Chapter 7: “He didn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so” (Vonnegut 154).

           This chapter of Slaughterhouse Five really irritated me for many reasons. Upon boarding a plane twenty-five years after the destruction of Dresden, Billy is giving an opportunity to change the future. Due to his spastic time travel, Billy is aware of the plane crash that will kill twenty-eight optometrists and the pilot on their way to a convention in Montreal. The only to survivors that would be spared are Billy and the co-pilot. Billy is aware of the exact moment the plane would crash, which gives an understanding that he has at least lived this moment in time once. What irritates me is that Billy had several chances to save many of his fellow men’s lives. He could have kept the plane from taking off, he could have warned the pilot that Surgarbrush Mountain would be in their line of travel, or he could have advised the pilot to take a different course of travel. However, Billy Pilgrim did none of this!!! He just sat there with his eyes closed at the moment before this disaster would happen. Billy’s excuse for not warning anyone was, “he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so” (Vonnegut 154).
            As it does irritate me that Billy did nothing to prevent this plane crash, I have to ask myself the question if I had the chance would I change anything about my past or even any kind of human history. They have always said that even the smallest faction of change in the past could alter the future all together. There is always that possibility that one of the twenty-eight people who died may have turned out to change the whole outcome of the war and the future. Overall I feel as if Billy Pilgrim did the right thing, but it just makes me wonder what I would do if I was in that kind of a situation.