Stuck in Time

“People aren`t supposed to look back. I`m certainly not going to do it anymore. ” (pg.22). Although we have reached the end of the book, it is necessary to go back to the first chapter to clear up doubts and questions. Both these parts of the story are told by the same mysterious person, who in class we assumed was Vonnegut himself. Only after reading the entire novel though, was I was able to have an anagnorisis connecting this person to Billy Pilgrim. The previously mentioned quote specifically states that the narrator of the story will not look back in time, and immediately after, introduces us to Billy. The entire first chapter of the book is about this speaker trying to recall all his old Dresden memories, but fails in doing so. In class, we listened to a radio lab which proved that the more you try to recreate a memory, the more it will change. Maybe this is why Billy Pilgrim was created. Instead of having to remember, or recreate each of his memories, he would actually re-live them by going back in time, eliminating the need to “look back”.

The narrator in the first chapter confuses the reader with incoherent memories. This man is a representation of all of us who are “stuck” in time, unlike Billy who is “unstuck”. I hadn’t understood the significance of this idea until now. We, who require the need to recreate our memories, are stuck in one moment and cannot get out of it. Billy and the Tralfamadorians on the other hand, live in every moment from the past present and future.

The book even allows the reader to become unstuck in time during the final five lines of chapter one, where the story`s very first sentence is told, as well as its last.

“It begins like this:
Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
It ends like this:
Po-tee-weet?” (pg.22)