What do you think about that fact that SL5 is no. 69 on the American Library Association’s list of The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000? (#87 at the Online Computer Library Center).
It what ways is this different than the average novel?
Is it possible that Billy Pilgrim is quietly insane? That Tralfamadore exists only in his mind, as a product of shellshock, surviving a plane crash, and reading too many Kilgore Trout stories? A protective madness?
If he is insane, why does he create another situation where he’s a prisoner? (captivity on Tralfamadore)
Is he a sympathetic character? Is he, as his name infers, a pilgrim on a journey?
Do we live our own lives “closer” to the Tralfamadorian model than we are consciously aware of? Everyone daydreams, remembers, fantasizes. Some much more than others. Is it a coping mechanism in Billy’s life?
Does Billy’s awareness of the course of his life lead to his passivity throughout the novel? (Bombing, plane crash, his marriage, his assassination, etc.).
Is Tralfamadorian philosophy a basically passive philosophy? (they know how the universe ends) And, is there philosophy that different than the “god grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”?
Does living this way not allow for growth, change, as a human being?
The narrator tells his sons that they are not to take part in massacres, and not to let news of massacres fill them with glee. That alone puts this pretty well into the “anti-war” novel category. What separates an “anti-war” novel from a “war” novel?
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