A Candy Bar, Really?

Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut uses several metaphors to describe objects that remind him of war. For example, when the woman in his office was munching on a Three Musketeers Candy Bar while questioning him about what the “squashed guy looked like when he was squashed.” At first, this statement seems irrelevant and random like the rest of chapter one. However, if one looks at it the way Vonnegut intended it, then the situation enters a completely different perspective. Although death for most people is depressing, for Vonnegut, it is an everyday thing that no one can avoid. After loved ones die, all he can say is so it goes. This makes one think that Vonnegut knows death happens and no one can stop it, so why get depressed over it. Vonnegut almost seems numb when it comes to death, perhaps it is easier for him to almost ignore it seem he had to experience so much during the war. Vonnegut had different opinion on death, during chapter two, the answer to death becomes apparent to Billy. After tralfamadores abduct Billy Pilgrim, he feels that death is nothing to feel and that it is just something that happens. Billy claims that the tralfamadorians see a corpse “that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment.” Death is nothing to fear because it happens to everyone, but for some, it happens to be very horrific. On the other hand, one can also take it has a metaphor for “The Three Musketeers” that Billy encountered during the war. To me, Vonnegut used the women in the office eating the Three Musketeer Candy Bar in two different ways. One way is to show that death does not affect some people, such as that woman from his office, because she continue to munch on her candy bar as she asked for the gruesome details about the squashed man. The other way is foreshadowing the group of people that Billy meets in the war. The Three Musketeers play a major role in keeping Billy alive. Regardless if the Three Musketeer Candy Bar has anything to do with the heroes later in the story or not, somehow I felt the two had a connection.