Post-war Insanity
“This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of
tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from.” Insanity is
a major theme in Kurt Vonnegut’s life and in turn his novels tend to be a release
for his thoughts of mental illness. Vonnegut’s characters tend to embody him
or at least characteristics of himself. His characters generally suffer from mild
insanity and therefore hints that Vonnegut himself is possibly mildly insane. In
each of his novels there are characters that are highly related to Vonnegut such
as Kilgore Trout, Billy Pilgrim, and Eliot Rosewater. Each of these characters
appear in different novels to help develop the plot and continue the relative
theme. The theme of insanity is what dominates the novel Slaughterhouse-Five,
and is what ties all aspects of the tale together.
In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five there is a character that is identical to
Vonnegut. His name is Billy Pilgrim. Both were in the American army and
became prisoners of war. Also, they both witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden,
Germany. “Dresden was destroyed on the night of February 13, 1945,’ Billy
Pilgrim began. ‘We came out of our shelter the next day.” (Slaughterhouse-Five
179) Billy is a thin frail boy who joined the Army so he would become a man, like
the author. ”World War II attracted them both because they realized that it was
an important time in history. With the horrors of war Pilgrim went into quasi-
insane state he’s described as “…bearded … in a blue toga and silver shoes,
with his hands in a muff (Slaughterhouse-Five 149).” This description is after they
got off of a POW train on a “balmy” Dresden day. Vonnegut also has this
character become “unstuck in time” or on a more realistic level, he has
flashbacks, even though Pilgrims flashbacks flash him to the future as well as the
past. His future is to Tralfamadorian Zoo; Tralfamadorians are little green men,
the Tralfamadorians, as a sort of appeasement to his capture, gave Pilgrim a
beautiful wife. This flash-forward was most likely just a science fiction writer’s
fantasy. His real future is as a Ilium, New York optometrist. His unsticking in time
is just a symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It appears in both Pilgrim
and Vonnegut, and later in Rosewate...
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... every death there is in the
novel. On page 210, the first five paragraphs emphasize just how often this quote
is replayed. Also, this quote is showing the removal of Billy from the situation.
Many people would find these occurrences extremely traumatising, but for Billy
he just withdraws from the entire scenario. This enables him to continue life
without dealing with everyday pain and suffering.
Kurt Vonnegut through his three main literary self-portraits vents his
mental illness. Not only does he do that, but also he gives us insightful tid-bits of
knowledge and advice that will help us later in life. His honesty and
straightforward manner help the relieving process for Vonnegut or any author
who uses writing as a catharsis. His need to rejuvenate himself from all his post-
war trauma is a perfect example of a form of insanity. Kurt Vonnegut uses all of
his novels to express all the emotions built up from years of suppression. He
uses the theme of insanity in all of his pieces of works to convey to the public
how he identifies himself. Insanity is the ruling force in Slaughterhouse-Five
and the passage on page 210 is the decisive force in portraying
Billy tries to live a normal life, but is traveling in time between his years in the military and traveling to the Tralfamadorians world.
Kurt Vonnegut places his experiences and his views in the text. He begins the book by stating, “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true...I’ve changed all of the names.” Viewing war as a sen...
Kurt Vonnegut is the author of Slaughterhouse Five and he was a soldier during World War II. Slaughterhouse Five is a fictional story of what a man named Billy Pilgrim went through as a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II. Vonnegut experienced the bombing of Dresden in Germany when was a prisoner of war. Vonnegut's prison in Dresden, Germany was a slaughterhouse that the Germans forced the prisoners of war to live in. He relates some of his experiences during World War II to help him create the fictional story about Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim is a fictional character that Vonnegut created in order to somehow tell his store of Dresden. Most of Billy Pilgrim's experiences are similar to what Vonnegut actually experienced as a prisoner of war during World War II. PTSD is a disorder that disrupts someone's life keeping them from having an normal life because of a traumatic event that they experienced. PTSD is very common among soldiers returning from war because they went through many traumatic events during their deployment. It is very obvious to see that Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim are suffering from PTSD after their deployment in Germany during World War II.
