Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five has an inscribed plaque saying “[that] God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” on the wall above his desk in his optometry office. Free will is the ability to act in a variety of ways on a situation in order to achieve the desired outcome of the individual. However, free will is not always present in day to day lives, resulting in individuals being forced to accept a predetermined fate as a result of their free will, and when to acknowledge to accept their fate as a result of their lack of free will. Characters of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five support this quote by accepting the inevitable …show more content…
Willy Loman for example, in Death of a Salesman demonstrates the inability to differentiate between what he has free will over and vice-versa. Throughout Death of a Salesman, Willy attempts to ensure both himself and his family a good job, at the cost of his life and his mental sanity. Unfortunately for Willy, this does not play out well, and instead of ensuring a stable economy for both himself and his family, Willy commits suicide, leaving doubt whether insurance money will be given to his family to create a new business. Willy, as the quote mentions, fails to accept the things he cannot change. As opposed to accepting aspects of his life Willy can't change, Willy attempts to change them. For example, at the end of the novel, when Biff yells at Willy that he's a failure and will never become a successful businessman, and orders Willy to accept this inevitable fate. However as opposed to following Biff's request, Willy perceives this as Biff attempting to fulfill Willy's dream, and instead commits suicide, hoping the …show more content…
Instead of living his life in chronological order, Billy relives random events of his life an endless number of times. However, each time an event is relived, the same outcome of the event occurs. Billy experiences the deaths of numerous friends, enemies, and neutral characters of his life. Each time a character dies, the saying "So it goes" follows. "So it goes" is a significant quote in the story, that reflects Billy's perception of death. Instead of treating death as a shocking and avoidable death, Billy recognizes through the teaching of Tralfamadorians that death itself is only a mere moment in a person's life, and instead of reflecting upon death itself, Billy should rather embrace the positive aspects of a person's life. For example, Billy dies at the hands of an assassin at a very old age, sent by Lazzaro,a misinformed thief who believes Billy was the cause of his friend's death during World War II at a young age. As Billy relives events through his life, including the Firebombing of Dresden, Billy does not fear for his life, knowing his death will only be as a result of Lazzaro. Furthermore, Billy is repeatedly abducted by the Tralfamadorians the evening after his daughter's wedding. Instead of seeking escape from the Tralfamadorians, Billy openly accepts his abduction. Billy recognizes that whatever events in his life that
...t or the future. With this information, Billy begins to learn about the future. “I, Billy Pilgrim will die, have died, and will always die on February thirteenth, 1976.” Billy is in fact right with this prediction. Realizing everything is planned out, Billy ends his search for meaning. He understands that he can do nothing to stop the senseless acts, which take place. Like the Tralfamadores, he must try to concentrate on the good moments and not on the bad ones. He could do nothing to stop them or to change them.
“Free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion” (Dictionary.com). The novel Slaughterhouse five portrays the idea of not having free will. The award winning author, Kurt Vonnegut, tells
Billy is also traumatized by the extreme loss in his life. Everywhere he looks, he experiences great loss. First his father dies in a hunting accident, then he gets in a plane crash and everyone aboard dies but him, and while he is in the hospital recuperating, his wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. There is so much death surrounding his life, that it is no wonder Billy has not tried to kill himself yet.
As explained on the planet of Tralfamadore, Billy can not make any choices. The Tralfamadorians tell him that he lacks free will, saying "Only on Earth is there talk of free will" (109). One of the Tralfamadorians also said they were "trapped in another blob of amber" (108), referring to the fact that neither he or Billy can change anything in life, and that everything has been, is, and will be the same. The Tralfamadorians also know how the end of the universe will come. They will be testing their rocket fuel, and it will fail and destroy the entire universe. When Billy hears this, he asks "isn't there some way you can prevent it?" (149). The Tralfamadorians tell him that they cannot change it, as the pilot has always done it, and always will do it. This is likely when Billy finally loses all belief in the idea of free will.
The main event that leads Billy to all his confusion is the time he spent in Dresden and witnessed the fire-bombings that constantly pop in his head along with pictures of all the innocent people Billy saw that fled to Dresden the "safe spot" from the war before the bombing. When Billy sees the faces of the innocent children it represents his fear of the situation. Billy can't acknowledge the fact that they were innocent and they were killed by Americans, Americans soldiers just like himself. The biggest issue Billy cannot come to grasp with is why the bombings took place. That question has no answer; it's just something that happened that Billy couldn't get over. During all Billy's travels back to Dresden he couldn't change what had really happened there although that was the closure he was looking for. Dresden purely represents Bill's past and fears of the truth about what happened.
Billy is used to showing that everything happens because of fate. As a prisoner, Billy has no control over his day to day life. While Billy is in Dresden, the city is bombed, because of luck, only Billy and a few others survive the bombing in a slaughterhouse. The people of Tralfamadore tell Billy that humans do not understand time because everything they do is in singular progression.
