Chapter 4 - Jurassic Park

Chapter four begins Billy's full recollection of the events that occurred on the night of his abduction.  He recounts new ideas and thoughts expressed to him by the tralfamadorians.  When Billy questions why he was chosen, the tralfamadorians use the analogy of comparing the reasoning to bugs trapped in amber.  They were "trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."  Just as bugs happen to be stuck in the amber, Billy was stuck in the moment that the tralfamadorians came for him.  This was always meant to happen because it did happen.  When the 'bugs in amber' was mentioned, I was reminded of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park.  In the novel, dinosaurs are genetically recreated with the use of mosquitoes that have been stuck throughout time in amber.  The dinosaur DNA was preserved in the misquitoes enabling clones to be made of the dinosaurs from which the DNA was taken.  Just like Billy, the dinosaurs had become unstuck in time accompanying the tralfamadorian philosophy that there is no past, present or future. There simply just is.