The Origin Of Fate And Free Will By Kurt Vonnegut

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."

After Billy comes out publicly with his story of the Tralfamadorians, she says to him, “…what are we going to do with you? Are you going to force us to put you where your mother is?” (Vonnegut 63), referring to the “old people’s home” in Billy’s home town. The threatening tone in which Barbara asks this question gives the idea that she has dealt with her father’s instability before and has the idea that, somehow, he can control it. Billy, however, feels powerless over his life, “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future” (Vonnegut 121). This quote, stated directly after the serenity prayer, shows that Billy has been changed deeply by his past in the war and, as a result, feels as though he cannot influence his future with his own actions. His internal excuse for this is shown through his story of the Tralfamadorians. Barbara Pilgrim is unable to understand her father’s mental state because she has never been to war and doesn’t realize how it changes people

His belief in the Tralfamadorians suggests that he is crazy. Billy is convinced that he was abducted and taken to Tralfamadore. He describes his experience to Tralfamadore in great detail throughout the book. Throughout the book, no one is able to recall the time that he is not on earth. This suggests that Tralfamadore is all in Billy’s head. He insists this isn’t the case and preaches the word of the tralfamadorians to large audiences.

On Tralfamadore, he learns that moments can always be relived, and that free will does not exist on earth. The concept on time allows Billy to stop fearing death, because even if someone died, he could go back in time and relive his or her happiest moments with that person. The idea of no free will removes any guilt that Billy feels as a soldier participating in war, because no matter what he did, the world would always be the same. Billy speaks positive about these concepts on earth, but in doing so; people start to think he is going insane. As a result, his social life diminishes and he becomes an outcast in society. On Tralfamadore, Montana Wildhack accompanies Billy and they have a child. In Billy’s imagination, Montana Wildhack fills the missing void of love. Billy finds great comfort with her, but her presence affects his ability to create loving and thoughtful relationships on earth. Tralfamadore becomes his refuge to cope with war, but becomes his demise on

Free will or the lack thereof is one of the most significant themes throughout the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death written by Kurt Vonnegut. This book follows the story of a man, Billy Pilgrim, throughout his experiences during the World War II or more specifically the bombing of Dresden, Germany, his time on Tralfamadore, and scattered events throughout his lifetime. The readers are told that Billy is a time-traveler; he cannot control when he will leave when he comes back, or to what point in time he is traveling to, but he relives events throughout his life multiple times because of it. In several points in the book, Vonnegut writes about the concept of free will. The Tralfamadorians that

Billy uses a few ways to cope with his depression, the first being a quote on his wall: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom always to tell the difference” (Vonnegut, 77). Billy clearly states that this is the quote that keeps him going in life; however when reviewing the quote itself it makes me wonder how this is useful to Billy when his mind is a shattered mess with fake time travels and extraterrestrial visits. Another question that arises is why is a religious quote used by Billy? Vonnegut specifically states that he is not religious and nor is Billy, so why use it? It is because Billy only wants to find a way to accept the things he cannot change-the past-and the courage to change the things he can-the future-and the wisdom to tell the difference. The only reason that Billy didn’t go to God is because he views God as pain and death from his interpretation of his mother’s crucifix. The last thing that Billy wanted was more death in his life; therefore, with a mix of his home life and his science fiction novels, he created Tralfamadorians. This quote was used by Billy because he needed an extra push to help himself, resulting in the creation of alien beings. In the end, I still believe that this quote wasn’t quite right for this novel based solely on that he wanted to become more one with

Billy experiences many hard times throughout this novel. One of the biggest themes in this novel is God. Billy always prays out to God whenever he is faced with a hard decision or problem. Billy recalls this, “I remembered a passage from the Bible my mother had read to us: "God helps those who help themselves." I asked God to help me get two hound pups. It wasn't much of a prayer, but it did come right from the heart”. After asking his parents millions of times for two dogs, Billy realizes that they are not the ones he should be asking. Billy turned to god and asked him. Billy went out and searched for the dogs. He worked very hard to receive the dogs God granted him. Towards the end of the story, Billy’s dad tells him, "I