Hattenhauer, Darryl. “The Politics of Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron’.” Studies in Short Fiction. 35-4. (1998): 387. EBSCOhost. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
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).
a prisoner of war (POW) in Dresden, Germany. During that time he experienced the firebombing of Dresden, which affected him greatly. This event had around 135,000. casualties, which is about twice the number killed in Hiroshima by the atomic bomb (1969 Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse (Five) -.. Many claim that his involvement in the war is what made him write Slaughterhouse Five.
common theme to his writing is that he want to have a self-reliance of own to the people
Within the article Stephen King continuously states that we humans all have insanity within us. In the article,
Columbia, University Press. “Insanity” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th edition (2013): 1. History Reference Center. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.
For a novel to be considered a Great American Novel, it must contain a theme that is uniquely American, a hero that is the essence of a great American, or relevance to the American people. Others argue, however, that the Great American Novel may never exist. They say that America and her image are constantly changing and therefore, there will never be a novel that can represent the country in its entirety. In his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut writes about war and its destructiveness. Vonnegut tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an unlikely hero, mentally scarred by World War Two. Kurt Vonnegut explains how war is so devastating it can ruin a person forever. These are topics that are reoccurring in American history and have a relevance to the American people thus making Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five a Great American Novel.
One who is righteous, pure, and ethical obtains a solid moral compass. A lack of morality in an individual results in insanity. This is shown in Timothy Findley’s The Wars; the war corrupts individual’s integrity which ultimately leads to their insanity. Robert Ross and Rodwell depict lunacy as war demoralizes them. As individuals receive commands that violate their virtues, as a repercussion a person will become irrational.
"In Slaughterhouse Five, -- Or the Children's Crusade, Vonnegut delivers a complete treatise on the World War II bombing of Dresden. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a very young infantry scout* who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them.' The reviewer concludes that 'Slaughterhouse Five is an extraordinary success. It is a book we need to read, and to reread.' "The popularity of Slaughterhouse Five is due, in part, to its timeliness; it deals with many issues that were vital to the late sixties: war, ecology, overpopulation, and consumerism. Klinkowitz, writing in Literary Subversions.New American Fiction and the Practice of Criticism, sees larger reasons for the book's success: 'Kurt Vonnegut's fiction of the 1960s is the popular artifact which may be the fairest example of American cultural change. . . . Shunned as distastefully low-brow . . . and insufficiently commercial to suit the exploitative tastes of high-power publishers, Vonnegut's fiction limped along for years on the genuinely democratic basis of family magazine and pulp paperback circulation. Then in the late 1960s, as the culture as a whole exploded, Vonnegut was able to write and publish a novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age. '"Writing in Critique, Wayne D. McGinnis comments that in Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut 'avoids framing his story in linear narration, choosing a circular structure.
Through the use of insanity as a metaphor, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, introduced us to characters and stories that illustrate the path to insanity from the creation of a weakened psychological state that renders the victim susceptible to bouts of madness, the internalization of stimuli that has permeated the human psyche resulting in the chasm between rational and irrational thought, and the consequences of the effects of the psychological stress of external stimuli demonstrated through the actions of their characters.
Throughout his career, Kurt Vonnegut has used writing as a tool to convey penetrating messages and ominous warnings about our society. He skillfully combines vivid imagery with a distinctly satirical and anecdotal style to explore complex issues such as religion and war. Two of his most well known, and most gripping, novels that embody this subtle talent are Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. Both books represent Vonnegut’s genius for manipulating fiction to reveal glaring, disturbing and occasionally redemptive truths about human nature. On the surface, Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five are dramatically different novels, each with its own characters, symbols, and plot. However, a close examination reveals that both contain common themes and ideas. Examining and comparing the two novels and their presentation of different themes provides a unique insight into both the novels and the author – allowing the reader to gain a fuller understanding of Vonnegut’s true meaning.
Insanity can be a dark descent into the strange, nightmarish unknown realms of the mind unable to return to the known world of reason. This is a major theme in literature, and is particularly evident in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. The nightmarish undertones are one of the main similarities in Hawthorne's and Melville's works. Another similarity is writing style. Both men write very descriptively, and their writing is based more in intellect than emotion. Also both men write about the nightmarish descent into madness.