1. on page 53, vonnegut uses the scene of billy’s capture by german soldiers to develop another aspect of the protagonist’s character—and another recurrent theme in slaughterhouse-five. what is this aspect/theme? where is the theme restated later in the chapter?

One aspect of Billy's character is the fact that he has incidents of "time shifting" recurrently.  For example, he could see his whole life from beginning to end in one "sweep".

In the chapter when Billy is transported to a camp in Germany, he and the other prisoners are taken to a feast by some English officers who were captured earlier in the war.  Billy gets a shot of morphine that sends him time-tripping again.  His mind was very likely to feel this sensations when some sudden circumstances appear.

honestly, school in itself just seems to be a huge waste of time. a lot of people graduate but still end up not doing anything in college anyways, which really makes the whole point of graduating seem useless. i'd rather not bring anyone's hopes up then. what i'd recommend is for whoever's reading this to simply drop out.

i mean, kanye did it. he said something along the lines of, "don't let society tell you what to do." now, he's obviously a very successful person, and since his album is called the college dropout i guess he never really had to go through all that nonsense in order to become a millionaire. the same goes for anyone else then.