Billy Pilgrim: Sane or Insane? Essay

But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough." (Kesey 168) Billy was not actually crazy, he convinced himself of it for those two reasons. However, Billy was depressed, but did not want to admit he was because instead he convinced himself of insanity. In the end not only Billy convince himself of insanity due to that but he also convinced the people around him, until he discovered it was only in his head. The final character in the novel who demonstrates this is Harding. He bottles up his insanity and claims that all his problems come from his wife until one day he lets his feelings go. "I'm not just talking about my wife, I'm talking about my life! I can't seem to get that through to you. I'm not just talking about one person, I'm talking about everybody! I'm talking about form! I'm talking about content! I'm talking about interrelationships! I'm talking about God, the Devil, Hell, Heaven! Do you understand? FINALLY?" (Kesey 54) This proves to the reader that he is not infect insane because he deals with problems and emotions like any other sane human being. Hardings problem is smily that he keeps too bottled up and gives off the idea that he is insane. Through McMurphy proving sanity in the ward, Billy using insanity to cover up depression and Harding using insanity to cover up his true emotions, this proves to the reader that the patients are not insane,

Billy Pilgrim is the person that the book is written around. We follow him, perhaps not in a straight order, from his youth joining the military to his abduction on the alien planet of Tralmalfadore, to his older age at his 1960s home in Illum. It is his experiences and journeys that we follow, and his actions we read about. However, Billy had a specific lack of character for a main one. He is not heroic, he has very little personality traits, let alone an immersive and complex character. Most of the story is written around his experiences that seem more like symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from his World War Two days, combined with hallucinations after a brain injury in a near-fatal plane

The Tralfamadorians, who explain this nature of time and existence to Billy, are shown as enlightened creatures while the humans back on earth are seen as backwards -- to such an extent that they believe in free will. Billy towards the end of his life becomes a preacher of these virtues of existence taught to him by his zookeepers on Tralfamadore, going around and speaking about his experiences and his acquired knowledge. This is ironic, because he is attempting to reverse the steady path of life, even time itself.

The reason, behind the readers of Slaughterhouse-five, believing that Billy had become “unstuck in time” was simply the way he moved back and fourth in time. But as the reader reads on, Billy’s illusions become stranger. For example he believes that he is taken the night of his daughters wedding to a different planet with the Tralfamadorians. It all begins for this part of time travelling when he could not

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.

Billy Pilgrim's life is far from normal. Throughout most of his adult life he has been moving backwards and forwards through time, from one event to another, in a non-sequential order. At least, this schizophrenic life is hard to understand. Because Vonnegut wants the reader to relate to Billy

Billy Pilgrim has not come unstuck in time; Billy has become a victim of violent warfare. Common to many soldiers of war, he has witnessed such horrific events during the bombing of Dresden that he has acquired Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In order to avoid the reality of his cruel life and of the war, Billy has become dependant on escapism. Through escapism he has created the planet of Tralfamadore and the Tralfamadorians.

Imagine opening your eyes to an unknown place. The room, the surroundings, and everything down to the smell seem different. What would you do? Well, in Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim is subjected to this kind of life style. In his novel, writer, Kurt Vonnegut illustrates a story about his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, who has been abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians and has become unstuck in time. His uncontrollable time travel between periods of his life causes the narrative to be non-chronological. Some consider Vonnegut's novel a semi-autobiographical because events such as the Dresden bombing based off his actual experience during World War II. From my original artwork, I am not only trying to convey the fragmented

This is the Tralfamadorian faith to the point where the is no reason of trying to change anything makes Billy feel like everything he has gone through, no matter how awful, could not have gone any other way. "Little Billy was terrified, because his father had said Billy was going to learn to swim by the method of sink-or-swim. His father was going to throw Billy into the deep end, and Billy was going to damn well swim. It was like an execution. . . . [Billy] dimly sensed that somebody was rescuing him. Billy resented that."

Curiously though Billy never tries to change the future. When Billy boards the doomed plane for his optometrist trip, Billy says or does nothing to stop the plane from taking flight. Billy learned from the Tralfamordians that the future will always be as it will be. The Tralfamordians already know how the world, the universe and everything will end. It ends when a new fuel test goes awry. When Billy asks why they simply don’t stop the button from being pressed to prevent the destruction of the universe. The aliens reply that the button will always be pressed. Maybe if they told the person not to press it, someone else would have or it would’ve been pressed by accident. I figure if Billy Pilgrim had told the other passengers

“Fate is a misconception, it's only a cover-up for the fact you don't have control over your own life.” –Anonymous. In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-five, an optometrist named Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time uncontrollably and constantly travels between his past, present, and future. Since Pilgrim is unable to control his time warps, he is forced to re-live agonizing moments such as watching his wartime friend Edgar Derby executed for stealing or going through the Dresden bombing repeatedly. However, he is also able to visit pleasant moments like speaking as president in front of the Lions club or his honeymoon with his wife, Valencia. Vonnegut’s use of repetition and vision of war, time and death are crucial to Pilgrim as he

In the book Slaughterhouse five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim is imprisoned in a zoo by aliens called Tramafladorians after he is abducted and taken to their planet. This zoo is furnished to look like a catalog home and the Tramaflodorians are adequately entertained by the mundane occurrences of his everyday life. His only other human company is a young film star named Montana Wildhack with whom he eventually starts a family. During his time at the zoo he learns about the philosophy of the aliens and the way that they perceive the passage of time. His time on planet Tramafladore is interspersed with other parts of his life because Billy Pilgrim time travels frequently into other times in his life. He time travels frequently to his time in Tramafladore during certain points of loneliness or captivity including his time as a prisoner of war during World War II. His time as a prisoner of the Tramafladorian Zoo seems to be a reflection of Billy Pilgrim’s time as a prisoner of war because of the juxtaposition of the events due to his time travel. The purpose of the Tramafladorian Zoo in relation to the novel serves to be a parallel to Billy Pilgrim’s time as a prisoner of war in Germany that also provides him relief during difficult times after the war. During his time in the Zoo he has the freedom to live an alternative life under captivity.

But ignoring death and its suffering is exactly what Billy should not be doing, Vonnegut suggests. To do so makes him, like the Tralfamadorians, alien and inhuman. He has no sense of his own mortality, an awareness he needs in order to understand that, as Stephen Marten has observed, "life is valuable not because it is infinite but because it is so scarce" (11).

Billy’s travels with the aliens come randomly during his time-traveling spells bring about different insights and lessons that readers can get and put into their everyday lives. For example, on the night Billy is kidnapped by the Tramalfadorians, he asks a simple question that anyone in his position would ask: “Why me?” The Tramalfadorians respond to him in a way that seems bizarre for humans to think about, saying that there is no why and that the moment just is and that all of them are trapped in that moment. The aliens basically tell Billy and the readers that time does not matter in life, and that the most important thing to worry about when dealing with time is the moment that is happening right now, not the past or the future.

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