![]() The narrator explains that people are not supposed to look back anymore, and that the book he tried to write about his experiences in the war was not good, because it was written by a pillar of salt. Lot's wife looked back and she was turned into a pillar of salt. The family of Lot was spared, but told not to look back as they fled. Sodom and Gemorrah: Sodom and Gemorrah are biblical cities which God destroyed because there were wicked people living there. After the plane crash, he begins to talk freely about his experiences on Tralfamadore. Plane crash: Billy is the only survivor of a plane crash which happens when the plane crashes into the top of a mountain in Vermont on the way to an optometrist's convention. The Germans who capture he and Billy take it away from him. ![]() Weary's knife: Roland Weary has a three-sided knife, which he shows to Billy and explains that it makes a wound which will not close. Therefore, when a person or thing is dead, they are also alive, because every moment that they were alive is simultaneously existing- it is just that their body is currently not in very good shape. Their belief is that moments exist not sequentially, with a past, present and future but as a constant state of has happened, is happening, and will happen. ![]() It signifies the Tralfamadorian attitude toward death, which the protagonist Billy Pilgrim has adopted as his own. So it goes: 'So it goes' is the phrase that follows each and every mention of death in the novel, whether it is the mass death after the bombing of Dresden or the death of the lice and bacteria on the soldier's clothes as they are cleaned. Ilium: Ilium is the city in New York where Billy and his wife Valencia live. Billy hears it at the very end of the novel, and it is foreshadowed when the narrator reveals at the end of the first chapter that his story will begin 'Listen:' and end 'Poo-tee-weet?'. 'Poo-tee-weet?': 'Poo-tee-weet?' is the sound of a bird chirping. ![]() He also uses it to describe the corpse mine from which the soldiers have to extract bodies of the victims of the Dresden bombing. He uses it to describe his breath late at night when he makes phone calls to people he hasn't seen in a long time. Mustard gas and roses: This is the narrator's repeating motif for something that smells bad or rotten. She is afraid that he will write a book glorifying the war, which will encourage more wars to happen, making it necessary for her babies to fight in wars someday. They see time as something constant, where events always have happened, are happening, and will happen, as opposed to how Earthlings are stuck in the present and live moment-to-moment.Ĭhildren's Crusade: The narrator promises Mary O'Hare that he will subtitle his book 'The Children's Crusade' after she angrily tells him that they were just babies when they fought in the war. The Tralfamadorians look like toilet plungers with little hands. He is able to time-travel and often travels to his future there while he is fighting in the war. Tralfamadore: Tralfamadore is the planet which Billy says he was taken in a saucer. Slaughterhouse: Billy and the other Americans are kept as prisoners of war in a slaughterhouse in Dresden, Germany. Billy is held as a prisoner of war in Dresden, and is there for the bombing Dresden: Dresden is a city in Germany which was firebombed during World War II.
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