Why We Feel?

People sometimes tell me I have a heart of stone. I can’t deny, nor can I accept. Tears refuse streaming out of my eyes when a friend leaves, a person dies, or a bad moment in my life happens. We can’t control our feelings, they just are. Human beings are often differed from other animals due to their ability to feel. “I could carve a better man out of a banana” (Vonnegut 184). Billy was never the most sentimental man, nor was the words of this book the most introspective. By lacking the ability to feel, or to control his feelings, Billy is considered inhuman. We see Billy on a vegetable state now, but maybe he always was on a vegetable state. As far as we know, he was never human, he possessed qualities a normal being could or would ever imagine. He never cherished love towards his life, nor his wife, son, or daughter. He never felt, and therefore he never was. Humans are known for feeling, and when we no longer feel, we stop being.

The only moment we stop feeling is when we die. But we have to die. Billy’s death is more ambiguous than what it sounds. We know he died on a baseball park just before giving a speech on February 13, 1976. I thought he had really died, but then the book would’ve finished two chapters ago. The book is about Billy Pilgrim, and if he is dead, then the book wouldn’t exist. But that’s one of the many things the book can’t explain. “When Billy saw the conditions of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn’t cried about anything else in the war” (Vonnegut 197). He cried and he didn’t know why. Most of the times we cry because the moment we live resembles a past experience: a sad moment that automatically reappears from the ashes of our memory. But Billy will not only remember the past when he cries. His memories will restructure his present and future as well.

He always felt the same: “It was all right. Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that in Tralfamadore” (Vonnegut 198). Billy lived in a constant denial of his state of being. He denied feeling sad, denied that he hated life and found no meaning in living it. Still, he was unable to stop tears from streaming down his face. Tralfamadorians believed that Billy had to “concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones” (Vonnegut 195), which shows once again how feelings play a vital role on Billy’s life. He never identified with feeling love or friendship. The only thing he identified in the world was that “he was there”. He knows he existed because he was present, but never felt like it. Now I’m writing words, but I don’t feel like it. I shall stop now.