Slaughterhouse Five Free Will Analysis

Free Will in Slaughterhouse Five
Free will and fate are themes that occur throughout Slaughterhouse Five. The stance taken on the idea of free will is that it is an illusion, and that it is something that humans have invented as an idea to comfort themselves. Vonnegut uses the science fiction element of an alien race, known as the Tralfamadorians, as a way to portray this idea. Billy Pilgrim, the novel’s main character, is abducted by this alien race and they attempt to explain to him the nature of free will and fate as they see it, although Billy has been the victim of his lack of free will throughout the entirety of his life.
Billy Pilgrim’s concept of the nature of free will, and the lack of its existence, begins with his abduction by the Tralfamadorians. They appear, absurdly, as toilet plungers with eyes who can see in the fourth dimension. Their view of free will is that time is already mapped out, every event has already occured, and that everything happens according to that set plan. They believe that every moment in time has already happened and that all of these moments continually repeat themselves. Nothing can change this predetermined fate and it is useless to try to fight the inevitable. This view leaves them with a sort of resigned acceptance of their fates, and an acknowledgment that they are powerless to change them. They claim that human beings are the only entities in existence that has created a concept of free will, and that it is a result of them being mistaken about the way time functions. According to the Tralfamadorians, humans operate under the assumption that time is a linear progression, allowing humans to believe that they can control their own destinies. One Tralfamadorian states “If I hadn’t spent ...

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...o potentially change the outcome, Billy does nothing. His impending death is something that he faces with little resignation. He spends a large portion of his life knowing that Paul Lazzaro will be the ultimate cause of his death, but maintains the “so it goes” attitude that is so prevalent throughout the novel.
Also certainly an indication that Billy has little control over his life and the things that happen in it is the fact that he cannot control where he will jump in time. He makes it known early in the novel that he has the ability to jump around to different areas of time, but that it is not an ability that he is able to control. Whether he goes forward or backward in time, or to a pleasant or unpleasant moment, is not chosen by Billy it happens at random. Also, despite the fact that he can go back in time he cannot change anything that has already happened.