Chapter 2: Indirect Characterization

          Chapter Two was kind of confusing for me, but by the end of the chapter I finally was able to make sense of it. While reading the second chapter of Slaughterhouse Five, I was able to pick up on many example of Indirect Characterization. The first example was one that  the narrator gave that was a description of Billy, “ He was a funny-looking child who became a funny-looking youth—tall and weak, and shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola” (Vonnegut 23). This was one of the first times when I was starting to become confused. This seemed to me as if the narrator was just giving the reader a basic description of Billy; however, what Vonnegut was getting at here was to show that Billy was not physically gifted in any way and seemed to be unfit or incapable of fighting in a war. 

          Billy’s experience after his involvement in the airplane crash was another example of Indirect Characterization that I came across while reading chapter two of Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut describes Billy, after the crash, by saying, “When Billy finally got home to Illium after the airplane crash, he was quiet for a while… He didn’t resume practice” (Vonnegut 25). This description of Billy shows us that that crash had some damaging and long lasting scars that deeply affected his mind and his personality. Personally, I feel in a way this may have something to do with the time traveling and endless loops throughout time. This explains that after the crash, Billy would not be the same mentally or emotionally ever again