Edgar Derby: The Mom Friend
As I read Slaughterhouse-Five, all I could think was that if I were a character in the book I would definitely be poor old Edgar Derby. He’s definitely the “mom friend”, and while some of this obviously comes from him being older and feeling the need to look out for the young boys he was surrounded by, I still definitely relate to that feeling of responsibility to taking care of the ones around me. He’s a high school social studies teacher, so he doesn’t really fit in with the “war hero” character. I think this explains some of his compassion and care for the young soldiers he has been grouped with. These teenage boys who have been shipped to another country to fight in a war they had nothing to do with are the same age as his students and I imagine that this pains him some. All these teenage boys who are being killed in this war should have had their whole lives ahead of them, like the students he taught and I think that Derby’s age allows him to somewhat see through the “glory” of w