Story Summary

The story is about the life of Billy Pilgram, he is an optometrist that served in World War II. He was in Dresden the night that it got bombed, and this event caused him to have a lot of trauma. The trauma from the war made it so he became unstuck in time. This meant that at anytime he could jump to another point in his life. Many times he would jump back to the war and talk about what it was like being a prisoner of war and being in Dresden. One time he got captured by aliens fromTralfamadore. The aliens taught him that there is no such thing as death. A person will have always been in the past, the present, and the future. From these aliens Billy learned not to be afraid of death. He also had a wife Valencia. She really loved Billy and she died because she was trying to see him in the hospital. On her way to the hospital she got in a wreck. The wreck messed up her car, but she still drove her car to the hospital. Little did she know that her car was leaking gases into her car and when she got to the hospital that gases had killed her. In the story Billy teaches us that we need to look at the good things in life and not focus on all the bad things. Billy also said," God grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change, courage to change the things i can, and wisdom always to tell the difference."