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Billy's Birth
Billy Pilgrim was born in 1922 in Ilium, New York, the only child of a barber there. Billy was a funny-looking child who became a funny-looking youth. He was tall and weak and shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle. -
Unstuck.
Billy became unstuck for the first time when he was a chaplain's assistant during WWII. He was in a forest in Europe, Billy was leaning against a tree with his eyes closed. He saw a violet light and heard a hum. His time travel was described as a re-birthing experience. When he returned to consciousness he was a little boy taking a shower with his father at Ilium YMCA. It was the day his father taught him how to swim using the "sink-or-swim" method. -
Dresden Bombing
Billy was down in the meat locker when Dresden was destroyed. He was there with the rest of the American POWs and four German guards. From the basement it sounded like giant footsteps above, those were sticks of high-explosive bombs. It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and the guards finally came out, the sky was black with smoke. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. A total of 135,000 people died in the attack of Dresden. -
Mental Ward
Three years after the war Billy admitted himself into a nonviolent mental ward in a veterans' hospital near Lake Placid, New York. While in the facility, Billy met a man named Eliot Rosewater. Rosewater was a former infantry captain, he also admitted himself into the ward because he was sick of being drunk all the time. He is also responsible for introducing Billy to the science fiction writing of Kilgore Trout. -
Kilgore Trout
Billy was driving down an alleyway in Ilium.He saw a dozen boys with bicycles huddled around a man who had a beard.They were discussing the newspaper.He heard the only girl, say, “Mr. Trout.”Billy parked his car in the alley and waited for the meeting to end.One of the boys quit his route leaving Trout with the burden of delivering the papers by himself.Billy offered to drive Trout around to deliver his papers and they discussed his novels and BIlly invited him to his anniversary party. -
Return to Dresden
KV, the narrator and author, returns to Dresden with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare. During the journey they befriended a cab driver who drove them back to the slaughterhouse where they were locked up as POW's. The cab driver's name was Gerhard Muller. The two war veterans returned to Dresden in attempt to help KV write his novel on Dresden. -
Tralfamadorian Kidnap
The night of Barbara's wedding he was taken.Prior to his abduction he drank a half bottle of champagne and watched a film, forward and backwards, about the Second World War.When it was time for him to go,Billy went out into his backyard. He heard a noise like an owl however,it was the Tralfamadore saucer.Down from the saucer snaked a ladder that was outlined with lights like a Ferris wheel.Billy was paralyzed by a zap gun and then the ladder was electrified so that Billy's hands locked onto it. -
Optometrist Plane Crash
Billy was on a plane with a group of twenty-eight optometrists flying from Ilium to an international convention of optometrists in Montreal. On the plane was also a barbershop quartet named "The Febs," which was an acronym for "Four-eyed Bastards." The plane crashed on top of Sugarbush Mountain, in Vermont. Everyone on the plane was killed but Billy. -
Valencia
On the day of Billy's plane crash, Valencia drove all the way to Vermont from Ilium in the family Cadillac. She was hysterically weeping the entire ride out of fear she was going to lose her husband. On her way to the Vermont hospital Valencia got into a car accident with a man in a Mercedes. Both drivers were uninjured, but Valencia lost her exhaust system. When she arrived, she passed out, overcome by carbon monoxide. One hour later she was dead. -
Billy Death
Billy dies on February 13th, 1976 in Chicago while he is leaving a baseball stadium. At the time of his death he was addressing a large crowd on the subject of flying saucers and the true nature of time. While exiting the event the cross hairs of a high powered laser gun appear on his forehead. It was aimed at him from the darkened press box, in the next moment, Billy was dead. Billy's experience of death was simply a violet light and a hum.
