7. Unkown Damage

In response to Slaughterhouse Five Chapter 8 (page 74-83)
Quote and response
(Billy Pilgrim's perspective; Billy is in Dresden. He time travels to a conversation with his daughter years later then talks about Kilgore Trout. Them travels to his wedding anniversary where he has some sort of panic attack/flashback, recalls Dresden, then is back in Tralfamadore talking about the war.)

“'Really— I’m O.K.' And he was, too, except that he could find no explanation for why the song had affected him so grotesquely. He had supposed for years that he had no secrets from himself. Here was proof that he had a great big secret somewhere inside, and he could not imagine what it was" (Vonnegut, 79).
"The guards drew together instinctively, rolled their eyes. They experimented with one expression and then another, said nothing, though their mouths were often open. They looked like a silent film of a barbershop quartet. 'So long forever,' they might have been singing, 'old fellows and pals; So long forever, old sweethearts and pals— God bless ’em—'"(Vonnegut, 81).
These two quotes are able to capture the entire theme of effects of war on people without being completely blatant about it. In this scene of the first quote, Billy Pilgrim is at his eighteenth wedding anniversary. A few of his friends start singing a song as a quartet, and it suddenly upsets him in a grand way. He felt like it was torture listening to the music and that it is suffocating. His reaction draws attention from the crowd and his wife runs over to make sure he is okay. And he is indeed okay, however he does not know why the song effected him so much. He had seen his life in moments time and time again, yet he never saw or felt this. And he was at a complete loss. This ties in with the second quote. Pilgrim had gone upstairs away from the party, because the music was becoming too much to bare, and he thought about Dresden. He remembered the night it was attacked and that he was in the slaughterhouse meat locker. The quote took place after the attack when it was safe for everyone who was alive, to come out from hiding. The guards "looked like a silent film of a barbershop quartet" and that is why at the party, the group had effected him so much. This perfectly shows effects of war. Billy had not completely remembered each detail from Dresden, but it was etched in his mind somewhere, which caused the reaction. Seeing the guards in Dresden do almost the same thing his friends were doing at a party was too much, and brought back haunting memories of a horrific time in his life. It is interesting how he couldn't identify where the reaction had come from automatically, and he had to really think about his time at war to find it. Also, Billy had seen these moments many times, yet he never saw this moment from the party. Billy may not have really known he had been suffering from war, till it became torturous for him.