Re: Billy Pilgrim, as boring as they come. - Milan, OWA1

Just acting as the 'devil's advocate', the novel isn't necessarily about Billy Pilgrim: it's about life around him. Billy Pilgrim is merely used as a point of view from which one can view society. As such, the novel becomes a story of the people and experiences that Billy sees, not about the character of Billy Pilgrim. It could indeed be said that everything around Billy becomes the characters in the novel; human society and its various facets become characters, while the Tralfamadorians are another character that they represent collectively.

It's impossible to sympathize with Billy (at least in the way that he's presented), because what he thinks and feels are not similar to most of people's personalities. Unlike, say, Napoleon or Snowball from Animal Farm he does not possess any qualities that draw others to him. Quite the contrary, he attempts to distance himself from others whenever he is given the best of chances.

I believe, as I said earlier, that Billy Pilgrim is used as a channel through which readers can observe human society in comparison with the Tralfamadorians (who represent an alternative to our 'popular' way of thinking). Therefore, Billy is in no place to attempt to try to change either society but merely to present us, the readers, with a viable alternative. As this is the ultimate goal of the novel, there can be no more important aspect of the story than Billy for without his unique way of looking in from the outside, it would be much more difficult to escape the pressures of society and thus be able to compare what we have and don't have.

However, there is one aspect in which Billy is used as an example for a reader: his opinion of fate and how he deals with it. Billy knows exactly what's going to happen to him in the future, but he doesn't have the mindset of making it as enjoyable as possible. Humans are the only species on Earth that can foresee possible events far in the future yet also do nothing about it (or be slow to react to it). We are, most commonly, content with what we have and not under pressure to change unless we find it immediately necessary. I believe that the message that is being attempted to be relayed by Vonnegut in his writing of Billy is not to casually accept events as he does, but rather to cherish our time alive and make the most of it. This ties directly into the Tralfamadorian beliefs of focusing on the good in lieu of the bad in life. Billy fails to do so even when he has the opportunity to do so, and we should all take care not to follow in his footsteps, however different they may be from our current way of thinking.