I believe that everyone, no matter how toughened, has a minimum of one emotional weak spot. The unfair and often cruel treatment of animals is my personal debility. Some people take advantage of animals by making them fight others of their sort. Animal abuse also includes cruelly scolding an animal, confining them to small spaces or collars (their necks eventually grow thicker than the diameter of the collars, choking them), or starving them. I can’t stand the sight of an abused animal without doing something about it.
Billy Pilgrim endured all of World War II without shedding a tear for anything: The bombing of Dresden, the cold frontier Winters, and the cruel treatment of Nazi officials. It wasn’t until he was shown the state of the horses he was using for transport in Dresden that his emotional indifference burst. Vonnegut describes how the German obstetricians he met in the ruined Dresden “made Billy get out of the wagon and come look at the horses. When Billy saw his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn’t cried about anything else in the war” (Vonnegut pg. 197). This type of cruelty is something to “weep quietly” (Vonnegut pg. 197) about. “Loud boohooing noises” (Vonnegut Pg. 197) only demonstrate the need for others to acknowledge your distress. A private weep is something much more personal and solemn. Here, I believe that Vonnegut gives Billy Pilgrim a degree of personality and psychosomatic reaction towards the events taking place. His grievance finally signals the existence of his human response, where before, he was indifferent to everything.
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