Friday, August 3, 2012
Antihero
In chapter two, Vonnegut introduces the main character Billy Pilgrim. Billy is a dazed and confused man moving through the motions in life. This character appears to be an anti-hero in many ways. Billy suffered many tragedies in life such as being a prisoner of war, a plane crash, and tragic deaths of family members. Billy was drafted into the second World War and became a chaplain's assistant. Billy basically didn't do much during the war and could be considered unhelpful to the other Americans. At one point in the book, Vonnegut refers to Billy as a "damn college kid, who was so weak he shouldn't even have been in the army" (55). Since Billy doesn't accomplish much and is presented as pitiful and crazy, he could be referred to as the antihero of the book.
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I definitely agree with your opinion that Billy Pilgrim is the antihero. Another reason that he could be referred to as an antihero is because he wanted to quit and give up in the beginning of the novel when he was traveling with the "Three Musketeers". Billy kept telling those three men to go on without him, and to leave him behind to die.
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