Entry 3, Chapter 2 - Characterization

     Revealing a character's personality, can make or break the decision of a reader to continue reading the book. Billy Pilgrim begins his story with background on his life before, during, and after the war when he descirbes Pilgrim's adventures in optometry, family development, and his life in the war. Billy explains to his reader that he was not exactly fit to be a soldier after being drafted soon after starting college. Vonnegut shows his reader that Billy was a normal guy, pulled into something much bigger than he could handle. This makes us, the readers, identify with Billy as an average Joe, who like the rest of us, are forced to do something we aren't fit to do. Later in the chapter, Billy begins his story about his life post war, when he was involved in a plane crash and developed a new outlook on life after becoming associated with aliens he called the Tralfamadorians. The reader now begins to feel that Billy is actually a character with a strange mind along with the other characters, like his daughter, agree with. Overall, Vonnegut reveals at first a Billy Pilgrim who was just like the rest of us, but then when talking about his post war days, shows the reader that Billy is a man with a possible psychotic mind when he said,"he had been kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians on the night of his daughter's wedding,"which was a cliche phrase said by those in the past years who had said they had been "abducted by aliens".