Reading chapter four of Slaughterhouse 5, I found a very nice quote I wanted to focus on. Billy claims to have been obducted by these aliens called Tralfamadorians. As their name says so, they come from a planet called Tralfamadore. One night, Billy couldn't sleep. He wakes up, goes to the kitchen, tries to pop some champagne, but it was gasless. He had a strange feeling that he was going to be obducted. This was the night of his daughter's marriage. He went out to his back yard, and out of the sudden a round spaceship came and opened itself, coming out of it, a ladder. Billy knoew he had to grab himself, and he did. The ladder was electrified, to keep him tighly grabbed up to the top. The Tralfamadorians have the capacity to travel through space and time, and this is why they appeared so suddenly. These aliens talked through computer machines, and they talked a little, when one of the green little guys said to Billy: "'If I hadn't spent so much time studying Earthlings,' said the Tralfamadorian, 'Iwouldn't have any idea what was meant by "free will." I've visited thirty-one inhabited plants in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.' " (Pg 31, SH5. Kurt Vonnegut)
I thought this was a very powerful thought. We just came from reading books about utopias/ distopias, and in most of them there is no free will. We don't know what we have untill we lose it, and even though in this case we haven't lost it (yet), well it made me think a lot about earth without free will. Nobody could say what they like, what they think, no relationships, no choosing careers, no books, no freedom. Could you imagine if earth, or your own country was liek this? I would not like to be a Tralfamadorian, as long as they don't have free will no.
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