Time Travel In Billy Pilgrim's Slaughterhouse Five

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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. In Chapter 2 of Slaughterhouse Five, we learn an awful lot about Billy Pilgrim. We learn that he was born an only child, drafted for military service, taken prisoner by the Germans, returned home a successful optometrist and had a nervous breakdown. Billy Pilgrim relives the Dresden bombings and his captivity. His "unstuck in time" or time-traveling was just a mechanism to help him cope with post traumatic system disorder. His time-traveling always found him going back to Dresden. …show more content…

Additionally, we learn that while he was recuperating, his wife died of carbon-monoxide poisoning trying to get to the hospital to see him. The entire story is basically told in Chapter 2.It is also in this chapter that Billy,"time-travels for the 1st time The series of scenes and fragmentations of Billy 's life in chapter 2 alone unnerving. Had we leaned the corse of events in a normal chronological sequence, rather than tidbit here and there, the events would have been m,ore understandable. We learn of his wife 's death in chapter 2, yet we learn the full circumstances of her death in chapter …show more content…

Since Billy knows the plane is going to crash, you would think that he would warn the passengers, yet he does not do anything to stop it. He doesn 't even get off the airplane or tell his father-in-law to get off.. He allows the events to take place as though nothing was going to happen. The plane crashes and everyone dies, including his father-in-law. Th only other survivor is the co-pilot. This gives the impression that although Billy knew the plane was going to crash, he also knew that he was going to survive.Billy is taken to the hospital and operated on. He is unconscious for 2 days. It is not until Chapter 9, that we see his wife trying to get to the hospital to see him and has a terrible accident that ultimately kills her. The lack of conventional chronology affected the way I would interpret the crash and the wife dying. I would have preferred it in a normal chronological sequence. Had the order been chronological, I would have had a better understanding of Billy 's stay in the hospital and effect of his wife 's death on his mental

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