pg. 275

One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-tee-weet?” (pg. 275)

I find it interesting that Vonnegut chooses to end the novel with this line. The bird is a recurring symbol throughout the novel that serves to fill the silence when there is nothing left to be said, or perhaps when there is an inability to express what needs to be said. We first encounter it on page 24 when the narrator asks, “and what do birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like poo-tee-weet?” The novel is obviously read as an anti-war piece, yet it also acknowledges that taking this stand is futile and in the end he might as well be writing an anti-glacier book because war is not something that can be simply avoided. Billy visits and revisits the various events of his life, but doesn’t really offer any perspective to the issue at hand, other than the fact that war is devastating. The easy part for Billy is recounting all of these things and living in a state of delusion on Tralfamadore, but in the end he still doesn’t really know what to do with himself, which is why the book ends with the meaningless words “poo-tee-weet.” In my mind I read those last few words as “so now what?”

In your mind, what is the take away message of the novel? What insight did Billy’s repetitive recollections provide?