy Pilgrim as a student in one of my classes. In Slaughterhouse 5 Billy Pilgrim always had the best luck out of everyone. He miraculously survived in situations in the war where he was supposed to die. Billy Pilgrim is in my classes after he has been deployed in the war and he wants to receive a further education. I would probably think that Billy Pilgrim is close to insane with his ideas of the Tralfamadorians, but I think that some of his philosophies that he picked up from the aliens, I would find really intriguing. Billy Pilgrim speaks about some of the Tralfamadorian philosophies. He talks about how you can life never ends, you are always alive at some point in time so you are never actually gone. The memories that you had and lived in are what keep you alive. He talks about how you can live in only happy moments if that’s what you want. Billy Pilgrim says that the Tralfamadorians do not see life with negatives, but that you can live your whole life in happy memories. He says that there is always a destiny and that no matter what you try and avoid in life, it will happen because your life is already laid out completely. If someone were going through tragedy and someone had died, Billy Pilgrim would tell them not to be sad because that person is always alive at some point in time in their life. To Billy Pilgrim, death is about sadness, it just means they go to a different part in their life that they are living.

I would quickly become friends with Billy Pilgrim. Half the time of my friendship with him, I would wonder if he was completely on his rocker and if he was not insane. I think I would be really intrigued by his ideas of the Tralfamadorians. A lot of the philosophies of the Tralfamadorians are about happiness of life and living in the happy moments. I think everyone needs a little reminding of that sometimes and I think that if Billy Pilgrim were a friend of mine, he would tell me to think of the happy moments in life if I were going through a hard time.