Slaughterhouse: Juxtaposition

Slaughterhouse Five
Kurt Vonnegut

Throughout the story, there are several instances which are juxtaposed with another occurrence or mirrored by some aspect of another scene. For example, the colors blue and ivory are repeated when describing both Billy's feet in his house and the hook used to prop himself up in the train.

However, one of the major juxtapositions is between Billy Pilgrim's career and his Tralfamadorian view of life. Billy is an optometrist, or a doctor who specializes in the care of sight and eyes. It is slightly ironic, though, that Billy works with sight because his own view of his life is changed as well. Just as he helps his patients to literally see more clearly, the Tralfamadorians helped him to see the truths of life more clearly. At the end of Chapter Five, the two are finally combined to show their relation. "While he examined the boy's eyes, Billy told him matter-of-factly about his adventures on Tralfamadore, assured the fatherless boy that his father was very much alive still in moments the boy would see again and again," (Vonnegut, 135). With this statement, the two types of sights are united: his sight is literally being corrected, but Billy is also correcting his sight of time. The two are one in the same for Billy, and he is unable to separate them.