Chapter 9 Summary

A panicked Valencia, after learning about the plane crash in Vermont, is rushing to the hospital in Vermont where Billy is admitted. She loves Billy dearly and is devastated having learned of the mishap. She drives in a state of hysteria and hits the Cadillac with another car. She drives off without a functioning exhaust system. After reaching the hospital, she passes out on the steering wheel and turns blue because of carbon monoxide poisoning. After about an hour, she dies. Billy is not aware of Valencia’s death, as he lies unconscious after his surgery.

Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, Billy’s neighbor in the hospital, is recovering from a skiing accident. He is an arrogant, aggressive professor from Harvard who is authoring a book on the role of the US Army Corps in World War II. When his wife brings him research materials, one of the books is on the bombing of Dresden, to which the author comments on the unnecessary carnage that happened in Dresden.

Billy’s son comes to visit him in the hospital but Billy doesn’t wake up properly. When he regains consciousness, everyone thinks that Billy might not recover. They are completely unaware that Billy is planning to let the world know about the Tralfamadorians and the true nature of time. Meanwhile, Valencia, Billy’s wife, is buried in Ilium while Billy is recovering at the hospital.

Billy overhears Rumfoord speaking to Lily, Rumfoord’s wife, about the bombing in Dresden and how “a lot of bleeding hearts … might not feel it was such a wonderful thing to do.” Billy tells Rumfoord that he was present at Dresden during the bombing but Rumfoord, who dislikes Billy and thinks him to be pathetic, does not believe him. Rumfoord informs the doctors that Billy has lost it and has developed a condition to repeat whatever he hears.

Billy time-travels to an afternoon in May, two days after the war ended. He is enjoying a “sun-drenched snooze,” in a coffin-shaped, green wagon that is filled with food and other items by the American prisoners. The wagon is tied to two horses. Meanwhile, the Germans are running away fearing the advent of the Russians. A middle-aged German couple, both obstetricians, while passing the wagon in which Billy is asleep, starts talking about the wretched conditions of the horses tied to the wagon. Their hushed conversation wakes Billy up. He looks at the horses and realizes that the horses are exhausted, malnourished, and thirsty with their gums bleeding and hooves broken. The ill treatment of the horses by the Americans, who do not consider horses as living beings, brings tears to Billy’s eyes and he cries for the first time in the war.

The next morning, Billy wakes up in the hospital in Vermont. He manages to convince Rumfoord into believing that he was indeed present in Dresden when the bombing happened. He narrates the story of the horses and the German obstetrician couple, and how he and the couple had unharnessed the horses. Rumfoord comments that the bombing “had to be done.” Billy, who has the knowledge of time and the inevitable nature of occurrence around humans, doesn’t mind Rumfoord’s insensitivity as he knows “everybody has to do exactly what he does.” Just then, Barbara enters to take Billy home.

Billy is put under the care of a nurse and his daughter instructs him not to leave the house. However, Billy, who is ready to share the knowledge he has gained from the Tralfamadorians with the world, sneaks out and travels to New York to find a radio show where he can talk about Tralfamadore. He goes into a shabby bookstore that is displaying four books of Trout. One of the books is about a woman who is kidnapped by aliens and kept in a zoo on an unknown planet. He notices an adult magazine with the headline “What really became of Montana Wildhack?” Billy already knows that she has been abducted by the Tralfamadorians.

Billy, pretending to be a writer at Ilium Gazette, gets on a radio show along with a panel of literary critics discussing the condition of novels. Billy patiently waits for his turn. When his turn comes, he talks about Tralfamadore and his relationship with Montana Wildhack. After that, Billy is politely asked to leave and is escorted out. He falls asleep on the street and time-travels to the zoo in Tralfamadore where Montana is nursing their baby. Billy tells her about the magazine he saw on Earth. She doesn’t display any shame about her past and tells Billy that she is aware of his time-travels.

Chapter 9 Analysis

Through the character of Bertram Copeland Rumfoord, Vonnegut comments on the nature of history and fiction. Rumfoord is the embodiment of toxic masculinity and the aggressive military mentality. This stands in contrast to Billy’s pacifist mentality. Interestingly, Rumfoord, who is writing a historical book on the Dresden bombing, thinks of numbers and military excellence, while Vonnegut, who actually participated in the war and is writing a fiction on Dresden bombing, comments repeatedly on the futility of war. When Rumfoord, who is a historian at a reputed institution, dismisses Billy’s claim of having witnessed the war, the author makes a commentary of the nature of writing history which sometimes is biased and does not take into consideration the narratives of real people. It rather depends on figures and numbers.

The chapter also demonstrates the frailty of human emotions. Billy considers his happiest moments to be the one where he is sleeping inside the coffin-shaped wagon, basking in the sun. He is yet to grasp the scale of the carnage and the despair it follows. He is oblivious to the burden of survival guilt. However, the sight of the horses bleeding lowers the veil of oblivion in Billy and, for the first time, he breaks down and starts crying. He seems to empathize with the beasts of burden who are not treated as living creatures, yet the wounded horses survive. Similarly, human lives, especially of soldiers, in a war are reduced to figures and numbers; yet Billy survives and is feeling joyous. This symbolism of the lack of humanity recurs throughout the novel.

Billy agrees with Rumfoord’s belief of the inevitability—“had to be”—of Dresden bombing, but ironically, they don’t mean the same thing. Rumfoord believes that the bombing was necessary as a display of military prowess and for the greater cause of establishing dominance of a nation on the political world map. However, Billy believes the bombing was destined to happen and nothing could have changed it, as the concept of free will does not exist in reality. Needless to say, Billy already has a different understanding of time that he has learned from the Tralfamadorians, which is devoid of the cause and effect. Here, Vonnegut makes an appeal to consider the possibility of adopting a third option, where people should have exercised their free will to not let the bombing happen in the first place.