"The flatcar sometimes crept, sometimes went extremely fast, often stopped - went uphill, downhill, around curves, along straightaways. Whatever poor Billy saw through the pipe, he had no choice but to say to himself, "That's life."" (Vonnegut 115).
This image relates to this quote because it is a picture of a young boy looking through a pipe, and Vonnegut, through the Tralfamadorians, describes the way humans view time by using a metaphor of a pipe. He explains that life is like looking through a length of pipe while being bolted down and immobilized on a moving flatcar.
I believe that Vonnegut's metaphor accurately illustrates a humans perception of life as time goes by. He describes the flatcar as going both fast and slow as time seems to pass at different speeds in a person's life depending on his or her perception of time. He also describes the high and low points of life as the figurative flatcar travels up and downhill. The curves in the flatcar's path symbolize turning points and events that change the course of a person's life. The fact that the flatcar does not stop illustrates how life continues to go forward and does not stop or go backwards. This metaphor employed by the Tralfamadorians to understand human time perception also provides the reader with a simplistic view of life that may be used to ponder the route that their own flatcar has taken.
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