Billy Pilgrim develops his own Tralfamadorian belief to explain all the deaths of the innocent people during the bombing of Dresden. During his daughters wedding a long time after the war Billy is abducted by aliens and taken to their plant of Tralfamadore. While there Billy learns of the alien’s philosophy of time and death. Billy realizes that this philosophy echoes his own feelings. To the Tralfamadorians time is constant not a linear progression of events, they explain, “All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist” (Vonnegut 34). He turns to this belief to convince himself that these deaths were supposed to happen and there is nothing he or anyone could have done to stop them, what was going to occur had
Willy Loman’s obsession with success blurs out the true picture around him. Both of his sons will never be able to achieve he lays out for them. As a result, he has an inner denial with the reality that his sons will not amount to success. Willy Loman prevents both, his sons and himself to progress due to his chains towards success. In addition, the quote “Man is born free, and everywhere he is on chains.”- Jean- Jacques Rousseau describes Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Willy Loman is born a free man until he starts to become chained to the idea of success. Ben Loman, his brother, represents the idea of success as he struck luck in Alaska and created a fortune. That as a result causes Willy Loman to work relentlessly to achieve he same level of fortune. That starts the downward spiral of Willy Loman as a character. On the whole, Willy Loman’s hunt for success and refusal to progress are the chains in his
In the novel, Kurt Vonnegut proposes the question of whether free will exist or not. The Tralfamadorians live with the idea of the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension contains occurring and reoccurring events, considering that they believe all moments have already passed. According to the Tralfamadorians, there is only free will on Earth, considering humans only think of time as a linear progression. Billy regresses back to events as a child, and remembers when his father let him sink to the bottom of the pool where he prefers to be, but he was rescued. As a young adult, Billy was drafted into the war against his free will. Even as a soldier in the war, Billy is not taken solemnly by the other soldiers. Billy comes to the conclusion that even if he trained hard, and became a good soldier he’d still die like the other soldiers in Dresden who are much better than him. Billy’s real world on earth seems to be taken into bits and pieces into the Tralfamadorian world where Billy thinks is error free. Although the serenity prayer is directed towards God, Billy directs it towards the Tralfamadorians instead. This prayer is significant to this theme, because Billy is trying to live up to the standards of the Tralfamadorians, which is nearly impossible and
Would you rather make your own decisions in life or have them already decided for you? That is what it is like to let your belief in fate guide your life. The main character Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut chooses to let fate decide his life, instead of him deciding his own. All throughout the novel he lets this unknown force choose being able to see old friends, allowing him to blame his responsibilities and making him accept his death even when it is avoidable in that situation. An essential theme in Slaughterhouse Five is that it is important to take control of your life as opposed to letting fate lead the way.
Though he was able to escape war unharmed, Billy seems to be mentally unstable. In fact, his nightmares in the German boxcar at the prisoners of war (POW) camp indicate that he is experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): “And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the car. Nearly everybody, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep. Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away” (79). Billy’s PTSD is also previously hinted when he panics at the sound of sirens: “A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting World War III at any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon” (57). The most prominent symptom of PTSD, however, is reliving disturbing past experiences which is done to an even more extreme extent with Billy as Slaughterhouse-Five’s chronology itself correlates with this symptom. Billy’s “abduction” and conformity to Tralfamadorian beliefs seem to be his method of managing his insecurity and PTSD. He uses the Tralfamadorian motto “so it goes” as a coping mechanism each time he relives a tragic event. As Billy struggles with the conflict of PTSD, the work’s chronological order is altered, he starts to believe
Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman follows protagonist Willy Loman in his search to better his and his family’s lives. Throughout Willy Loman’s career, his mind starts to wear down, causing predicaments between his wife, two sons and close friends. Willy’s descent into insanity is slowly but surely is taking its toll on him, his job and his family. They cannot understand why the man they have trusted for support all these years is suddenly losing his mind. Along with his slope into insanity, Willy’s actions become more aggressive and odd as the play goes on. Despite Willy and Biff’s “family feud”, his two sons Happy and Biff truly worry about their father’s transformation, Happy saying: “He just wants you to make good, that’s all. I wanted to talk to you about dad for a long time, Biff. Something’s – happening to him. He – talks to himself” (Miller 21). Willy, as a father, cares about his children but he wishes they would do better. He believes Biff should have been an athlete. According to Harrington, “Even figuratively, Willy is haunted, and particularly in Biff’s failure to achieve success as a sports figure” (108). This haunting is part of what led to Willy’s slow plunge into madness. As Willy’s career in sales fails, he also fails, even failing his family. Heyen adds: “He didn’t have anything of real value to give to his family, or if he did, he didn’t know what it was” (48). His debilitating flashbacks and delusional hallucinations with Uncle Ben cement his horrifying realizations that he has let down his family. Willy Loman blames the economy for his downfall in his career. In one of his more extreme outbursts he exclaims, “There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country! Population is getting out of control. ...
Billy allows himself to be ruled by chance and when his time travels first begin, he does nothing to try and control when they happen or where they go. Billy knows that the Tralfamadorians are coming, but does nothing to stop it and goes with them freely. Billy saw a "flying saucer from Tralfamadore, navigation both space and time, therefore seeming to Billy Pilgrim to have come from nowhere all at once" (Vonnegut 95) These feelings stayed with Billy throughout the many odd occurrences of his life. When still a child in the eyes of society, Billy was sent off to fight World War II in Europe. There he be...
Willy Loman equates success as a human being with success in the business world. When Willy was a young man, he heard of a salesman who could "pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, make his living." (81) This salesman is Willy's inspiration; someday to be so respected and so well known that he can still provide for his family, even at an old age. Of course, Willy is no good at being a salesman because his heart isn't in it. The only time Willy puts his heart into anything is when he works with his hands, and his son, Biff, comes to realize this. "There's more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made." (138) Willy never comes to the realization that it is not being a salesman that he cares about, but rather being well known and, perhaps more importan...
Willy’s hubris makes him feel extremely proud of what he has, when in reality he has no satisfaction with anything in his life. Willy Loman’s sons did not reach his expectations, as a father, but he still continued to brag about Biff and Happy in front of Bernard. Willy Loman caused the reader to empathize with him because before his tragic death he did everything he could for his family. Empathy, Hubris, and Willy Loman’s tragic flow all lead him to his death that distends from the beginning. He is unable to face reality and realize that he’s not successful in life or at his job; he remains living in a world where he thinks he’s greater than everybody else because he’s a salesman.