Billy Pilgrim By Kurt Vonnegut

     Critics of Kurt Vonnegut’s are unable to agree on what the main theme of his novel Slaughterhouse Five may be. Although Vonnegut’s novels are satirical, ironical, and extremely wise, they have almost no plot structure, so it is hard to find a constant theme. From the many people that the main character Billy Pilgrim meets, and the places that he takes us, readers are able to discern that Vonnegut is trying to send the message that there will always be death, there will always be war, and humans have no control over their own lives.

SlaughterHouse-Five is a book about a man named Billy Pilgrim who is stuck in time, and constantly travels throughout different events in his life. Billy accepts different values and sees traumatic and morbid events differently than others. Billy accepts a way of life that is not perceivable to other humans. Many would argue that Billy’s experiences make him insane, but Billy’s experiences with the Tralfamadorians actually allows him to preserve his sanity, and stay a very intelligent man.

In order to illustrate the devastating affects of war, Kurt Vonnegut afflicted Billy Pilgrim with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which caused him to become “unstuck in time” in the novel. Billy Pilgrim illustrates many symptoms of PTSD throughout the story. Vonnegut uses these Slaughterhouse Five negative examples to illustrate the horrible and devastating examples of war. The examples from the book are parallel to real life experiences of war veterans, including Vonnegut’s, and culminate in a very effective anti-war novel.

More of the time travels Billy has take him to his time on the planet Tralfamadore. Billy says that the aliens abducted him on his daughter's wedding night and returned him a few milliseconds later, but actually spend many months on Tralfamadore because the Tralfamadorians can also see in the fourth dimension, time, which allowed them to keep Billy for what seemed like longer than what he was actually there. While on Tralfamadore, Billy learns to accept his life as it is dealt to him because nothing that happens to you damages you forever. Since time is relative, and your life is like a mountain range, your death ,birth, and all the events in between are nothing more than peaks in a range of mountains, irremovable and able to be visited numerous times.

Vonnegut includes himself in scenes within Slaughterhouse-Five to portray an “author-as-character” unique style. It is in the tenth chapter when Vonnegut switches points of view to reveal himself as one of the soldiers alongside Billy.

Vonnegut calls upon his personal experiences to create his breakthrough work, Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut expresses his own feeling on war, family, and free will through the non-linear narrative of the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. His experience as a soldier and death within his family are mirrored into Pilgrim’s character.

Since the first time Billy claimed to have come unstuck in time while in the forest leaning against a tree, he has depended on an alternate reality in which he has created a new life for himself to avoid thoughts of the horrific events he witnessed while in Dresden. Although Billy claims that he was abducted by the Tralfamadorians, in reality, he was captured by the Germans. The reason that the Tralfamadorians exist is so that Billy can escape from the harsh reality of being a prisoner of war. Although separate in Billy’s conscience, the Nazis and the Tralfamadorians are interchangeable. Billy’s adventures on Tralfamadore all have significant and undeniable connections to his life:

In the novel, Billy Pilgrim experiences things in his life he can’t control and he doesn’t feel comfortable in those situations. One of those experiences is when Billy is drafted for World War II. He obviously doesn’t want this because he has to give up his career as an eye doctor. When Billy goes into the war he is a chaplains assistant. This displays how he is not equipped with what he needs to fight and survive in the war; however, he does survive. The other soldiers that are fighting with the proper equipment end up getting killed. This situation in Billy’s life is significant because it shows his fate and how he doesn’t have free will to decide on his own. Against Billy’s will he went to war and survived when he shouldn’t have. Billy couldn’t

The author writes of many different human beings, showing that each one thinks war is ultimately, the worst thing. While in the war, Billy is in the hospital during his imprisonment by the Germans. There is an old general there who was a teacher before joining in the war efforts. One day, in a conversation with Billy and another older man in the hospital, the general starts to talk about what he thinks of the war. He says, "You know-- we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "‘My God, my God----’ I said to myself, ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade’" (p. 106). This general feels that war is nothing but babies being murdered by one another. He is disturbed by the thought of war and the fact that so many young people are dying for its cause.

