Not only can time travel affect one's closest affiliates, but it also affects the way onlookers perceive the adventurer. As Billy’s gift of time travel began one day without warning, he was left baffled and bewildered. On top of this, it began when he was at war, which is not exactly a time or place to take a moment and reflect. Billy refers to his first instance of time travel as becoming “unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 43), and the first witnesses of his abnormal behaviour are his fellow soldiers. Billy is walking through the forest and stops to rest against a tree when his mind starts dashing and suddenly he is everywhere but the present, until Roland Weary interrupts his travels. Weary shakes him to life and throws him in the direction they …show more content…
He believes Billy to be a complete fool with no brains, however his perceived incompetence is as a result of Billy’s internal battle against time travel. Because Billy’s time travel is not his physical absence, but moreso mental, those around him cannot understand why he acts so oddly. Furthermore, not only do other POWs judge Billy, but so do the enemies. The German soldiers are parading the Americans around Luxembourg when Billy is taken to photograph a staged capture. Throughout the picture taking, Billy travels to the future and is left with an unfit expression described as, “his face wreathed in goofy good will, they menaced him with their machine pistols,” (Vonnegut 58). Again, Billy is left looking quite senseless because in his mind he is elsewhere, and in this situation the Germans think he is reacting erringly, putting him in a threatening …show more content…
Time travel in Billy and Henry’s lives, whether it is made clear or kept secret, corrupts the way that spectators view and judge them. Because those around him are unaware of the voyage going on in his mind, people think Billy is an imbecile, but likely because they are uninformed. Conversely, Henry is quite open when it comes to his disorder, however people are still skeptical about the stability of his life and the way it will affect others as a result of their minimal knowledge of time
The human mind is a part of the body which current science knows little about. Trigger mechanisms, and other factors within the brain are relatively unknown to current humanity. Therefore, in order to produce a diagnostic on why Billy Pilgrim became “unstuck” in time, the reader of Slaughterhouse Five must come to terms with situations concerning the experiences described in the novel. Billy Pilgrim starts out, chronologically, as a fairly basic infantryman in the United States Army during the last Nazi offensive of the war, also known as the Battle of the Bulge (Vonnegut, 32). That battle resulted in fierce fighting, and also in massacres (such as the one that occurred near Malmedy, France), and the reader may be sure that there were men who became mentally unsound due to the effects of what they experienced there. Pilgrim is taken in by a group of soldiers who have found themselves behind the Nazi lines and are required to travel, by foot, back to friendly lines (Vonnegut, 32).
Vonnegut makes clear that he, too, has experienced Billy's struggles. He does so by intruding into the accounts of the fictional Billy with his own personal thoughts. In one case Vonnegut states, " . . .it would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim--and for me too"(121). Another such event occurs when Pilgrim travels "back to Dresden, but not in the present. He was going back there in 1945, two days after the city was destroyed. Now Billy and the rest were being marched into the ruins by their guards. I was there. O'Hare was there"(212).
Billy tries to live a normal life, but is traveling in time between his years in the military and traveling to the Tralfamadorians world.
... Traflamadorian philosophy he realizes that time travel to cope with his feelings is not a viable solution. The traflamadorians taught him that there is nothing he can to prevent change or alter the future in anyway because from the beginning the moment was is and always will be struvtured that way. Before he went to traflamadore Billy was time travaling quite frequently to try and cope with regrets and relive accomplishments to see if he could have done anything differently in any of the situations he found himself in. Billy seemed to kill himself over what he could and could not have done. After the experience on traflamadore Billy didn’t time travel as much and he seemed to be at peace with the world and his fate. So it is evident that the frequent use of time travel is Billy Pilgrim’s way of coping with the regrets, and reliving the accomplishments of his life.
...t or the future. With this information, Billy begins to learn about the future. “I, Billy Pilgrim will die, have died, and will always die on February thirteenth, 1976.” Billy is in fact right with this prediction. Realizing everything is planned out, Billy ends his search for meaning. He understands that he can do nothing to stop the senseless acts, which take place. Like the Tralfamadores, he must try to concentrate on the good moments and not on the bad ones. He could do nothing to stop them or to change them.
