"There were barricades on the main roads leading into the ruins. Germans were stopped there. They were not permitted to explore the moon" (Vonnegut 213).
This picture shows a distant moon in the sky, past branches and clouds. In this passage in the book, Billy Pilgrim and the other prisoners of war are being taken back into Dresden after the bombing to work clearing the wreckage and recovering bodies. The description of the city as the moon, and the fact that civilians weren't allowed back into it show the utter destruction of Dresden and its isolation.
The imagery of Dresden as the moon serves to describe the scale of the destruction, that it no longer even looks like a human habitation. It also makes Dresden seem so isolated from the rest of the world. As seen in the picture, the moon is incredibly far away. And although Dresden was still just as close to other German cities after it was bombed, the description makes Dresden seem set apart from the rest of the world after the destruction it had gone through. The physical barriers to keep civilians away also served to isolate Dresden. I would imagine that some of the descriptions in this section come from Vonnegut's personal experiences from his time in Dresden after it was bombed.
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