Kurt Vonnegut 's Slaughterhouse Five

Billy is human, and he believes what the Tralfamadorians teach. Some may argue that a human, receiving information from super intelligent aliens, may cause insanity, and that no human is meant to live in four dimensions. Billy Pilgrim handles this

… Disorientation and confusion“ ("Trauma/PTSD"). Vonnegut writes, in one of the very first chapters, “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day” (Vonnegut 23). Throughout the book we are taken on a spastic and wild journey from one moment in Pilgrim’s life to another. For instance, Pilgrim is walking through the horribly cold, bleak and depressing German landscape with “The Three Musketeers” and ends up being dragged by Weary most of the way. As soon as the two scouts ditch him and Weary and it seems their ordeal couldn’t get any worse, Pilgrim “time travels” to a moment in which he has just won the Presidency of The Lion’s Club and proceeds to gives an impressive speech. (Vonnegut 48-50). This sort of behavior, completely dissociating oneself from the horrible situation at hand, is typical of PTSD. Pilgrim wanted to escape completely from the cold and depressing “hell” he was in and be back in happiness, where he had just won a successful campaign for the Presidency of his club. This is what happens throughout the book and it is simply another example of Pilgrim’s widespread and horribly debilitating case of PTSD.

In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five he talks about many different themes. He quotes, makes fun of, and uses many different themes. I would like to talk about one major theme in Slaughterhouse Five, religion. In the book he uses religion to teach important lessons, he used it as inspiration, and he even pokes fun at religion.

Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut chooses to use special literary techniques that better explain his own encounters in war as well as help his readers bare the horridness of war. Vonnegut adds black humor in his text to benefit readers as well as “an author-as-character” perspective to set barriers and help protect his own memories in the war. Without adding these two specific devices, Vonnegut could possibly have lost reader’s interests in the book or lost his own interest in writing the book.

After reading the novel, Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., I found my self in a sense of blankness. The question I had to ask myself was, "Poo-tee-weet?"(Vonnegut p. 215). Yet, the answer to my question, according to Vonnegut was, "So it goes"(Vonnegut p.214). This in fact would be the root of my problems in trying to grasp the character of Billy Pilgrim and the life, in which he leads throughout the novel. The pilgrimage that Billy ventures upon is one of mass confusion, running with insanity, finally followed by sanctuary, if layed out in a proper time order sequence. Billy is a victim, prophet, survivor, as well as a firm example of

“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

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut takes places on two contrasting planets. One is Earth, where war tears apart families and minds, and the other is Tralfamadore, where supernatural alien beings share their extended knowledge of the world. Vonnegut uses the two planets, Earth and Tralfamadore, to show the contrasting ideas of chaos and order, and that human actions have limitations that render them helpless against a meaningless universe.

Vonnegut creates an outsider in society as the main character. Billy Pilgrim’s experiences in Dresden impacted his life severely. Witnessing the deaths of so many people changed the way he viewed the world. Billy copes with all of the killing he had witnessed in the war by creating an alternate world. Huber explains, “he invents the Tralfamadorians, a peaceful, intelligent race of beings from a faraway land who do not make war or believe in the finality of death” (Huber). Tralfamadore exhibits

His style of writing is explicit, he combines the reality of war and science fiction, aliens and time concepts. A theme is destructiveness of war and the concept of death, time itslef, people whom you love die in the worst times. Some imagery conecting to the theme is “Billy got out of bed in the moonlight he felt spooky and luminous, felt as though he were wrapped in cool fur that full of static electricity”(Pg 91) it connects to theme of time. This is before he was abducted, he knew it was coming and so he had time think but the why came later “ Why me?

with the world around him. Billy believes that after the war he is abducted by aliens who brought him to

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Vonnegut graduated from Shortridge High and later continued his studies at Cornell University before being drafted into World War Two. He was sent to Europe and then captured in the Battle of the Bulge shortly after arriving. When Dresden, Germany was firebombed by the Allied Forces, Vonnegut and other POWs were safe underground in an airtight slaughterhouse.

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.

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.

The book Slaughterhouse Five written by Kurt Vonnegut is about a man named Billy Pilgrim explaining his life and the bombing of Dresden. The story is told from three different points of views: during the war as a prisoner, when he was captured by aliens, and after the plane crash. He shows these different points of view through time travel, which the aliens, called Tralfamadorians, showed him how to do. This story shows that Billy Pilgrim was changed in the war, was using the aliens to cope, and created them through reading science fiction.

Billy encounters countless atrocities and absurdities in his life and his war experiences that all contribute to his mental withdrawal and deterioration. The horrors of Dresden, including death, senseless cruelty, and absurd injustice, make up the panorama of violence and inhumanity that defines Pilgrim’s world (Broer 70). All of this violence and death around him leads to his descent into schizophrenia and insanity. Billy becomes increasingly crippled by the psychologically damaging blows he receives during the war causing him to withdraw from reality and ultimately lose his sanity (Broer 70). Billy’s prisoner-of-war experience is a nightmare of victimization and madness described as “an acrimonious madrigal, . . . everybody, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep” (Vonnegut 100). Broer states that Billy “and everyone around him exhibit some form of insane, mechanically conditioned behavior, that which is overtly aggressive, or that which allows aggression to happen” (73).