Time Unstuck: Coping Mechanisms in Slaughterhouse-Five

1360 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Free will in slaughterhouse five

Imagine experiencing the events of your life in a random order. How would you view your life if it seemed more like a collection of moments rather than a story? In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim is a chaplain’s assistant during World War II who claims to be "unstuck in time." Billy seemingly jumps from one moment in his life to the next without his control or consent. Billy also believes that aliens, known as Tralfamadorians, abducted him. These events may seem silly considering all of the serious and grim experiences that Billy faces in the war, but they are far from comical. Billy Pilgrim 's time travels and experiences on Tralfamadore are not real experiences, but rather coping mechanisms Billy has created. Throughout …show more content…

Reed argues that the fantasy and science fiction of Slaughterhouse-Five are ways of dealing with reality (777). The aliens offer Billy a unique perspective on free will. They say that humans are the only species to believe in free will. They are subtly telling Billy that there is no such thing as free will and that individuals have no control over the events in their lives (Cox). These aliens explain to Billy that moments happen as they are meant to happen. When Billy asks the aliens why they chose to abduct him, the aliens tell him, “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why” (Vonnegut 77). This view of life helps Billy to have a new understanding of the death and destruction he sees during the war. Since people do not choose to kill but are destined to do so, Billy is able to reconcile the cruelty he has seen. Understanding this fact helps Billy to come to terms with the atrocities he …show more content…

Both his time travels and the aliens’ view of time are related because they define time as a collection of moments. If time is a collection of moments, his life appears less upsetting because he can cherish the happy memories and simply accept the difficult ones as a mere moment in time. If his life is viewed in a linear progress, it appears more tragic, as it becomes a story filled with heartbreaking moments that directly lead to painful resolutions. This explains how both his time travels and the Tralfamadorian understanding of time help Billy deal with the traumatic incidents in his

Show More
Related

  • Slaughterhouse Five: Billy Pilgrim and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

    1566 Words  | 4 Pages

    Within the novel Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, the character Billy Pilgrim claims to have come “unstuck” in time. Having survived through being a Prisoner of War and the destruction of Dresden during World War II, and having been a prisoner used to clear away debris of the destruction, there can be little doubt that Pilgrim’s mental state was unstable. Furthermore, it may be concluded that Pilgrim, due to the effects of having been a Prisoner of War, and having been witness to the full magnitude of destruction, suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which caused him to review the events over and over during the course of his life. In order to understand how these factors, the destruction of Dresden and ‘PTSD’, came to make Billy Pilgrim “unstuck” in time, one must review over the circumstances surrounding those events.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

    1981 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.” Stated Abraham Lincoln. That quotes applies to Slaughterhouse-Five because even when you think you have conquered something and achieve the victory doesn’t mean that it will last long. Billy Pilgrim is the protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. Billy Pilgrim is non-heroic in the anti-war novel which makes the theme of the book Slaughterhouse-Five a man who is “unstuck” in time.

    Read More

  • Slaughterhouse Five Hero's Journey

    940 Words  | 2 Pages

    After a dramatic event happens in someone’s life such as war, some people cannot function the same way as they did previously. To make a reference to the novel, "Slaughterhouse five" written by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim’s character experiences war during World War II. Some drastic changes happened in his way of dealing with the fact of surviving a war. He claims to travel in time and to meet Aliens, called the "Tralfamadorian’s". This essay will discuss Billy believing that he is meeting Aliens and traveling in time, but in fact he only has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after surviving the war.

    Read More

  • Slaughterhouse-Five and the Psychological Consequences of War

    1382 Words  | 3 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • Analysis of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

    2383 Words  | 5 Pages

    Analysis of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five Section One- Introduction Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut Junior, was published in 1968 after twenty-three years of internal anguish. The novel was a "progressive work" after Vonnegut returned from World War II. Why did it take twenty-three years for Kurt Vonnegut to write this novel?

    Read More

  • Free Will In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

    1845 Words  | 4 Pages

    Billy is used to showing that everything happens because of fate. As a prisoner, Billy has no control over his day to day life. While Billy is in Dresden, the city is bombed, because of luck, only Billy and a few others survive the bombing in a slaughterhouse. The people of Tralfamadore tell Billy that humans do not understand time because everything they do is in singular progression.

    Read More

  • Vonnegut's Thoughts on the Atrocities of War

    1674 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Vonnegut’s science fiction and dystopian novel Cat’s Cradle, the main character, John, demonstrates his personal growth and from that, his enlightened attitude towards the unnecessary horrors that war creates. In the beginning of the novel, John sets out to discover and gather information on what people’s lives were like the day that the atomic bomb dropped. Along his path of discovery, he meets the Hoenikker family, of which Felix was the patriarch and the creator of the elusive, dangerous material ice-nine. John then gets sidetracked of his initial quest and becomes infatuated on his pursuit for more knowledge about ice-nine. From there, he stumbles across more of the Hoenikker children as well as the Bokonon people and their peculiar faith. Once John is on the island he learns of the disastrous potential that ice-nine has, and by the end of the novel, witnesses it’s power as it kills virtually the entire human race. At the very end of the novel, John recognizes what his quest for ultimate truth led him to (destruction of humanity) and furthermore sees the cruel, blind and horrible nature of war (ice-nine/weapons of mass destruction). Vonnegut’s next book, Slaughterhouse-Five, another science-fiction novel that was written just a few years after details the life of Billy Pilgrim, a goofy, awkward, and incompetent guy whose life never seems to turn out the way he anticipates. When Billy was a young man, against his wish, he was drafted to fight against the Germans in World War II. As most men do in war, Billy experiences horrific sights on and off the battlefield. As a result he greatly traumatized for the rest of his life because of it. Then, in h...

