The “So It Goes” Philosophy of Slaughterhouse-Five “There are no characters in this story and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters” (Vonnegut 208-209). Slaughterhouse-Five is riddled with anti-war messages, and this quote explains a major one: a loss of meaning brought on by war. Vonnegut uses main character Billy Pilgrim to present and reflect on not the strategy, historical context, or glory of war but the pointlessness of war. Vonnegut experienced the horrors of World War II, specifically the bombing of Dresden, and effectively employs Billy to …show more content…
All the meaningless deaths he has witnessed contribute greatly to his loss of hope. Vonnegut makes this hopelessness clear by describing Billy’s devotion to the Serenity Prayer, which involves understanding and accepting the things he could not change. However, in Billy’s case, “among the things [he] could not change were the past, the present, and the future” (Vonnegut 77). Once he realizes he can change nothing about the deaths, his “range of affect is severely restricted, shown most prominently in the much repeated phrase 'So it goes,' his passive and emotionless reaction to tragedy and death” (Vees-Gulani 297). After the war, “Billy wanders thoughtlessly in life, eventually adopting a philosophy which justifies his purposelessness" (O'Sullivan 245). The hopelessness Billy feels leads him to fabricate the Tralfamadorian Philosophy, a viewpoint based on the belief that all things are predetermined. Granted “the inability of events, there is little reason to be overly concerned about death” (Telgen 265). Billy takes this message to heart and lives by it, and up to this point, it seems Vonnegut would be of similar …show more content…
It allows for an indifference that for Billy to overcome his misery is practically necessary. Throughout the novel, instances that parallel his past horrors cause Billy to return, or at least in his mind, to his life during the war. Therefore, “being ‘spastic in time’ thus is a metaphor for Billy's repeatedly reexperiencing the traumatic events he went through in the war” (Vees-Gulani 295). One incident in particular reveals what he believes to be the only cure for grief. While Billy is recovering in a hospital, he meets another former soldier Eliot Rosewater who deals with a similar crisis of finding life meaningless. Billy overhears Rosewater retort to a Psychiatrist, “I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people aren't going to want to go on living” (Vonnegut 129). Billy understands this pessimistic attitude, as he has just about exhausted every solution for his grief. Stemming from this idea, he “tries to develop new lies to live his life; but in his attempt, he creates the Tralfamadorians and their philosophy” (Brown
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.
In Slaughterhouse Five written by Kurt Vonnegut, war and life are two very important aspects. The war that is taking place during this time period in Slaughterhouse Five is World War II. Being in the war can affect many different people in different ways for the good, or for the bad. The war has an affect on two men named Billy Pilgrim, and Eliot Rosewater.
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.
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.
Vonneguts character Billy is showing frequent signs of mental illness throughout the book. Most of the chapters show his delusions in the repeated use of the extraterrestrials, the Tralfamadorians. Many scenes from his travels with the aliens can be seen in different parts of his life that Billy may not have realized he had seen and taken to insert into his own imaginary delusions. Vonnegut gives us many scenes to prove that the Tralfamadorians are just a construct of Billy’s broken mind through the use of Kilgore Trout's science fiction novels and other pieces of his life.
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.
Slaughterhouse Five and the Impact of War on the Individual War effects people in multiple ways, some worse than others. “Studies suggest that between twenty and thirty percent of returning veterans suffer, to varying degrees, from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a mental-health condition triggered by some type of terror, or a traumatic brain injury, which occurs when the brain is jolted so violently that it collides with the inside of the skull, causing psychological damage (Finkel 36).” Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the most common form of affect on an individual involved in warfare, whether it is the victim or the perpetrator. In Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim, the main character, is struggling with PTSD looking for a way to justify everything that occurred. This story reflects Kurt Vonnegut’s side effects from his war experience.
In conclusion, Slaughterhouse-Five is an anti-war novel because Vonnegut, the character, says it is in the first chapter, the terrible damage it left on Billy, and how it exposes war's horrifying practices. Knowing these elements, one might wonder why people still have wars. Although these anti-war novels cannot completely stop wars, they are important. The role that such novels play is one of raising awareness of war's actions and wrongdoings. Since the role of the novels is important, authors should continue to write them to keep people informed and educated about a problem of such a huge magnitude.
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
Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut is an anti war novel told by the narrator who is a minor character in the story. Slaughterhouse-Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has come "unstuck in time. "The bombing of Dresden is what destroyed Billy. Dresden’s destruction shows the destruction of people who fought in the war: the all the people who died. Some people, like the main character, Billy Pilgrim, are not able to function normally like before because of what they saw, because of their experience. Throughout the book, Billy starts hallucinating about his experiences with the Tralfamadorians: he wants to escape the world which was destroyed by war, a war that he does not and cannot understand. Vonnegut uses the technique of repetition.. The main repetition is “so it goes” which is told after anything related to death, he also uses other repetitions throughout the book. The major theme of the story is the Destructiveness of War. Vonnegut uses repetition to reinforce the theme of the story.
"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.
are at the same time. When Billy is given the jacket that is extremely small coat, the Englishman make fun of how that was a joke on him, it shows the lack of human dignity. The theme is also in the Tralfamadorian zoo where he is forced to be nude in front of everyone. Vonnegut wanted to convey that war strips men of all their dignity instead of giving them confidence. The last theme represented would be the occurrence of death. Death occurs throughout the entire novel plenty of times. Every time a character dies, Billy will say, “so it goes”. Billy was surrounded by death most of his life, starting from the death of his wife, Valencia, to the assassination of Martin Luther King, to the death of his own father. Billy even faces his own death
Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse Five, provides a powerful first-hand account describing the horrific events of WWII. Vonnegut recounted the events and wrote about himself through the novel's protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. He was pessimistic regarding the novel because he wrote, “It is so short and jumbled and jangled, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre” (Vonnegut 22). However, on the other spectrum critics considered it to be “one of the worlds greatest antiwar books”(Vonnegut Back cover). The controversial novel was published in 1969, which was over two decades after WWII.
Billy Pilgrim is also not like Pilgrim who is the main character in the “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, although they have same last name. His experience is very horrible in the war, there are just have violence and cruel, like the soldier who is in the “Three musketeers”. Imaginary, a man who just naive and have a great lucky, how can he keep his life in the war, just lucky? It is funny. Thus, though the whole novel “Slaughter-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, the main character, Billy Pilgrim is a contradictory person who has the naive and sane attitude together, in almost time he looks like a child, but his wise can “see” at his speaking and action, likes his speaking “So it goes.” (2) Not only is the indifference to the lives, or the hatred and