The concept of escape plays a large role in literature. Many authors explore mental, physical, or figurative escape throughout their work. In Slaughterhouse 5, a novel written by Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut explores mental and physical escape through his main character Billy Pilgrim. Billy is a soldier at war, but only because he feels entitled to do so. His father was a soldier and grandfather was too, so Billy feels obligated to uphold the tradition, even though he has no desire to be at war. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut describes Billy as weak, constantly trying to escape his circumstances, both literally and figuratively. In contrast, Achak Deng, the main character of Dave Eggers’ novel, What is the What, is a Lost Boy from Sudan, who walked for days, weeks and months, hoping to flee from South Sudan to Ethiopia. Throughout his journey, Achak utilizes outside sources to escape the hard circumstances he faces on his journey to Ethiopia. Slaughterhouse 5 and What is the What are similar in …show more content…
their narrative structure as they are both written as nonlinear novels. This structure highlights the concept of escape for each of the main character’s pasts and present. In both Slaughterhouse 5 and What is the What, Vonnegut and Eggers explore the concept of escape in various ways. Both authors highlight a lack of breath or a loss of consciousness, therefore alluding to a mental or physical escape. Billy Pilgrim continuously escapes the hardships in his life by revealing mental and physical weakness.
When Billy was a child, he was never taught how to swim. One day his dad took him to the pool to “teach” him. Billy’s father threw Billy into the pool, teaching him how “to swim by a method of sink-or-swim” (Vonnegut 55). Right before Billy fell unconscious, he sensed someone coming to rescue him, he “resented that” (Vonnegut 55). By resenting the rescue from a lifeguard, Vonnegut reveals Billy’s preference to escape rather than face his problems, therefore highlighting his weakness from a young age and foreshadowing his fatigue as a soldier during war. Although escape isn't a huge factor is Billy’s decision making throughout Slaughterhouse 5, it is always in the back of his mind as the “easy way out”. Additionally, escape develops an internal conflict between Billy and himself as he struggles to make decisions about facing his hardships or physically escaping his
situation. Eggers emphasizes mental and physical escape to highlight the hardship Achak faces and the simplicity of relieving stress. Achak Deng walked for many days before he found a group of Lost Boys to walk with. One night he found a fire and started walking towards it, until he got close enough and realized it was a fire surrounded by murahaleen, who heard him rustling through the tall grass and began yelling in Achak. He was too close to the fire to turn around without being seen so he “stayed on [his] stomach and held [his] breath and buried [his] face in the soil” (Eggers 97). In this situation, Achak is able to physically escape because of his lack of breath. This instance, early in Achak’s journey that would last many months and years, creates tension between Achak and the audience. Additionally, this event highlights the historical conflict in South Sudan and alludes to the amount of people who want to flee to Ethiopia and other countries in Northern Sudan. After many months of walking with other Lost Boys, Achak and the rest of his group were ambushed during the night. One of the leaders saw the headlights of a truck and ordered everyone to “run!” so Achak did (Eggers 199). Achak ran until morning when he got his leg stuck in an electric fence and was found by a man who took him to his house to help fix his leg. Achak instantly saw the man’s bike, so once his leg was fixed up, the man offered to let him ride it, “... huffing and heaving and laughing. [Achak] pushed the pedals” allowing him to mentally escape running from the murahaleen, since he is riding a bike for the first time (Eggers 206). Riding a bike is a simple thing that allowed Achak to mentally escape such a complex and terrible situation. Both authors illustrate the concept of mental and physical escape by highlighting their main character’s weaknesses. Both novels are nonlinear therefore they both explore the concepts of escape based solely on the nature of their narrative structures. However, both Vonnegut and Eggers assert the idea of escape by illustrating specific actions performed by the main characters of their respective novels. Both Billy Pilgrim and Achak Deng escape either mentally or physically by losing consciousness or changing their breathing patterns. Additionally, the concept of escape alludes to either conflict or tension in both novels. Through physical escape, Kurt Vonnegut develops an internal conflict for Billy Pilgrim and foreshadows his weakness at wartime. For instance, when Billy chooses to sink rather than trying to swim, Vonnegut alludes to Billy’s physical escape by highlighting his lack of breath, leading to his loss of consciousness (Vonnegut 55). By emphasizing a moment of his childhood, Vonnegut foreshadows Billy’s weakness at wartime. Additionally, his weakness develops internal conflict as Billy begins wishing for death within weeks of entering the war (Vonnegut 41). Comparatively, Eggers utilizes the concept of escape to represent