Trauma In Slaughterhouse Five

Billy is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians one night and is brought to the planet of Tralfamadore. In the novel “Slaughterhouse Five” Billy reveals this event when Vonnegut states, “Billy went to New York City, and got on an all-night radio program devoted to talk. He told about having come unstuck in time. He said, too, that he had been kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967. The saucer was from the planet Tralfamadore, he said. He was taken to Tralfamadore, where he was displayed naked in a zoo, he said. He was mated there with a former Earthling movie star named Montana Wildhack” (25). Billy finally tells others about his experiences with the Tralfamadorians when he goes to New York. This is the point in the book where Billy is viewed by others and it shows just how crazy he really is. Billy really does believe that he went to another planet and interacted with other forms of life. Billy often stops in time and flashes forwards several years, the author describes this as “becoming unstuck in time. Vonnegut states, “And so on. Billy says that he first came unstuck in time in 1944, long before his trip to Tralfamadore. The Tralfamadorians didn't have anything to

In the eye opening, anti-war book, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim is “unstuck in time” after being captured by a fleet of four dimensional, time traveling extraterrestrials called the Tralfamadorians. In his own acts of time travel, he goes through many moments of his life, and learns that even though his notion of free will is ruined, he can still enjoy the goodness in moments. Through his madness, Billy learns of the fate and ugliness of tragedy and war, but also the beauty of time.

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.

Vonnegut is Kilgore Trout in the novel. The first line of the novel is “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time"(23). By using the word "unstuck", Vonnegut implies that Billy has now become free. Consequently, Vonnegut's narrative, as well as Billy,

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

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

The design of this novel was structured from Kurt Vonnegut’s own World War II experiences. The one experience that seemed to stand out the most in the novel was the Dresden air raids. Vonnegut saw the air raids as senseless, so every time Vonnegut is describing the raids in the novel we see a distinct pattern, Vonnegut uses his novel to depict to the reader a feel of senselessness every time the bombing is mentioned. As a witness to the destruction, Billy confronts fundamental questions about the meanings of life and death. Traumatized by the events in Dresden, Billy is still left lost with no answers. Although his life as a working family man is considerably satisfying, he is unable to find peace of mind because of the trauma he suffered in Dresden. (Vonnegut,

Since the first time Billy claimed to have come unstuck in time while in the forest leaning against a tree, he has depended on an alternate reality in which he has created a new life for himself to avoid thoughts of the horrific events he witnessed while in Dresden. Although Billy claims that he was abducted by the Tralfamadorians, in reality, he was captured by the Germans. The reason that the Tralfamadorians exist is so that Billy can escape from the harsh reality of being a prisoner of war. Although separate in Billy’s conscience, the Nazis and the Tralfamadorians are interchangeable. Billy’s adventures on Tralfamadore all have significant and undeniable connections to his life:

The main event in the novel was the fire-bombing on Dresden during World War II, which both Vonnegut and Pilgrim took part of. Billy Pilgrim was constantly traveling back in time to WWII already knowing this tragedy was going to take place. But again, he went on with life because he knew he could not stop the bombing from

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

Often when returning from the traumas of war soldiers experience post traumatic stress, this stress can often alter reactions to stressful situations. In Slaughterhouse Five Billy's PTSD is shown when he comes home from war and is in constant fear of reliving his past experiences, “A siren went off, scared the

This kinship can further connect Billy and Vonnegut together. Since Vonnegut is a fourth generation German, it is possible that Vonnegut could also have a cousin that was a Nazi soldier (Biography). Though it may be a far stretch, a further connection the two have is the name of their hometowns. Billy was from the town of Illium, Illinois and Vonnegut was from Indianapolis, Indiana. The correlation between the two cannot be ignored. Billy could very easily be a way for Vonnegut to show the emotions that he felt during the war to the rest of the world.

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.

When he tells Billy that he needs to figure it out and snap out of it, Billy says, “ You guys go on without me. I’m all right” (Vonnegut 47). This just displays the hopelessness in Billy’s life. The war has driven him to lose touch with himself and not value his own life. This makes it very easy for a reader to feel empathy for Billy and get an idea of how war can really affect these men. Billy isn’t the only character that Vonnegut uses to depict the terrors of war.