Slaughterhouse - Five

Kurt Vonnegut

As a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontations, I had outlined the Dresden story many times. The best outline I ever made, or anyway the prettiest one, was on the back of a roll of wallpaper.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

Every so often, for no apparent reason, Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping. Nobody had ever caught Billy doing it. Only the doctor knew. It was an extremely quiet thing Billy did, and not very moist.

Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

Billy closed that one eye, saw in his memory of the future poor old Edgar Derby in front of a firing squad in the ruins of Dresden. There were only four men in that squad. Billy had heard that one man in each firing squad was customarily given a rifle loaded with a blank cartridge. Billy didn’t think there would be a blank cartridge issued in a squad that small, in a war that old.

If you stop taking pride in your appearance, you will very soon die. He said that he had seen several men die in the following way: They ceased to stand up straight, then ceased to shave or wash, then ceased to get out of bed, then ceased to talk, then died. There is this much to be said for it: it is evidently a very easy and painless way to go. So it goes.

I suppose they will all want dignity, I said.
I suppose, said O’Hare.

The knack of enjoying one's self in the moment one has is not unlike Vonnegut's Tralfamadorian conception of time: all points exist always and at once, so ignore the bad and enjoy the good. If you are delayed in a journey and are forced to wait somewhere, should not these moments of waiting be moments of deep and flowing peace? Why must we find waiting so frustrating? We musn't. Or this much I will exhort: the art of patience, the art of waiting seems to have been lost, but there is not really a good that comes out of this. To wait is to be like the one we are tying to be like.