the intensity of Achak Deng’s situation and indirectly emphasizes the simplicity of releasing burdens, particularly after running from the truck’s headlights and finding a man who allows him to ride a bike for the first time (Eggers 199, 206). The simplicity of a single task that brought Achak, a Lost Boy from Sudan who has walked for weeks, so much joy highlights his mental escape from these frightening circumstances. Although both authors explore the concept of escape through either mental or physical escape, they do so in vastly different ways, causing their effectiveness to vary as well. Both Vonnegut and Eggers explore the concept of escape through breathing changes or loss of consciousness for their respective main characters. What is the What is slightly more effective than Slaughterhouse 5 because it alludes to escape and Eggers finds ways to illustrate escape that are relevant to the main plot line, rather than flashing back in time to highlight a time Billy has escaped in his past. Correspondingly, Eggers flashed forward to his apartment robbery where the audience felt even more sympathy for Achak, as he was being attacked by two strangers, years after he had arrived in America, after finally fleeing Sudan. While What is the What is more effective, it is evident that Slaughterhouse 5 is also very effective in illustrating escape, as many people are able to feel more empathy towards Billy than Achak.
Slaughterhouse-Five is a story of Billy Pilgrim 's capture by the Nazi Germans during the last years of World War II. Throughout the narrative, excerpts of Billy’s life are portrayed from his pre-war self to his post-war insanity. Billy is able to move both forward and backwards through his life in a random cycle of events. Living the dull life of a 1950s optometrist in Ilium, New York, he is the lover of a provocative woman on the planet Tralfamadore, and simultaneously an American prisoner of war in Nazi Germany. While I agree with Christopher Lehmann-Haupt that Slaughterhouse-Five effectively combines fact and fiction, I argue that the book is more centralized around coping.
The human mind is a part of the body which current science knows little about. Trigger mechanisms, and other factors within the brain are relatively unknown to current humanity. Therefore, in order to produce a diagnostic on why Billy Pilgrim became “unstuck” in time, the reader of Slaughterhouse Five must come to terms with situations concerning the experiences described in the novel. Billy Pilgrim starts out, chronologically, as a fairly basic infantryman in the United States Army during the last Nazi offensive of the war, also known as the Battle of the Bulge (Vonnegut, 32). That battle resulted in fierce fighting, and also in massacres (such as the one that occurred near Malmedy, France), and the reader may be sure that there were men who became mentally unsound due to the effects of what they experienced there. Pilgrim is taken in by a group of soldiers who have found themselves behind the Nazi lines and are required to travel, by foot, back to friendly lines (Vonnegut, 32).
“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.
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.
This independent reading assignment is dedicated to Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut experienced many hardships during and as a result of his time in the military, including World War II, which he portrays through the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim. Slaughterhouse-Five, however, not only introduces these military experiences and the internal conflicts that follow, but also alters the chronological sequence in which they occur. Billy is an optometry student that gets drafted into the military and sent to Luxembourg to fight in the Battle of Bulge against Germany. Though he remains unscathed, he is now mentally unstable and becomes “unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 30). This means that he is able to perceive
"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.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five the main character Billy Pilgrim experiences few emotions during his time in World War II. His responses to people and events lack intensity or passion. Throughout the novel Billy describes his time travel to different moments in his life, including his experience with the creatures of Tralfamadore and the bombing of Dresden. He wishes to die during most of the novel and is unable to connect with almost anyone on Earth. The fictional planet Tralfamadore appears to be Billy’s only way of escaping the horrors of war, and acts as coping mechanism. Billy seems to be a soldier with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as he struggles to express feelings and live in his reality. At the beginning of the novel the narrator proposes his reason for writing the book is to explain what happened in the Dresden fire bombing, yet he focuses on Billy’s psyche more than the bombing itself. PTSD prevents Billy from living a healthy life, which shows readers that the war does not stop after the fighting is over and the aftermath is ongoing. Billy Pilgrim’s story portrays the bombing and war in a negative light to readers, as Vonnegut shows the damaging effects of war on an individual, such as misperception of time, disconnect from peers, and inability to feel strong emotions, to overall create a stronger message.
