The mechanized nature of warfare is discussed and
emphasized on a number of occasions. One case in point comes when Billy views the war
films in reverse.
"The bombers opened their bomb bay doors,
exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical
steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes.… The steel
cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America,
where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the
dangerous contents into minerals … [which] were then shipped to specialists in remote
areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they
would never hurt anybody ever
again."
In addition to this
scene of mechanized warfare, the atomic bomb is discussed in the text. The most
prominent "destructive force" or element of destruction in the text is the Dresden fire
bombing.
This event is discussed repeatedly throughout the
novel, beginning in the opening chapter. The novel ends just after the bombing has taken
place. At this point the narrative has made clear just how destructive this event was,
killing over 100,000 people in a single night.
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