set when another human's life was blindly taken. After coming to newly understand the limits of human vision and the naivet of human-kind, namely that one can change what will happen and guide one's actions Billy felt no sympathy for death and made no attempt to right injustice and stop the atrocities of war. Although Billy finds peace in the many positive aspects of the Tralfamadorian mind-set, there also exist many negatives to his new vision. The many aspects of Billy's life which his new vision touch are clearly outlined in Slaughterhouse-Five. For example, whenever there is a tragic death or an entire city is destroyed Billy says what all Tralfamdorians say "so it goes." Billy does not feel remorse or anger when he hears of the war in Vietnam because it is just a frame in time, which has, is and always will happen. Just as the universe will be destroyed by the Tralfamdorians but no attempt is made to stop it. At one point in the novel Billy sees a war movie in reverse, he describes it as follows: The formation flew over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored in neatly racks. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were shipped to factories where operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents...so they would never hurt anybody again. (Vonnegut 64) Vonnegut uses this imagery to dramatize effectively the cruelty of bombing. Billy's Tralfamadorian view of this war film is an obvious improvement over the forward version. However, with the Tralfamdorian view also comes a heavy price. The cost of this new vision is the human conscience and the concern for life. The Tralfamdorian view extracts the human conscience, which separates humans from the rest of the an...