    Read More

  • Slaughterhouse Five Literary Analysis

    898 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut displays the clash between free-will and destiny, and portrays the idea of time notion in order to substantiate that there is no free-will in war; it is just destiny. Vonnegut crafts this through irony, symbolism and satire. And he successfully manages to prove that free-will is just a hoax that adopted by people that cannot percept time fully.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Free Will In Slaughterhouse Five

    1025 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, the plot focuses on a man who tends to regress back to his childhood, and earlier life, using three important themes. These important themes are the destructiveness of war, the illusion of free will, and the importance of sight. In this novel, Kurt Vonnegut reflects on his experiences in the war in 1945 as a prisoner of war. This man is named Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim is a former prisoner of war who tends to be stuck in the same mindset as before.

    Read More

  • The Crossing Sparknotes

    2163 Words  | 5 Pages

    Despite the initial idea that this story will have a happy ending for Billy and the wolf, life and its trials change the ending dramatically. McCarthy said in the quote that “Nothing can be dispensed with”. This is a vital lesson of the story; every hardship and issue that had to be faced led to another vital step in Billy’s journey. Without the death of the wolf, he would not have wandered and met the people he did. He may have returned home sooner and been killed alongside his parents. Later on, if his family hadn’t have died, he would not have traveled again into Mexico, where he would save a young girl, learn even more, and lose his brother. While the events that took place were not pleasing, they were necessary. That’s what this quote is trying to teach; that every step in life, good or bad, must take place to reach the end goal. “We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall” (McCarthy). This is entirely correct. If Billy had known what was in store for him and his brother in Mexico, they may not have ever traveled there. They didn’t know the outcome, though, and even though the end wasn’t appealing, it was necessary for both of them to just live their lives and face whatever came their way. This quote is mainly showing that life can’t be predicted, only lived, and The Crossing on proves

    Read More

  • Free Will In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

    236 Words  | 1 Pages

    A predominate theme in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five is the concept of free will vs fate. Vonnegut uses many symbols to present this theme and is a driving force in the overall outline in which the novel is written in. The most predominant one, however, is how Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of the story, is taught about this idea and most importantly by whom. Billy is taught the truth about free will vs fate from aliens that abduct him that are from the planet called tralfamadore. This aliens referred to as tralfamadorians teach Billy about time travel and about how the illusion of free will is only really present on earth, and that all events in our life are actually already decided by fate and that not even with time travel we can

    Read More

  • Time Travel In Billy Pilgrim's Slaughterhouse Five

    797 Words  | 2 Pages

    Additionally, we learn that while he was recuperating, his wife died of carbon-monoxide poisoning trying to get to the hospital to see him. The entire story is basically told in Chapter 2.It is also in this chapter that Billy,"time-travels for the 1st time The series of scenes and fragmentations of Billy 's life in chapter 2 alone unnerving. Had we leaned the corse of events in a normal chronological sequence, rather than tidbit here and there, the events would have been m,ore understandable. We learn of his wife 's death in chapter 2, yet we learn the full circumstances of her death in chapter

    Read More

  • Billy Pilgrim Character Analysis

    639 Words  | 2 Pages

    Though he was able to escape war unharmed, Billy seems to be mentally unstable. In fact, his nightmares in the German boxcar at the prisoners of war (POW) camp indicate that he is experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): “And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the car. Nearly everybody, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep. Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away” (79). Billy’s PTSD is also previously hinted when he panics at the sound of sirens: “A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting World War III at any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon” (57). The most prominent symptom of PTSD, however, is reliving disturbing past experiences which is done to an even more extreme extent with Billy as Slaughterhouse-Five’s chronology itself correlates with this symptom. Billy’s “abduction” and conformity to Tralfamadorian beliefs seem to be his method of managing his insecurity and PTSD. He uses the Tralfamadorian motto “so it goes” as a coping mechanism each time he relives a tragic event. As Billy struggles with the conflict of PTSD, the work’s chronological order is altered, he starts to believe

    Read More

  • Why Is Billy Pilgrim Insane

    1051 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Slaughterhouse-Five” is an anti-war novel. It describes a flesh-and-blood world. Main character is Billy Pilgrim, he is a time traveler in this book, his first name Billy is from the greatest novelist in the USA in 19 century’s novel “Billy Budd” ; and his last name is from “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan. Differently, the main character in “The Pilgrim’s Progress” ’s traveling has meaning and discovering, Billy Pilgrim’s traveling just has violence and escape. In the novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut ’s main character, Billy Pilgrim is sane and his time travel is half in his mind half is real. He is looked so innocent and weakness, there is a sentence which is spoken by Billy Pilgrim “So it goes.” (2) This quotation shows that a poignant sense of helplessness.

    Read More

  • Free-Will In Slaughterhouse-Five

    1290 Words  | 3 Pages

    Billy is placed in numerous egregious incidences during his time in World War II, observing the firebombing of Dresden and the deaths of his fellow soldiers in by German soldiers. An eye, one central characteristic of the Tralfamadorians, is symbolic of knowledge and sight. Just like Jesus had divine spiritual knowledge and sought to spread Christianity, Billy wished to spread the peculiar teachings Tralfamadorians. Billy’s belief in Tralfamadorians allows him to make sense of the tumultuous events in his life, so he wants other individuals to follow the Tralfamadorian way. Vonnegut also establishes that although may hold sacred spiritual knowledge although Billy possesses great spiritual knowledge, he still has human characteristic, so he is still subject to death--just like Jesus

    Read More

More about Time Unstuck: Coping Mechanisms in Slaughterhouse-Five

Open Document