Compare And Contrast Vonnegut And Billy Pilgrim

With Kurt Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim being the same person besides some key factors like Billy Pilgrim getting abducted by aliens was that they have endured suffering and hardships which caused Vonnegut to write the book in the way that he did. While both, Vonnegut and Pilgrim were prisoners they survived the firebombing of Dresden in which only seven people including Kurt Vonnegut (aka Billy Pilgrim). “ Billy, with his memories of the future, knew that the city would be smashed to smithereens and then burned-in about thirty more days. He knew, too, that most of the people watching him would soon be dead. So it goes”(Vonnegut, 151). This event that Vonnegut and Pilgrim live through is seen as suffering and hardship because every single person in that area died except for seven. Vonnegut’s suffering and hardships are seen through Billy Pilgrim, some of the examples was that he “was a prisoner of war”, and

Gale). All of these unfortunate events that happened in Vonnegut’s life made his writing better. With these hardships in hand, leading to suffering, Vonnegut was able to shape his character, Billy Pilgrim into the character that he is in the book.

The author and the character experience depression and death on many first-hand accounts from family related issues to strangers’ deaths from the war. Which most likely caused depression in Vonnegut and Pilgrim. For example, when Billy Pilgrim was learning to swim his father dumped him into the deep end, “It was like an execution...He dimly sensed that somebody was rescuing him. Billy resented that”(Vonnegut, 44). Pilgrim was depressed because someone was saving him, this is clearly suicidal because he would rather die than be saved. When Billy