The Sin of Man

In chapter 3 of Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut there is a mention of a German soldier whose boots are identified by Adam and Eve, as he himself says it and as Billy notices later, "If you look in there deeply enough, you'll see Adam and Eve." pg 53. Adam and Eve have been always identified as the sin of man. The sin of man is in this case with what the German soldier is walking with, being it his boots, and therefore giving it a sense of all the sins he is carrying with him. What this may come to indicate is that he might be carrying a lot of the crimes he may have committed during the war and therefore feels that he is carrying all the sins for which man was condemned to leave paradise and become mortal. But then there's also another maxim said by Billy which states, "They were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently. Billy Pilgrim loved them." pg 53. Even though it seems that this man is carrying the sin of man within himself, Billy sees that this man, in a sense, wont hurt them. He seems to be, even if he carries with him some sins, someone who at that moment had noticed what he had done, and therefore was going to act in a different way than he would in other instances, just as it happens when you notice you have done something incorrectly and feel the need to behave decently in order to compensate for it in some way. Similarly it happens with Man when he is taken out of Paradise, and which then decides to pray to God thereafter. The German soldiers boots represent the sins walked on by the Nazi army, and it shows the punishment of having to carry them along for the rest of their time.