The film definitely ignored certain aspects of the Billy's understanding of his special place in the world. He claims in the book that he didn't want to tell anyone about his time & space travel before his accident because the timing wasn't right. This is simply ignored in the film, because he is abducted after his wife's death.
This also removes that seeming contradiction that he never cheated on his wife but once, on the washing machine at a party, & was caught. Even if he travelled through a portal to Tralfamador & lived in a different crease in time, one that could be experienced by him as years & his family or whoever as only minutes back on earth, this would still seem pretty clearly to consist of infidelity. Therefore, his claims would be contradictory, posing a more interesting problem relative to his sanity & possible brain damage after the plane crash.
This reminds of that Robert Cormier book, _I Am the Cheese_, which I read in ninth grade or so. The kid is obviously suffering from various mental & psychological confusions & disconnected memories, as well as mind-altering influences (drugs, electric shock, something like that). This adds a rich layer of meaning to the stories woven throughout _Slaughterhouse-Five_, and presents a puzzle--Pilgrim's sanity--which leads to a problem: an individual's inability to come to terms with reality after his experiences in WWII, & especially surviving the Dresden bombing. & adding to his seeming narcosis, paralysis, or whatever his sleepwalking through life is in the novel--interrupted momentarily by the very real & naked nervous breakdown he had--is his wife's sudden death & his son's conversion to war hero. What could this image of his son mean to Billy, considering what he had seen of war?
The movie, on the other hand, seems to offer us only a man disconnected from reality, very clearly constructing a more pleasant version to counter the horrors of his wartime experiences. This "mental divergence" is definitely one way to read the novel's protagonist, but provides only a fraction of its intricacies.
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I just can't help but feel that the whole Billy Pilgrim story is meaningless unless we are using it as a tool to offer insight into the inner workings of the author and his struggles with post- traumatic-whaterever-you-want-to-call-it. I hate seeing it that way. A story is a story and I feel like I should be able to appreciate it for simply that reason. Perhaps if we had seen the movie first or maybe if Vonnegut had not written that precursor to the Billy Pilgrim novel then I would be able to have that appreciaion. But as it goes, I look at the whole novel as an excuse for Vonnegut's inability to personally relay the events of Dresden (not that I think he needs one)because,basically, he told me so. I would be able to be more objective if he had just published the story with no mention of himself. Does that make sense?
hmm, objectivity vs. subjectivity is a really shifty thing, you know? what is the truth of the story? of any story? how can we be objective, when we aren't objects? how can we record or see what is if we block most of it out so we can see at all? i don't know if i'm ever particularly objective, as far as that goes!
Objectivity is an ideal. We can strive for it but not really achieve it. We can also look at things knowingly idealistically, yet not not believing in it fully bcause it's an ideal that, as non- objects, we are not capable of achieving, though understanding that as well. As far as truth is concerned, we all have our own truths at any given moment, and no amount of fact or proof can dismiss that our truths are true to us. Perhaps I could have phrased that comment as, "I would be able to have a different perspective if the story was published with no mention of himself". Then again, perspective creates different truths and maybe I should be more focused on my own dissatisfaction with my perspective than with the story. Funny.
haha, very well put!
I just appreciated Vonnegut's insertion of himself into the story, thematically, through memory, the ironies produced, & the richness of the story, that being a big part of the story, to me.
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