has difficulty accepting the constraints of time and often lives in the past, calling up old girlfriends and remembering the good ol' days. Vonnegut writes, " . . . my wife asks me what time it is. She always has to know the time. Sometimes I don't know, and I say, 'Search me'" (Vonnegut 7). After witnessing the war and Dresden, both Billy and Vonnegut try to rationalize and understand what they have been through. Billy does this through his time traveling and visits to the planet Tralfamadore. Billy imagines the planet Tralfamadore where he is whisked off to by aliens. Billy is trying to make sense out of what he has witnessed at Dresden and to give order to the disorder of the universe. He wants life to make sense (Lundquist 17). On Tralfamadore, he is exposed to the Tralfamadorian philosophy on life. Their philosophy states that all time is all time: it does not change. It simply is. All moments exist in time simultaneously and forever, and one cannot change the past or the future because they already and always exist (Lundquist 51-52). Billy learns that the best philosophy is to enjoy the good moments and ignore the bad ones. The Tralfamadorians do not understand Billy's concern about finding a cure for the wars on Earth that result in the bombing of Dresden. They know that it is all inevitable and unchangeable. Free Will is a uniquely human concept. The Tralfamadorians know that it does not truly exist. Billy's trip to Tralfamadore allows him to examine the human race as a whole from afar. Billy comes to adopt Tralfamadorian philosophy. He continues on his time-travels and manages to rescue himself and his personal sanity through the works of his own imagination. His time-travels and trips to Tralfamadore serve as a rationalizing fantasy. He reinvents himself and his universe so that he can go on living. He is unhinged by what happens to him in the war, and because of this, he invents the Tralfamadorians. He blames his madness on ...
