Question

During the party for Billy and Valencia’s eighteenth wedding anniversary, Billy is greatly upset by the barbershop quartet (219-30; 172-80 in the shorter edition). Summarize what happens to him in this moment and why. What do you think Vonnegut is saying about the nature of memory in this section of the book (and indeed throughout the book)?

Answer 1

This question is incomplete, here´s the complete question.

Read Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.

During the party for Billy and Valencia’s eighteenth wedding anniversary, Billy is greatly upset by the barbershop quartet (219-30; 172-80 in the shorter edition). Summarize what happens to him in this moment and why. What do you think Vonnegut is saying about the nature of memory in this section of the book (and indeed throughout the book)?

Answer:

The barbershop quartet reminds Billy of the German officers when they saw the destruction caused by the bombing of Dresden. Billy breaks down and realizes he has some "big secret" inside. Vonnegut´s ideas about the nature of memory appear in Billy´s suppressing his emotion during the war, to end up having his later civilian life shape by what happened there.

Explanation:

Traumatized by the horrors of war, Billy´s memory constantly takes him into vivid flashbacks, showing that he hasn´t truly processed what he has gone through.