Billy Pilgrim time travels to various moments in his life at random, which suggests he has no power over his mind and the memories that haunt him. He “is spastic in time, (and) has no control over where he is going next” (Vonnegut 43), as he struggles to make sense of his past. Billy’s ability to remember events in an erratic sequence, mirrors the happenings of war. War is sudden, fast paced, and filled with unexpected twists and turns. Billy cannot forget what he experienced during his time as a soldier, and in turn his mind subconsciously imitates this hectic quality of war. This behavior proves that although the war is over, “psychologically, Billy has never fully left” (Vees-Gulani). For many soldiers, especially those who were prisoners of war (POW), it is inevitable that their mind will not be like it once was (Vees-Gulani).
Billy proves throughout the book that he is not mentally stable, yet somehow, he is persuasive in his interpretation of the truth.
...e past (or future) like Billy. A lot of people do this. They either dwell in the past and aren't able to get over things that happened a long time ago, or they have such a hard time dealing with the present that they choose to live in denial and think everything is just how it has always been. This is a very immature solution to handling the world's absurdities. We don't have the choice to "flip the channels" in our lives like Billy does; however we often flip the channel when the news comes on. But we can't just ignore our problems and expect them to go away. That never works for anybody. Nor does denial, which living in the past is, plain and simple. We have to deal with things in a more mature way. As Vonnegut subtly points out, we have to help the things we can and understand the things we can't, and hopefully we will never lose sight of the difference.
However, the books present response to war in a contrasting way. The incorporation of repetition, balance, and the idea of little control of one’s fate display parallelism between Billy Pilgrim and the soldiers of The Things They Carried while still distinguishing the existing psychological and internal contrast between them. When Billy is leading a parade in front of the Dresdeners prior to the bombing, Vonnegut
Billy Pilgrim is born in 1922 and grows up in Ilium, New York. A funny-looking, weak youth, he does well in high school, then he enrolls in night classes at the Ilium School of Optometry, and is soon drafted into the army. He serves as a chaplain's assistant, is sent into the Battle of the Bulge, and almost gets taken prisoner by the Germans. Just before being captured he first becomes unstuck in time. He sees the entirety of his life in one sweep. Billy is transported with other privates to the beautiful city of Dresden. There the prisoners are made to work for their keep. They are kept in a former slaughterhouse. Billy and his fellow POWs survive in an airtight meat locker. They emerge to find a moonscape of destruction. Several days’ later Russian forces capture the city and the war is over. Billy returns to Ilium and finishes optometry school. He gets engaged to the daughter of the founder of the school. His wealthy father-in-law sets him up in the optometry business. Billy and his wife raise two children and become wealthy.
What is time? Is time travel possible? When nothing is changing does time still exits ? Is that really true? Are you real? Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that is significant to us when questions and other clams bring curiosity about whether things are real or not.
Willy Loman, a sixty-year-old traveling salesman, is having trouble lately because he can't seem to keep his mind on the present. He keeps drifting back and forth between reality and memory, looking for exactly where his life went wrong. Having been demoted to a strictly commissions salesman, as he was in the beginning of his career, Willy begins to wonder what missed opportunity or wrong turn led his life to this dismal existence.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck” in time. The question here is, why? The fact of the matter is that he does not actually begin to time-travel. Billy “becomes unstuck” as a coping mechanism to deal with his traumatic experiences during the war. Billy attempts to reorganize his life’s events and cope with a disorder known as post traumatic stress (PTSD).
Billy and Henry each show how their closest relationships suffer as a result of travelling through time without control. The difference between the two is the level of understanding or willingness to attempt to accept and overcome. Barbara Pilgrim refuses to give Billy the benefit of the doubt nor does she show effort to mend their connection. Contrary to this, Clare Abshire and Henry are both considerate of eachothers struggles and want nothing more than to be together despite the strain on their marriage. While both parties are dealing with a similar challenge, both are managing
Time Travel has always struck close to the imagination of the minds. From H.G. Wells ' "The Time Machine" to blockbuster films like "Back to the Future" - for years, time travel was the stuff of science fiction and crazy-eyed mad men but as physicists approach the subject of time travel with new advances in scientific theories and equipment, the possibility of time travel has become a more legitimate field for scientific endeavours. This paper will argue the possibility of time travel and the positive effects that this discovery will bring forth to modern day society: technological advancements.