Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five
Life with nothing but death encompassing you is perhaps no life at all. Kurt Vonnegut was a POW in World War II and a survivor of the infamous Dresden bombings, carried out by the U.S.-Britain coalition in 1941. Vonnegut takes twenty-three years of his life, and many drafts his book to create a story that accurately conveys his experience of the infamous attack and the conflicts of World War II. In the process of coping with these unexplainable emotions, Vonnegut creates Slaughterhouse Five, a Post-modern story of unconventional chaotic order. Intentionally, Vonnegut creates a character that has also survived the Dresden bombing. Vonnegut mirrors Billy and shares many similarities, yet the most prominent is their inability to make rational sense of the events they experienced. Although the book is built around Billy's life and conflicts, it is without a doubt, a vehicle for Vonnegut to express his emotions through Billy. Through an examination of the story and characters, this essay will show Vonnegut's connection to Billy, Billy's ability to cope with the tumultuous series of events, and the failure of Vonnegut to make sense of his own world.
We now know that the bombing was intended to break the spirit of the Nazis and to deter further uprisings. Asking this same question brought about overwhelming emotions of guilt in the already feeble mind of Billy Pilgrim. Consequently, he creates the Tralfamadorians, whose philosophy on life provides Billy with a method of understanding and coping with the events of Dresden. One can only imagine, surfacing from the basement and witnessing the unreasonable death of so many innocent lives. "Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim" by, Susan-Vees Gulian is a psychiatric approach to understanding Billy's condition. Essentially, "successful therapy requires a balancing act"(Susan-Vees Gulani 8) one must not avoid the trauma completely, but relieve it slowly. He considers that if the end of the universe is already known by an advanced race of aliens who still are not able to stop it, Then, there is little he can do to prevent the death of the citizens of Dresden he believes, the moment of the bombing is structured that way, much like the end of the universe is also structured. PTSD is consistent with this symptom, patients will experience flash backs which can contain lucent details which fuel the same emotions of fear experienced in the past . Slaughterhouse Five is Vonnegut's "therapy", it's his way of retelling the story to alleviate stress. An understanding treatment methods of PTSD will help explain meaning and logic of why Vonnegut wrote this book. For example, Professor Rumpford (who shared a hospital room with Billy) asked, "You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground (Dresden)?" His answer, "it was alright"(Vonnegut 198). The Tralafamadorians explain to him the structure of "moments": essentially, it is a design of how the world began, how the world ends, and every detail in between. She makes an argument that Vonnegut's character is not "crazy", but suffers from Post Traumatic Stress disorder as a result of his trauma in World War II. PTSD is defined as "an inadequate way of coping with extreme stress", brought on by ones encounter with events that threatened death or serious injury to oneself or others. Billy, remarkabley, had nothing emotional to say about the 130,000 lives lost after the bombing.
Common topics in this essay:
Dresden Tralafamadorians,
Slaughterhouse Five,
PTSD Exposure,
Billy Pilgrim,
Five Consider,
Intentionally Vonnegut,
War II,
Professor Rumpford,
Nazi Germany,
Billy Billy's,
slaughterhouse five,
world war ii,
war ii,
billy pilgrim,
world war,
cognitive therapy,
survived dresden,
traumatic memories,
dresden bombings,
130000 lives,
vonnegut creates,
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Acceptance Essays
