Slaughterhouse-Five Chapter 2, Section 6 Summary

  • Someone winds up telling Barbara about her dad's late-night radio broadcasts. She's really upset.
  • Barbara and her husband drive down to New York to pick up Billy and take him home.
  • He tells her that everything he's said about Tralfamadore is true: he was taken the night of his daughter's wedding and no one missed him because they used a time warp so he could be away for years on Tralfamadore while only seconds passed on Earth.
  • A month after this radio incident, Billy writes a letter to the Ilium newspaper describing what the Tralfamadorians look like. They look like toilet plungers, with their suction cups on the ground and shafts pointing up at the sky. At the top of each Tralfamadorian shaft is a little hand with a green eye in its palm.
  • The Tralfamadorians can see in four dimensions and feel bad that earthlings can only see in three.
  • They have a lot to teach us about time.