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Slaughterhouse-Five Chapter 5, Section 51 Summary

  • Valencia thinks Billy is full of secrets that he doesn't want to talk about. (He is, of course: Tralfamadore, time-traveling, and so on.)
  • Billy has a great idea for what should be written on his tombstone. On the next page, there is an illustration of a tombstone with the words, "Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt" (5.51).
  • Valencia tells him that she once overheard Billy telling her father about the execution of Edgar Derby.
  • Billy had to bury Derby after he was shot.
  • Derby didn't really seem scared; they had given him drugs to keep him calm in front of the firing squad.
  • Billy excuses himself to go to the bathroom and winds up back in 1944.