The Scar of War

“Billy sat in the back of the jiggling coffin. His head was tilted back and his nostrils were flaring. He was happy...” (SH5pg194) He’s not actually in a coffin, Kurt Vonnegut just wants to show a symbol of death, all the soldiers have had to live through this death during the war. Killing others is not an easy thing to do and seeing death beside you is less, all these men had to live through that left each with a unique scar. The Scar of War. Each handled their Scar of War in a different way Billy chooses science-fiction and even possibly invents the Trafamadorians and Montana Wildhack. “What really became of Montana Wildhack? So Billy read it. He knew where Montana Wildhack really was, of course...but the magazine...promised that she was wearing a cement overcoat under thirty fathoms of saltwater in San Pedro Bay.”(SH5pg204) We never considered Billy so crazy (he was reading sci-fi, and had been scared by war after all) but all this, the Trafamadorians and Montana Wildhack could well be Billy’s imagination of an alternative utopia were he would escape. Running off in times when he really didn’t want to be there and this may explain why he ‘time travels’. Maybe he just remembering all his life from his deathbed, and jumps from one event to the other we never know because he so unpredictable.