Fate in Kurt Vonnegut’s Novel, Slaughterhouse-Five Essay

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.

War is the third topic that is heavily satirized in Slaughterhouse Five. First, Billy almost gets killed because he is time-traveling. Second of all, Vonnegut always says “so it goes” (12) whenever someone dies, so it sort of mocks death. Also, he is given a woman’s jacket when he becomes a POW and it mocks his position in the war also. On the nights of February 13-14 in 1944 the city of Dresden, Germany was subjected to one of the worst air attacks in the history of man. By the end of the bombing 135,000 to 250,000 people had been killed by the combined forces of the United States and the United Kingdom. Dresden was different then Berlin or many of the other military targets which were attacked during World War II because it was never fortified or used for strategic purposes and, therefore, was not considered a military target. At one point, Billy watches a war movie about WWII. He watches it regularly, showing how reality is.

The reality in this novel is about how real it is to Billy Pilgrim (Kurt Vonnegut). He is never really time travelling it is just a part of his stage in life that he keeps replaying. Due to the devastation he had to watch it is hard for him to live everyday as a normal person. And again this all relates to PTSD. It is not a given fact that Billy had PTSD, however as you read the novel you understand more about his life and why he is the way he is.

The point of view that Slaughterhouse-Five is written from also affects the way the reader fells about time after reading the novel. Since the story is narrated by a omniscient being that is everywhere with Billy Pilgrim, the reader gets a first hand account of every event in his life. Also Billy is very relaxed and accepting all things around him. A good example of this is Billy's habit of following every death with "so it goes". (Vonnegut 69) The repetition of this phrase not only de-emphasizes death, but also helps Vonnegut assert control over the readers response after a death. (Dawley 2) The way Billy

Vonnegut reinforces the ideology of the perils or warfare through Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim experiences many hardships during his time throughout World War 2 and his time in Dresden. Billy and his fellow American soldiers endure many hardships such as overcrowding, no food and the weather is to harsh, on their long voyage to the prison camp. Not only was there very little room on the train but no one would let Billy sleep next to them due to Billy’s wild night terrors. This led to Billy having to post himself up in the corner of the stagecoach in order to sleep standing up. “Billy Pilgrim was lying at an angle on the corner brace, self crucified, holding himself there with a blue and ivory claw hooked over the sill of the ventilator” (Vonnegut 101). This musters up the image that Billy looked like Jesus Christ on the cross which Billy is also compared to during the novel. Upon the trains arrival at the German prison camp, Billy’s attire did not resemble that of an American Soldier. Billy Pilgrim had no shoes or jacket and it was in the middle of the harsh winter. After getting of the train and stepping foot on the cold dead soil of the camp, Jackets are taken from the dead corpses of dead prisoners and given to the so called “newcomers”. The coats are given out in little frozen clumps as if they cant even be worn and it is Billy who receives the smallest and least effective looking coat. “ The coat

Many people returned from World War II with disturbing images forever stuck in their heads. Others returned and went crazy due to the many hardships and terrors faced. The protagonist in Slaughter-House Five, Billy Pilgrim, has to deal with some of these things along with many other complications in his life. Slaughter House Five (1968), by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is an anti-war novel about a man’s life before, after and during the time he spent fighting in World War II. While Billy is trying to escape from behind enemy lines, he is captured and imprisoned in a German slaughterhouse. The author tells of Billy’s terrible experiences there. After the war, Billy marries and goes to school to

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.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five describes the experience Billy Pilgrim had when he was involved in the Dresden bombing. Vonnegut uses aliens, Tralfamadore, and time traveling as a mirror for Billy to reflect on the society. As the book progresses Billy starts question the ethics in which the society influences him. Billy and the human race believes in free will: humans are in control for what has happened, what is happening, and what is going to happen.

The injustice of suffering in war has the ability to effect anyone and everyone but the lack of control due to inevitably caused by entering the front lines of war is unhinging to most. This touchy subject is expressed through the character of Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five”. Although the general theme of suffering with a determinist twist is covered, this novel strays in the fact that we see a shift in how it is discussed from the first half of the book to the second half and how it ultimately effects the readers ability to comprehend the touchy subject matter. Firstly, Vonnegut delves head first into the discussion of religion and how soldiers who are on the front lines might be impacted religiously.

Throughout the course of the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the reader is walked through the morbid but engaging life of Billy Pilgrim, a character who experiences many dreadful tragedies such as war. The way Vonnegut structures this novel is scattered and not told chronologically because we experience Billy Pilgrim’s life just as he does without suspense or logical order. Shortly after Pilgrim going to war in 1944 he becomes “unstuck in time” which simply means that he experiences different moments of his life at various moments of his life knowing exactly what will happen. He discovers that free will is nothing but a misinterpreted illusion that only the Tralfamadorians can truly understand because they perceive that everything that will happen has already happened since all time is recurring.

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.

Slaughterhouse-Five appears to be semi autobiographical because it includes events that Vonnegut himself experienced, but is written instead about a character named Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim, also a soldier in World War II, experiences the same firebombing of Dresden that killed more than 135,000 people (Notable Biographies). The novel follows Pilgrim throughout his life where he finds himself “unstuck in time” and constantly travels to different moments from his birth to his death. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five explores the idea that war is seen by some as a way to become a hero but, it only will lead them to be villains killing other people. The death from war leads to psychological instability for those who live the war and the ones around them.

In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut explains his experience of the World War II bombing of Dresden, Germany. Vonnegut's creative antiwar novel shows the audience the hardships of the life of a soldier through his writing technique. Slaughterhouse Five is written circularly, and time travel is ironically the only consistency throughout the book. Vonnegut outlines the life of Billy Pilgrim, whose life and experiences are uncannily similar to those of Vonnegut. In Chapter 1, Kurt Vonnegut non-fictionally describes his intentions for writing the book. Vonnegut personally experienced the destruction of Dresden, and explains how he continuously tried to document Dresden but was unsuccessful for twenty-three years after the war. Vonnegut let

Slaughterhouse-five strives to remember the tragedy of the bombing of Dresden. Kurt Vonnegut constructs his novel around a main character who becomes “unstuck in time” (23). Billy Pilgrim’s life is told out of order, which gives him a different perspective than the rest of the world. Billy lives through his memories, and revisits events in his life at random times and without warning. Vonnegut introduces Billy Pilgrim to the Tralfamadorian way of thinking about memory and time so that he can cope with being unstuck in time. The Tralfamadorian ideology is set up as an alternative to the human ideology of life. In the novel Slaughterhouse-five, Kurt Vonnegut constructs a reality where memory is unproductive through the Tralfamadorian