Vy Anybody?

From what i’ve read so far, I think that the author is trying to portray Billy Pilgrim as a person who was broken by war and the Children’s Crusade, in order to fulfill his purpose as an antiwar book. It all derives from Billy being captured by the Tralfamadorians. He adopts their philosophy in the way of looking at death. As their state early in the book, these creatures believe that everything is happening simultaneously, all the present, past and future. This means that when someone dies, they still exist in the past, so as they say, in page 27, crying in a funeral is silly. Billy adopts the Tralfamadorian saying of So it goes. Every time someone dies, Billy says So it goes, and this happens every couple paragraphs and even sentences. People die but life continues, so it just goes on. This sort of degrades the importance of life, as Billy makes it seem like something disposable. Generally this contradicts with our morals or ethics, making seem Billy as someone mean or immoral. As his trips to Tralfamadore started after going crazy from several traumatizing events, like WWII or a plane crash, war is what eventually caused Billy to become that way. So by chapter five, So it goes  seems normal. Every few sentences a dead body appears or a prisoner gets killed. So it goes. In another side, as said before, Billy seems to be like in the Children’s Crusades. There are a bunch of young men if Germany fighting for something, but do they really know what that is? The Americans, Germans, Russians, French and British are all together in what looks like they’re dealing to follow what others command them to do. As Billy degrades life, adn makes death seem normal, he starts putting everything that happens in war as a casual occasion. When he talks about the German prison, he doesn’t really show it as he was suffering--he simply states what happens. People are in good conditions, people are in bad conditions--he just says it. Another example is how he talks about the British. He says they were rich because they had food. Also, they were powerful because they were physically strong. All these things are only important in war. 

In the beginning of chapter five, in page 91, Billy asks a guard in the prison, “Why me?” The guard answers, “Vy anybody?” That’s what Vonnegut is asking us, why anybody? Why take young men to give their lives by someone else’s command? Why kill? Why war? Although this is not a common antiwar book, the author is able to put this question in mind through a creative way.