Billy Pilgrim's Slaughterhouse-Five

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.

Although Kurt Vonnegut does not say in his novel that Billy Pilgrim has PTSD, it is implied by the first hand view into Pilgrim’s mind. Looking at the symptoms of PTSD it’s reasonable to infer that he was

The concept of being "unstuck in time" refers to a person living from one moment in life to another instead of the day-to-day one we live today. The main character of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim, does just that. He travels through the time line of his life experiencing moments of it in no particular order. In a flash, time travel for Billy happens with no warning to where he will turn up next. On the night of his daughter's wedding, Billy is abducted by extra-terrestrials from the planet Tralfamadore. They enlighten him on the concept of being "unstuck in time." Their belief is that, "When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that

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

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

“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 Slaughterhouse Five, Earth is a grim, war torn place. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is haunted by the war throughout the novel. Billy experiences some parts of his past during the war, because of this, events happen simultaneously, outside of the constraints of time. After the war, Billy has a “mild nervous collapse”. His nervous breakdown shows the chaos Earth represents for him. In one scene, Billy is in the middle of a conversation, and a split second later he has finished that conversation and is watching Cinderella (98). The moments in between are wiped from his memory. This scene intensifies the chaos both Billy and the reader associate with Earth. The author enhances the chaotic nature of Earth by changing location on Earth with no warning. At one moment, Billy is honeymooning in Cape Ann, then he’s on a train in 1944, and seconds later he’s back in the war (126-127). Vonnegut does this to clearly show the chaos that is Earth. After Billy returns from Tralfamadore, he sees that the things he learned there were true. Earth

Regardless of the angle in which Slaughterhouse-Five is approached, there is no escaping the destructive properties of warfare the book entails. The novel chronicles Billy Pilgrim, a New York man who has become “unstuck in time.” As a result, the narrative is structured in sections, jumping back and forth through time and space. Billy begins the novel a boy, already dealing with the perils of life from the bottom of a swimming pool. He grows to become a rather awkward and unattractive adolescent who enrolls in an Optometry school only to be drafted into the army during World War II. A weak youth, his battle skills land him a prisoner of war behind German lines. Throw in a nervous breakdown, morphine, brutal living conditions, and the

We all wish we could travel through time, going back to correct our stupid mistakes or zooming ahead to see the future. In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five, however, time travel does not seem so helpful. Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut's main character, has come unstuck in time. He bounces back and forth between his past, present, and future lives in a roller coaster time trip that proves both senseless and numbing. Examining Billy's time traveling, his life on Tralfamadore, and the novel's schizophrenic structure shows that time travel is actually a metaphor for our human tendency to avoid facing the unpleasant reality of death.

Throughout the plot of Slaughterhouse-Five, the idea of time is thrown around in several ways. In the beginning of the story, Vonnegut introduces his readers to Billy Pilgrim, the main character of the story who has the ability to travel to different moments of his life without knowing

At the time Billy is captured, he becomes “unstuck in time,” and he sees various moments of his life occur. Later, Billy experiences a nervous breakdown so the other prisoners give him a shot of morphine which sends him time-tripping once more. Afterwards, he and the other prisoners are sent to the city of Dresden which remains untouched y the war. Here, they work in an abandoned slaughterhouse which carries the name of “Slaughterhouse Five.” One of the nights of their stay, enemies of the Germans bomb the city to compose a firestorm which consequently incinerates roughly 130,000 people. Billy and his allies manage to survive in an airtight meat locker. When they depart the locker, they are introduced to the wreckage and destruction that is left of the

“But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it,” 1 Timothy 6:6-7. The Bible uses contentment to promote trust in God above all else, and not stress about the things that cannot be changed. Throughout the course of the anti-war book, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut skillfully uses biblical references in the text to promote a similar way of thinking. Continually life is presented as no more than something controlled by fate, for freewill is an imaginary idea that people come up with to give them a sense of peace.

The author Kurt Vonnegut characterizes the structure of his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, as schizophrenic. The novel jumps to and from fragmented clumps of information without accordance to traditional chronological order. The unique jumpy structure and the representation of time exemplified by this structure transcend simply commenting on the senselessness of massacre and war. The schizophrenic representation of time experienced by Billy Pilgrim challenges the traditional American narrative presented in cause and effect relationships: this challenge serves to critique the alienation and isolation perpetuated by American society as the root of terrible tragedies including massacres.