Something that was brought up today briefly was the aspect of body image. There seem to be conflicting views throughout the novel about body image. The Englishmen, for example, are fascinating in their obsession with body image, and their subsequent ability to stay alive because of it. In other circumstances, though, like that of Edgar Derby, his body doesn’t seem to help him at all. It may have helped him when he was a tennis court at his high school, but in Dresden, bullets cut through nicely shaped muscle the same way they cut through deformed muscle.

What are some different ways in which we can view Vonnegut’s reference to body image, not only in these instances, but in others as well? Namely Valencia, Billy in the zoo or any others you can think of