Dreaming of Time Travel

Dreaming of Time Travel

Billy Pilgrim: fact or fiction? Is Billy really travelling through time, or is he merely the victim of a series of unfortunate circumstances that have left him damaged and unreliable? Provide support from the novel as a basis for your opinion, and don't sit on the fence.

            Travelling through time is a seemingly impossible task; however throughout the novel Billy seems to travel through time on several occasions. Can Billy truly be travelling through time or is it just a flashback, or is it a glimpse at where Billy's mind is truly at? If you ask me Billy is not time traveling but fading in and out of reality and his mind.

 We see that Billy drifts in and out of scenes of the past and the future. The first time we Billy became unstuck in time was during his time in World War Two where he leaned against a tree and closed his eyes and started to travel to the past than in a blink of an eye to the future.  Billy describes these travels as realistic, as if he was there, but when he comes to he is in the same place he was when he became unstuck in time, behind German lines in World War Two with the same people he was with.  During his travels he speaks to people that he knew during that time in his life.  The thing that I found strange about Billy’s travels is that he came to where he went under.  I believe that Billy was in a deep dream state where what ever happened in his dream he believed to be real.  We all have dreams similar to this when we wake up in the morning and we think a day has passed or we missed an event.  Billy seems to believe these dreams so much because of his belief in fate.  When he sees these events in his dreams and what takes place to him he believes that in the future these will truly happen, especially when he was told he was to die.  This explains the future dreams, but what about the past.  I believe that these dreams are strong memories that mean something to Billy and this makes it so believable to him, because they have a meaning in his life.

In conclusion Billy isn’t traveling through time, but in a deep dream where he believes what happens there to be real.