David Jung
Honors English III
Mr. Jennings
April 7, 2013
Literary component
In the beginning of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut introduces himself
as a character. He was in World War II and was a witness of the bombing of Dresden. Seeing as
that was a monumental part of his life, he wants to write a book about it, but he cannot bring
himself to remember the events because they were all so gruesome. In the next chapter the
tall, scrawny, awkward Billy Pilgrim is brought into play. Billy Pilgrim is a self proclaimed “time
traveler.” He was abducted by the aliens called the Tralfamadorians and kept in what was
described as a zoo. While he was in the zoo he learned their way of life and how they perceived
things, such as time. For example, humans see death as the end of life and time, whereas the
Tralfamadorians describe death as a time of extreme illness and can go back and relive any part
of their life. The book is centrally focused around Billy’s time traveling and his past experiences.
Billy was also in World War II and, oddly enough, at the firebombing of Dresden. He goes back
to all of the important parts of his life: from being in the womb momentarily, to his death, and
to most everywhere in between.
War is a very destructive thing. In addition to the massive bombings and the ultimate
destruction of many cities and towns, war can destroy the bodies and minds of the many young
men and women in the war. In addition to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), war can cause
schizophrenia and varying cases of anxiety and depression. In other words, war can make you
go crazy. Billy’s time in the war is not what you would call a walk in the park. He was captured
and made a prisoner of war, was forced to walk many miles without proper footwear through
snow, and witnessed the destruction of an entire city. That, along with other problems, is what
made Billy go crazy.
Because Slaughterhouse-Five is such a widely read book, many critics have put in their
two cents about what they think the book stands for. Some of the critics argue that it is an antiwar book, but Vonnegut explains in the novel that writing an anti-war book would be like
writing an anti-glacier book; even though you wrote the book, won’t make glaciers go away.
There will always be war no matter what and it would be futile to write a book about it. On the
other hand, there are the people who claim Billy Pilgrim is suffering from schizophrenia. With
simple scientific evidence such as to have schizophrenia you have to have symptoms for six
months before you can be diagnosed. Also, schizophrenia develops at a young age and you
have to be born with it; it cannot be developed over time.
However, almost all critics agree that something is wrong with Billy. I would diagnose
him with PTSD, or posttraumatic stress disorder. PTSD is caused by extremely stressful events,
such as nearly dying, and not being able to properly deal with the stress. PTSD puts people on
edge, and often times the person suffering has dreams or flashbacks about the events
witnessed.
“Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has
walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back
through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times,
he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between. He says. Billy is spastic in
time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily
fun(Vonnegut 23).”
At the end of the quote Billy is described as being “spastic in time”, which is just an explanation
of him reliving the traumatic moments he witnessed in the war. PTSD has been described as
putting people in a “continual present” as stated by Jerome Klinkowitz. The continual present
means that you feel like you’re living forever in the moment that caused you to get PTSD.
People can go on to live normal lives, just as Billy did with his optometry, but still feel like they
are living, in this case, back in the prison camp.
The book seems to be centrally focused around the firebombing at Dresden. Dresden is
what hit him the hardest. In the book Billy explains how barbershop quartets are so
“meaningful” to him. “The guards drew together instinctively, rolled their eyes. They
experimented with one expression and then another, said nothing, though their mouths were
often open. They looked like a silent film of a barbershop quartet”(178). Seeing this led him to
feeling as if he were going to have a heart attack. This is when he was traumatized.
Billy’s problem eventually gets so bad that he checks himself into a mental hospital
because he himself realized he was going crazy. While he was in the hospital he met a friend
who was irrelevant, other than the fact that the friend introduced Billy to Kilgore Trout; a
science fiction writer. Reading the books allowed Billy to keep living in his fantasy world and
couldn’t have helped him at all. The Tralfamadorians were just a figment of his wild imagination
and the philosophy of the Tralfamdorians allowed him to think of his traumatic events in a new
light. Their philosophy places a lack of importance on trying to make sense of things that
happen. To them, life just goes. “When a Tralfamdorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the
dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in
plenty of other moments”(27). The tralfamadorians don’t think of death as anything. All they
say is “so it goes.”
Works Cited
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Random House Inc., 1969. Print.
Simpson, Josh. "This Promising Of Great Secrets": Literature, Ideas, And The (Re)Invention Of
Reality In Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, And
Breakfast Of Champions Or "Fantasies Of An Impossibly Hospitable World": Science
Fiction And M."Critique 45.3 (2004): 261. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Matheson, T.J. "This Lousy Little Book": The Genesis And Development Of Slaughterhouse Five
As Revealed In Chapter One." Studies In The Novel 16.2 (1984): 228. MasterFILE Premier.
Web. 8 Apr. 2013.