Billy's Anniversary

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

One of the oddest parts of the book is Billy's 18th wedding anniversary. Now this is saying something considering most the entire book is odd, yet this bit of peculiarity goes on explained and untouched for the rest of the book. It is the scene when Billy listens to the barbershop quartet sing "That Old Gang of Mine". For some reason or other, the actually changing of the notes and the sourness of the song cause Billy to come physically sick. He becomes so sick that in fact many can see it on his face. "They thought he might be having a heart attack, and Billy seemed to confirm this by going to a chair and sitting down haggardly" (Vonnegut 173). Kilgore Trout immediately assumes that Billy had peered through a "time window", which in all honestly is not that to hard to conceive. Then Valencia says to Billy that he looks like he's seen a ghost. However the word "ghost" is italicized. I believe it is italicized for a reason and that both Trout and Valencia's words were not far off. In that moment, it's as if Billy did go through a time window, in which he was reminded of the future in which all those people are dead. This applies even to the barbershop quartet, who were the last one's singing before that plane went down into the mountains.