Billy Is Crazy! (Chapter 3)

The other day I was browsing an article about the last veteran of WW1 or something like that, and that he just died. This started a long talk between my father and my oldest brother. In a part of the conversation my dad explains t us that there is this very terrible thing called the after-war syndrome. It is a syndrome that, after you have seen people die, have killed hundreds of people, ruined families, teared down cities, and all the horrible things that war causes, once it is over, you keep having flashbacks. You close your eyes and find yourself back at war, behind enemy lines, but this closing your eyes issue is also called sleeping. What I think Billy is experiencing is after-war syndrome. This quote basically gives him out: "The photographer wanted something more lively, though, a picture of an actual capture. So the guards staged one for him. They threw Billy into shrubbery. When Billy came out of the shrubbery, his face

wreathed in goofy good will, they menaced him with their machine pistols, as though

they were capturing him then. Billy's smile as he came out of the shrubbery was at least as peculiar as Mona Lisa's, for he was simultaneously on foot in Germany in 1944 and riding his Cadillac in 1967. Germany dropped away, and 1967 became bright and clear, free of interference

from any other time. Billy was on his way to a Lions Club luncheon meeting." (Chapter 3, page 21. Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut) This quote might seem a little long, but it is for everyone to understand the context. Billy is thrown to the ground by german soldiers and closes his eyes, and when he opens his eyes, he is driving a car going to a meeting. That is very peculiar. Also in a part, the narrator says Billy suddenly wept. I again think this is because of the stress levels he went through. Various times throughout the chapter and the novel he passes through the same thing, which makes me believe, he has after-war syndrome.