Sh5

There is no middle for Slaughterhouse five. The middle for Billy Pilgrim is his entire life. He feels that there is no beginning or end.Billy has many different timelines that seem to all be happening at once. Billy goes through time in Illium, New York as an optometrist. He is a soldier in World War two, and he is kept in a zoo on Tralfmadore. There are multiple times that could be the actual time line line. 

I think the one that is most likely the timeline is the war. All the events that we see, like Billy getting into a plane crash, and Billy going to New York to talk about the aliens that kidnapped him. I feel like none of that actual happened.

The first time Billy jumped through time, he was in the woods with the Three Musketeers. Billy saw his death when he jumped through time. When you are tired and you just want to give up, you start imagining things. Billy wanted to stop walking, so he imagined what it felt like to give up and die.

Billy once said "not in the present",

Billy Pilgrim was meanwhile traveling back to Dresden, too, but not in the present. He was going back there in 1945, two days after the city was destroyed." (pg.212)

     That got me thinking, what is the present for Billy? I thought it was during the war and I feel like this confirms it. He said he went back to Dresden but not in the present. That means that the present is in Dresden but it is before the fire bombings. Maybe that means that nothing in the book really happened after the bombings in Dresden, because Billy died in the slaughterhouse. Or maybe Billy dies and this is what he sees in Heaven to help him cope with what he had to live through.

What do you think the main time line is? Do you think Billy actually experienced everything in the book?