Chapter 7- Simile

     While being rescued at the airplane crash site in chapter seven, Billy Pilgrim is aided by Austrian ski instructors. To Billy Pilgrim, "they looked like golliwogs" (156) with their black masks and red topknots. I did not understand this simile at first since I had never heard of a golliwog. According to Wikipedia, golliwogs were black rag dolls that became popular after World War II. They were considered to be toys for little boys because they were usually male. These dolls are considered by many to be a cultural tradition to be preserved; however, others believe that the dolls promote racism. Now, these dolls are rare and no longer mass produced as children's toys. Even Billy Pilgrim seems to believe that golliwogs have a negative connotation, for he says that the ski instructors were "like white people pretending to be black for the laughs they could get"(156). This shows that just twenty five years after WWII people found golliwogs rather offensive.