Out of all of the characters, Edgar Derby was the one that really stood out to me. He seemed to have more strength and personality than any of the other characters. In a way, he seemed to be the soldier most suited to being a soldier.
When the narrator first talked about Edgar Derby’s death, he mused, “‘The irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands and thousands of people are killed. And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot....and then he's shot by a firing squad.'”
For me this quote connected back to the idea of the unpredictability and injustice of war. Edgar Derby, a strong, heroic leader, seems like the type of soldier who should die in some heroic blaze of glory, but in reality, he dies in the least glamorous, least meaningful way possible.
I also found it interesting that Derby was immediately introduced to us as a doomed man.
“Billy was put to bed and tied down, and given a shot of morphine. Another American
volunteered to watch over him. This volunteer was Edgar Derby, the high school teacher
who would be shot to death in Dresden. So it goes”(Vonnegut 98).
In not just this instance, but in every single instance, the name is accompanied by “poor old,” “doomed,” or “would be shot in Dresden.” It seems to me that the narrator wanted to impress upon us the belief that what happens in the “future” will always happen, and cannot be changed. By always reminding us that Derby dies, the narrator tells us that his death is an undeniable part of him, a part that can never be undone. Derby always has died in this way, and always will. This reminded me of Billy’s complete acceptance of his own death, seen on page 143. Billy made no attempt to prevent his death, as he accepted that it was absolutely inevitable.
How does Edgar Derby contrast the other American soldiers, and why? Are there other characters that you found particularly interesting?
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