Chapter 9: SYMBOL

Near the end of chapter 9, Vonnegut becomes even more of a symbolic writer. The time-traveling continues after the bombing, when "Billy and five other American prisoners were riding in a coffin-shaped green wagon" (193-194). It came to my attention that maybe the coffin-shaped wagon symbolized all who had died in the Dresden bombing. The coffin-shaped wagon is a symbolic death suffered by the survivors of the brutal war. Then, when the two Germans make it known to Billy the condition of the horses pulling the wagon, Billy understands his history withholds his own defeat. This part of chapter 9 results in a complex thought process connecting everything that has occurred thus far.