A Modern Prophet

My relationship with Science Fiction; whether it be books, movies, magazine articles, et cetera, is one that is fraught with dislike and mixed feelings. Ever since I was little, I was disturbed by science fiction, and the images it left frozen in my mind. However, I recently began reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Perhaps it's that Kurt Vonnegut's version of science fiction is rather quirky, or that elements of the book are more like historical fiction, or even that the deeper philosophical meaning found in the book is one that I profoundly admire; whatever the reason, I find myself truly loving and enjoying this work of science fiction.

The premise of the story is that a rather ordinary man, who is in no way special and is almost an outcast; in society, among his friends, and among his peers, is given the ability to time travel. This man's name is Billy Pilgrim, and the one component of Billy Pilgrim that makes him such an intriguing character is that Billy Pilgrim is "unstuck" in time. His time travel takes place within his own life, and he therefore repeatedly travels to events that have taken place in his life; to the future where he learns of his death, to the planet of Tralfmadore, where Billy encounters the Tralfmadorians who no believes exist except for Billy, and, most importantly, to the horrors that Billy experienced while fighting in World War II. Yet the part of the book I find most engaging are Billy's visits with the Tralfmadorians, for they teach Billy to view his ordinary, depressing life in a whole new and different perspective. Instead of focusing on each event in life as an individual  occurrence, they look at life as a whole and look at its beauty rather than its faults. They describe humans as having one long tube to look through, and that tube can only focus on one thing at a time rather than focusing on the huge, glorious picture that life is made up of.

Whilst reading, I began to wonder, why was this power of time travel, or rather, being "unstuck" in time, given to a man of such ordinary stature and being. Why Billy Pilgrim? This nobody, who is perfectly ordinary, is given the extraordinary power of being unstuck in time, and experiencing the world of the Tralfamadorians. After Billy's encounters with the Tralfamadorians, he is sent back to earth to spread the word, to explain the people this whole new perspective on life that forces people to look at the bigger picture, at how beautiful their life indeed was. In a way, Billy Pilgrim is almost like a prophet, for he is simply an ordinary man, yet he is then given this power and therefore begins to tell people to look at their lives in a different way, to interpret events as thy've never thought of them before. Life is not a journey, but rather one wonderful moment in the continuation of Time. Life possesses no beginning and no end, and when someone dies it is not sad for you still have memories, pieces of them that you are able to hold on to forever, and those memories are really what truly made up the person and your relationship with that person. And so, perhaps the reason I enjoy this book is that it's a mixture of science fiction, historical fiction, and the introduction of a modern-day prophet. Whatever the reason, I am excited to learn what deeper meaning lies within this book, and I am intrigued as to how this book will conclude itself.