War’s Devastating Impact: Billy Pilgrim's PTSD Journey

After the war, Billy Pilgrim is suffering from PTSD and battling with depression and mental illness. Vonnegut spreads his anti-war message through the internal conflict that Billy goes through. Billy Pilgrim never fully recovers from the horrifying scenes he had seen at war and right after the war he fell into depression. Anything loud and abrupt startled Billy, “a siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting world war three at any time” (57). This indicates that the war will always have a negative impact on Billy and all the other soldiers. He lived in fear all the time and never felt safe around anyone or anything. The constant worry about being drafted to another war remains with him all the time. Also, Billy always felt
Billy is so pessimistic about life that after each character's death Billy says, “so it goes” (20). This shows that death, to Billy, is hollow and inevitable. He is used to the emotional suffering so he is just casually dealing with it, which ties it back to the anti-war theme. The use of the satirical motif represents how war has taken something such as death, which is so drastic and made it so meaningless. In other words, he is just going through the motions without thinking too much because he is physically and mentally drained. Vonnegut shows that war does not only affect the soldier but also his family. After the war, Billy commits himself to the mental ward and he feels embarrassed when his mother visits him, “he always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward… she made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all” (102). This quote displays that Billy is battling mental illness and dealing with devastation. Parents work hard to raise their kids up and teach them to be grateful and to love