A Tralfamadorian when speaking to Billy about time says "Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in Amber."
Billy responds by saying "You sound to me as though you don't believe in free will"(86).
Bugs in Amber is a reference back a couple pages where a Tralfamadorian explains that "There is no why"(77), to a moment in time it just is. For most humans they believe that they control the actions in their lives. Therefore this brings into question, do humans have free will and if so is it taken away during the war time.
I think that this is a very interesting thing to think about. Many people believe that they have the freedom to make decisions and to change things that they aren't happy with. However, according to the Tralfamadorians, "free will" is a very human thing, and events just happen without the control of humans.
ReplyDeleteI think that many decisions can be made by humans, but a lot of these choices have consequences that are not up to the human. So, we do have some control and free will, but we don't always have the control of the aftermath of our decisions.
During the war time, free will is restricted and the consequences of making decisions are intensified because of everything that is on the line. Billy made a lot of his own choices and had a lot of free will during the war time, but his free will was very heavily restricted. At one point "no one wants to let Billy sleep beside him because Billy yells and kicks in his sleep. He thus sleeps standing up"(Ch 4). In this case, the war and his comrades limit Billy's free will and take away the free will that Billy would normally have if it were not for the war.