It is ironic that Billy Pilgrim tries to promote the idea that fate is predetermined through the use of his own free will. Throughout Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut refers to the lack of free will for Billy Pilgrim. “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future” (60). The idea that Billy could not change anything in his world is a recurring theme throughout the book. There is constant talk about how everything in the world is predetermined, and there is nothing that can or should be done in order to try and change what will happen. Again, the idea of predetermination is evident through the Tralfamadorian perspective: "Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply

To begin, the first reason this section of Slaughterhouse-Five tells us that Billy’s obsession with time-jumps and the Tralfamadorian abduction is all just a coping mechanism is the setting in which he the above passage takes place. Billy has admitted himself to the veteran mental hospital. This alone should make us question the reliability of Billy Pilgrim especially considering that this is the place where

Billy and Jonah both have unique insights into the nature of time, consequently, they have resigned themselves to fate; neither of them cares about death or life because they know that they are helpless to change the future. Whenever Jonah recounts a story,

The abduction of Billy Pilgrim by the Tralfamadorians is a hallucination that could be a way to escape a world destroyed by war. Billy escapes there when he is stressed, from his experiences of war on earth. It’s a haven in the midst of all the madness around him. These aliens are what makes another world so intriguing, what get Billy out of our world that is plagued by war. This is justifiable because war is an awful experience and who wouldn 't want an escape from the constant death, injury, and fighting. Billy gets into Kilgore Trout’s books before he even shows signs of PTSD. The books are already infused in his brain and Billy’s fantasies becomes his reality when he starts to have hallucinations. He

After being abducted from Earth, the Tralfamadorians discussed with Billy their view of the philosophical question of whether free will exists. Their view on free will, is that it is non-existent in which everything in life had already happened and nothing will change it. They think that free will is only thought of on Earth, because humans think time is a sequential progression. Having accepted this, the Tralfamadorians are acceptant of their fates in the future. This theme is not only seen through the Tralfamadorians, but as well as Billy’s events in his life that opposes his free will. When Billy was a kid, his father had him sink into the deep end of the pool to teach him to swim. Billy, however, instead of trying to reach the surface, chose to lay at the bottom of the pool, but was rescued which went against his free will. Later, he is drafted into the war against his will even though he was lacking training, supplies, and proper clothing. How the illusion of free will comes into play, is the fact the an improperly trained joke of a soldier could survive the Dresden bombing where many highly trained soldiers perished. Billy eventually accepts these teachings from the

Billy is a wealthy optometrist, also doubling as a veteran, who lives in New York with his children. Although not particularly strange, Billy claims that aliens named the Tralfamadorians have abducted him many times and shown him the fourth dimension in which they experience. This changes Billy's perspective on life, as he sees it as inevitable events because “all moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist”, as seen on page 25. His perspective causes the tone of the writing to become rather indifferent, for the author's views Billy's events as fate instead of free will, and therefore Billy also does not seem rather harmed or happy about events in his life. This is because he thinks that his entire life is already happening on different parts of a timeline and cannot be controlled. He compares it to a mountain range because he can “look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of mountains”, where he can see “how permanent all the moments are”, seen on page 25. The indifferent tone in the piece reveals the theme of illusion of free will, because all moments are one and cannot be changed as the tone indicates, leading to the main character not caring what happens to him, whereas every other human who can't see in the fourth dimension thinks they have free

Additionally, Billy has gone through so much physical change from fighting in the war, to being an optometrist, to living on the planet of Tralfamadore; that life seems to have no simple path and he could live in one of these places at any point. His convoluted life continues to mess with Billy’s head, and simplicity and relaxation in his life are nonexistent. Billy’s distraught past continues to flow into the present, therefore, it is very hard for him to “keep going” (Page

Billy’s manifestation about Tralfamadore leads one to question his sanity. Tralfamadore is something that he solely imagines. He begins reading Kilgore Trout’s science fiction at a stage in which he is losing the grip he has on reality. He is already unable to live fully in the present and cannot control his movements forward and backward through time. Science fiction helps his attempt to “reinvent himself and reinvent his universe.” Billy cannot change the fact that living life normally after the war is no longer a possibility. He recovers his sanity by creating a new comprehension of the progression of time. The Tralfamadorians, who strongly resemble some of Trout’s creations, explain how the entirety of the world works and they serve as