Again, Matheson points out the problem immediately by saying, “the first… [problem] is encountered in the unusual opening chapter where Vonnegut, apparently speaking as himself, gives an account of the novel’s genesis that cannot help but strike us initially as being carelessly written”(Matheson 1). Matheson is not fond of Vonnegut’s work, he not only dislikes the fact that there is not a single meaning to the book, but also the creative and eccentric style Vonnegut used in writing Slaughterhouse-Five. Slaughterhouse-Five is semi-autobiographical; the first and the last chapters are written in first person, and there are many similarities between Vonnegut’s life, and Billy Pilgrim’s life. In the first chapter Vonnegut identifies himself as the author when he is speaking to his friend on the phone by saying, “‘Listen— ’I said, ‘I’m writing this book about Dresden’”(Vonnegut 4). Critics seem to dislike the use of first person and the identification of the author because it is “irrelevant…[and leads] nowhere”(Matheson 1). The first person point of view comes back in the last chapter when Vonnegut says, “Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago”(Vonnegut 210). Vonnegut uses first person not to be annoying to critics, but to remind the reader that he experienced all of the events in his book, “more or less”(Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut did a great job in writing an irresistible reading novel in which one is not permitted to laugh, and yet still be a sad book without tears. Slaughterhouse-five was copyrighted in 1969 and is a book about the 1945 firebombing in Dresden which had killed 135,000 people. The main character is Billy Pilgrim, a very young infantry scout who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered to a slaughterhouse where he and other soldiers are held. The rest of the novel is about Billy and his encounters with the war, his wife, his life on earth, and on the planet Tralfamador.

The story of Slaughterhouse Five is about a man named Billy Pilgrim who goes through a series of strange events throughout his life time. And it all starts when he is in a war in Germany. Billy is resentful towards the war and he makes it clear that he does not want to be there. During the war, he becomes captured by Germans. Before Billy is captured, he meets Roland Weary. When captured, the Germans took everything from Weary, including his shoes so they gave him clogs as a substitute. Eventually, he dies from gangrene caused by the clogs. Right before Weary dies, he manages to convince another soldier; Paul Lazzaro that it was Billy’s fault that he was dying so Lazzaro vows to avenge the death of Weary by killing Billy.

Once Billy becomes capable of time travel and comes into contact with the Tralfamadorians, he simply goes through the motions of life but avoids falling into a defeatist attitude. Under the tutelage of the Tralfamadorians, Billy fashions a brand new perspective towards society and enhances his natural persona, “When Billy accepts the Tralfamadorian philosophy, the passivity that he has displayed his entire life—from wanting to drift quietly at the bottom of the YMCA pool after his father throws him in, to begging Roland Weary to leave him behind—is justified. If the future cannot be changed anyway, why even try?” (Farrell 9). Though the interaction with the Tralfamadorians seems to allow Billy an outlet to construct his own ideals upon the universe, he nonetheless continues along the same path as before. Billy becomes an extremist towards passivity in life rather than utilizing the experience to impart a strong impression

In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a fictional character named Bill Pilgrim is used to depict the various themes about life and war. Vonnegut went through some harsh times in Dresden, which ultimately led to him writing about the tragedies and emotional effects that come with war. By experiencing the war first handed, Vonnegut is able to make a connection and relate to the traumatic events that the soldiers go through. Through the use of Billy Pilgrim and the other characters, Vonnegut is able show the horrific affects the war can have on these men, not only during the war but after as well. From the very beginning Vonnegut portrays a strong sense of anti-war feelings, which he makes most apparent through Billy Pilgrim.

One of the more obvious and clear signs that Billy has gone insane is his claim to be have been kidnapped by extraterrestrial beings known as Tralfamadorians. Billy claims to have been taken by these beings and taken to Tralfamadore, where he spends eternity with Montana Wildhack, a famous “hollywood” actress. Also, from the film version of the story Wildhack’s image makes multiple appearances and every time Billy glances at her image he stares in awe. Taking this into consideration, it is important to note the irony- that he just happened to be kidnapped with his celebrity-crush by the Tralfamadorians. To further prove that Billy made up the story about the aliens, viewers must evaluate how he never mentions how he was captured, or how he managed to escape from Tralfamadore. Instead, Billy magically returns to Earth and then rambles on about the culture and philosophy shown on Tralfamadore. The way of life for the Tralfamadorians was stated by one of the beings which it said, “I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the