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Slaughterhouse 5 II
Slaughterhouse 5 II
Charcoal, Sharpie marker, and silver colored pencil on mat illustration board
32 in x 40 in
2011

A more bizarre interpretation of Slaughterhouse Five represents how Billy Pilgrim was able to cope with the traumatic experiences of war by being in two places at once. In other words, time travel. Presently, he is in the middle of a rainstorm of bombs dropping down on Dresden and is also lounging on a bed on the planet Trafalmadore. Nobody knows what the Trafalmadorian aliens look like or where their home planet is. Thus they are simply represented as all-seeing eyes that only we can see. According to them, Billy can hear their voices but can't see them, or even us, because we the viewers as well as the Trafalmadorians are not in the same dimension as Billy. The mannequin Billy is in bed with further represents the strangeness of the story.

Having the comical ability to travel back and forth in time to his past and future, Billy smiles because he knows what is going to happen to him. The tombstone slanted against the darker side of the bed says, "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."