Throughout, SlaughterHouse-Five, Billy, is randomly time traveling. Whenever, Billy want to not deal with reality, he has an out-of-body experience. In his time-traveling, Billy knows the outcome of many events. He can change the outcome, yet he chooses not to.
The book, Slaughter House-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, is based on the main character named Billy Pilgrim who is a little "lost" in the head. Billy is always traveling to different parts of his life and rarely in the present state. Throughout the book Billy mainly travels back and forth to three big times in his life. In each different time period of Billy's life he is in a different place; his present state is in a town called Illium and his "travels" are to Dresden and Tralfamadore. When Billy is in Illium he is suppose to have a "normal" life; he is married, has two children, and works as an optometrist. Then Billy travels back to Dresden where he was stationed in the last years of WWII and witnessed the horrible bombing. When Billy travels to Tralfamadore he is in an "imaginary" state, everything that happens to him is more like a dream. Through Billy's travels in time he shows that he is striving to find meaning in the events that happened in his life that he is afraid to acknowledge. As Billy says himself, "All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist," (1) this just proves even further that fact that Billy cannot ever forget any event in his life.
Themes of Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt vonnegut and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller In the books, Slaughter House 5 by Kurt Vonnegut and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller there are many themes that at first don’t appear to be related but once given a closer look have striking similarities. Both books are about one mans experience through World War II, one being a fighter pilot and another being a soldier. Each man is known as an anti-war hero. They do not agree with the war and do not find it appropriate to fight for it.
In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, he talks about World War II and the bombing of Dresden. He writes about this historical event through the character Billy Pilgrim, Billy is drafted into the army at age twenty-one during World War II. He is captured and sent to Luxembourg and then later Dresden as a prisoner. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut constantly ridiculous Billy. He describes Billy as a character that has no individualism and no choice in anything that happens in his life.
“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.
As well as, explaining how trauma changes an individual’s circumstances in society. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is about a man named Billy Pilgrim who becomes “unstuck in time” meaning he travels back and forth between key moments in his life. Billy Pilgrim was a prisoner of war captured behind German lines during The Battle of the Bulge. They may believe the trauma survivor no longer shows or even posses the qualities that they loved and admired (A Supplement Take-Home Module).”
Kurt Vonnegut has built a universe for Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five where Billy’s cruel, unforgiving reality is contrasted by a philosophical utopia where he has learned to operate without the pains of being human. Within this self-described ‘telegraphic’ and ‘schizophrenic’ novel, Vonnegut manages to swing the reader halfway across the galaxy to a planet inhabited by a plunger-like race called the Tralfamadorians, take them into the harrowing depths of a POW camp, and show you a man who is increasingly coming undone at the seams after having lived with the psychological terrors of the Dresden bombing. He accomplishes all of this while only leaving the reader with a slight case of jet lag and hopefully a new perspective on the American lifestyle. It does not change the way you think. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations.
Both Kurt Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim have to deal with their post-war traumas. Slaughterhouse-Five is a primary source of how science fiction can be used in order to escape the outside world, and ultimately propel past these horrific obstacles. Just as Kurt Vonnegut found a way to deal with his post traumatic stress disorder, so too do many war veterans, as they do what they must to free themselves from their gruesome memories.