Tralfamadorian In Edith Wharton's Slaughter House Five
571 Words3 Pages
Throughout the “The Writing of Fiction” novelist Edith Wharton states that “every author has an illuminating incident that is essential to the understanding of the theme.” Wharton statement is proven in novels like Slaughter House Five, The things They Carry and etc.
In “Slaughter House Five” Kurt Vonnegut displays his illuminating scene when Billy Pilgrim is taken to the Tralfamadorians’ planet and he first encounters an alien race called Tralfamadorians. In Pilgrims encounter the conversation about time introduces a topic of what time is and how life should be lived or embraced. The Tralfamadorians explain to Pilgrim how “All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber." This moment alternates the interpretation of life for Billy Pilgrim, creating a deeper meaning to life and making him finally understand this framed prayer on his office wall that went like this “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” His encounter with the…show more content… For example, “when a person is in a dark room they will always search for a light switch, and they cannot accept the fact that sometimes there is no light switch.” The very change of mind for Billy Pilgrim brought to play the question of why do humans ask why when “there is no why” in life, even though they are just machines “like every other creature and plant in the universe” “with tubes as a spine with important wires in it.” The encounter with the Tralfamadorians changes Pilgrim completely, he has realized that time has already been laid out like a stretch of the Rocky Mountains and everything in the universe is trapped in the amber of a stagnant