The Importance Of Time Travel In Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

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Time travel has been one of most thrilling topics in the science fiction novels. Some characters possess the ability to travel through time without any limitations. They can change the course of history. While their time travel ability fascinates their readers, time travels further provoke readers’ deliberate thinking about their own lives without the precious ability of time travel. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five probes into precisely these questions about time travel. In his immensely popular book, the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is a World War II veteran who “has come unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 29). Pilgrim travels through time back and forth between war period and post war period. Because of this, he knows that he will be the only survivor after the bombing of Dresden, that knows that he will survive an airplane crash, and even that he claims that he has been kidnapped by being from the planet Tralfamadore who have the ability to see their lives in the fourth dimension, time. Despite the fact that Vonnegut depicts characters who embody the philosophical ideas of absurdism in his book, Slaughterhouse-Five, a work of fiction, in fact, satirically criticizes the indifferent human attitude toward life, despises people who believes in fate, and, most …show more content…

Meanwhile, there are many places in Slaughterhouse Five that symbolized elements of absurdism like Nietzsche’s nihilism and Camus’ notion of revolting. As a final note, human race now stands at the summit of civilizations; however we are unable to win over time. Past cannot be changed and the future cannot be foreseen. Time travel has always been alluring but unapproachable for the human race. Nevertheless, it may be fortunate not to be able to do so because, without time travel, human potential is unfathomable and the thirst of pursuing can thus be

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