Throughout Chapter 5, I have noticed many more flashbacks than usual. Usually during one chapter, the story flashes back maybe 3 or 4 times, but throughout this chapter there have been an increasingly more amount of flashbacks. Not only are there are more flashbacks because the chapter is so much longer, but more action also occurs. Billy Pilgrim has traveled farther back in time than in previous chapters. During this chapter it flashes back to him being captured in the war and receiving his dog tags. We, the readers, also find out about the death of Ronald Weary and how he convinced everyone that Billy Pilgrim was the one who killed him. We also learn about his time after the war. When he was in the mental hospital about three years after the war. We learn that he is engaged to Valencia, who loves to eat chocolate bars, and how he hides every time his mother comes to visit him. Many things are revealed in this chapter.
Throughout this chapter we learn a lot more about his family life and his life outside of the war. His fiancee, Valencia, visits him frequently when he is in the mental hospital and talks to him about many different events. One of the events that they are currently planning is their wedding. We learn that Billy is willing to go along with whatever Valencia wants. We also learn that she is taking these decisions way more seriously than Billy Pilgrim is. We learn that he did not even want to propose to her, but he did anyways. While he is with his fiancee planning the wedding, he finds himself in a zoo in Tralfamadore. He is a forty-four year old man on display in a reclining chair. Vonnegut, through the use of flasbacks, made it easier for the reader to understand why Billy Pilgrim is the way that he is in present time.
Vonnegut's point in these very frequent flashbacks is to show how Billy Pilgrim's past has shaped him into the man that he is in the present day. Vonnegut also adds these flashbacks to show how different things connect to points in his life.
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