Billy Pilgrim's Healthy Confusion In Slaughterhouse-Five

Healthy Confusion

Healthy confusion is described as a feeling of pleasure and uneasiness. This is placed in many novels to keep a reader interested. One novel that provides a healthy confusion is Slaughterhouse - Five. This particular writing keeps the reader constantly enthused whilst also being slightly disturbed. Slaughterhouse - Five is about a man named Billy Pilgrim who claims he can time travel in his mind. Billy is captured in Germany during the second world war and the novel is the story of his journey all the way from the battle fields, to prisoner camps, and finally to the moment of freedom and survival of him and 99 other men as the town of Dresden, where they are last stationed, is blown to bits by the US Armed Forces with nearly no survivors. There are many cases of healthy confusion in this novel, such as when Billy Pilgrim travels in time, when he claims he was abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians, and when he escapes the ashed ruins of Dresden, Germany.

This simply confuses the reader because it takes the story off track and really makes them wonder what is really going on. Although, this simultaneously entertains the reader as they are wondering how, in many cases, the situation will resolve. Billy was then captured by Germans with a war partner, Roland Weary. The place he most often travels is his office of optometry, and this is where he goes. In his mind, he is now trying to stay awake while taking care of a patient, but in the readers’ mind, they are experiencing that healthy confusion. In one part of their mind, the reader is worried about what on earth could be happening on the other side with Billy and Weary. As Billy returns to the war, the reader should be relieved to hear he has not been harmed in any way by the German soldiers (Vonnegut 55-58). This is all an interpretation of how a healthy confusion could be