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How Does Vonnegut Use Ptsd In Slaughterhouse Five

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Kurt Vonnegut, the author Slaughterhouse Five, served in the United States Armed Forces during WWII and was captured during The Battle of the Bulge. Like Billy Pilgrim, he too was taken to Dresden as a prisoner of war. Vonnegut himself witnessed the destruction caused by the Dresden bombing and thus utilizes Billy Pilgrim to share his message on war and life. Billy’s experience with the Tralfamadore aliens and his episodes with time is only a fragment of his wild imagination. A common trait that war veterans unfortunately develop is Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.) It is a mental disorder that is developed due to a traumatic event that causes psychological trauma. The symptoms of PTSD include flashbacks, nightmares, and sever anxiety …show more content…

The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.” Already, Vonnegut prepares the reader for what extreme literature lies ahead. This glimpse of doubt stated by the author himself allows the story to be questioned in numerous ways. Vonnegut continues by stating that “One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn’t his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war.” Vonnegut in his opening paragraph discusses the horrors of war. Billy Pilgrim is associated in this environment and is shaped by it. Long after the war, Billy is involved in a plane crash. When the ski instructors search the wreckage, they can hear Billy saying “Schlachthof-funf,” or Slaughterhouse Five. This incident explains just how deeply the Dresden bombing and WWII in general have impacted Billy. Even after twenty-five years, Billy’s subconscious mind still remains attached to the life in war-torn Germany. The plane crash functions as a psychological trigger which then provides Billy with flashbacks of the …show more content…

A majority of Trout’s novels resemble the experiences of Billy Pilgrim, especially The Mysterious zoo novel and The Big Board. The plot in these novels directly relate to Billy’s experience with the Tralfamadores and Montana Wildhack. Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension by Kilgore Trout describe the basis of the fourth dimension that is later explained to Billy by the Tralfamadores. The similarity between Trout’s novels and Billy’s “unstuck in time” experience definitely mirror each other and are able to conclude that Billy did not physically travel to

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He brings his experience from the bombing of Dresden and recalls his encounters during the tragedy. Through the subject of Billy, he describes the aftermath of man’s destructive power through the bombing, “It looked like Dresden after it was fire-bombed-like the surface of the moon” (). From this quote, he paints a true sight of war where nothing is left but dust. He relates this event to emphasize the fact that war is a place of sadness and despair and from Billy’s viewpoint he observes the hurtfulness and all the destructiveness of the world when the city of Dresden gets

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Victorious conquerors have taken prisoners of war in conflicts across human history. The foreign prison camps of the World Wars were infamous for their cruelty. However, many people are not aware that millions of German prisoners of war were placed in hundreds of camps all across America. These prisoners had their own unique experiences that differed significantly from prisoners held in foreign POW camps. Kurt Vonnegut voices his own traumatizing prisoner of war experience through the main character of Slaughterhouse-Five.

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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).

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Kunze wrote; “Even after the war, Billy is unable to enact an acceptable example of American masculinity. His very name suggests his childlike state: “Billy” as the diminutive of “William,” while “Pilgrim” alludes to his disconnectedness from the world that leads him to travel between time and place. Believing himself to be an abductee, Billy frustrates his family, who perceives what today may be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as insanity. His daughter infantilizes him, sternly advising him, “If you’re going to act like a child, maybe we’ll just have to treat you like a child” (167)…” (Kunze 2012).

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25,000 people died when the Allied forces dropped incendiary devices over Dresden, Germany. After surviving this, Kurt Vonnegut was forced to clean up the charred bodies. Although the term did not specifically enter the english language until after the publishing of Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of what he witnessed there. Most people who suffer from PTSD use common coping techniques some are simply in denial, some stay in an emotional state of uneasiness, while others result to self-harm. Vonnegut uses the novel as a coping mechanism to find new ways to handle the disorder.

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Billy Pilgrim is the main character in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five. Billy is a scrawny, thin, and cowardly man that is thrown into the center of the war, more specifically the Battle of the Bulge, with little to no preparation. His character is unlike the ones you would normally see from people in the war. While being cowardly in the war, Billy is unafraid of many things afterward, the most prominent of these things being death. Billy doesn’t have much of a place to go, as he is fully accepting of fate.

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In the novel, Slaughterhouse Five, the author, Kurt Vonnegut uses a very unique way of making his readers both understand and feel Billy Pilgrim’s experiences. He does this by beginning the novel in a somewhat usual way (no novel is ever the same) and then shocks us by making Billy travel through his past and future and his present. Proof of this would be when Billy, on the night of his daughter Bernadette’s wedding, waits an hour to be abducted by the aliens. Then after asking the aliens “why him?” , he is transported to the moment when he and other war prisoners are in a freight car trying to sleep; although Billy sleeps standing because he screams and kicks in his sleep.

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Title: Slaughterhouse-Five Author: Kurt Vonnegut Thesis: Throughout KVs SF, he describes in matter of fact way the psychological impact/effects of the devastation of war and death upon Billy Pilgrim and how he handles it. Through the exploration of Billy Pilgrim’s detached and indifferent thoughts, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five illustrates the coping mechanisms of a World War II veteran with post traumatic stress disorder.

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Vonnegut wanted to “try to write my war story, whether it was interesting or not, and try to make something out of it.” Vonnegut wanted to make a significant point across about the horrors of the war stating several times he is currently writing an anti war novel(******). The main character Billy is broken from the war, which is clearly stated in (*******). Showing what Vonnegut went through through Billy described the Dresden bombing as the worst bombing and experience that any prisoner of war had

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Throughout history, many crucial events have touched numerous people in their own way, one of these events being World War II. This war impacted countless people who were affected by the horrendous things that Germany ensued. One person that was impacted by World War II is Kurt Vonnegut. From his experiences in the war, he has written multiple books, one of his books being about his involvement in the Dresden firebombing. Within the book, he uses different literary devices that reflect this historical event.

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Before becoming an author, Kurt Vonnegut enlisted in the U.S Army. During his time in service, German soldiers captured and kept him as a prisoner of war. While he was held in Dresden, Vonnegut saw first-hand the devastation the bombings and the war caused. Later in his life, he wrote one of his most famous novels, an anti-war book titled, Slaughterhouse Five, to illustrate the reality of war. But, Slaughterhouse Five lacks relevance to today based on the dissimilar mindset and war experience of Kurt Vonnegut in 1969.

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441 Words | 2 Pages

First, the setting of this story takes place in the past, present, and the future. The central point of this story; however, is in a city of Germany called Dresden. On the night of February 13, 1945, Allied bombers dropped incendiary bombs on Dresden, creating a firestorm that destroyed the city (Source Cox, F. Brett). Billy, the main character, describes his experience before, during, and after these bombings took place. From the wondrous moments of scouring Dresden, to being captured alive by

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1591 Words | 7 Pages

Throughout the story Kurt Vonnegut portray his anti-war sentiment through symbols, tragic events and characters. He conveys his belief the most with the main character Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim has post traumatic stress disorder, that is caused by the war. Therefore, showing negative consequences that come from war. Kurt Vonnegut also uses the bombing of dresden as to strengthen his anti-war novel.

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1700 Words | 7 Pages

But when Billy has a nervous breakdown in the veterans’ hospital, Valencia ignores it, asking if Billy wants “‘to talk about… silver pattern’” (111). Valencia was supposed to be taking care of Billy people, but ignored his discussions about war and his interest in Kilgore Trout. Valencia appeared indifferent, perhaps uncomfortable, talking about the war with her fiancee and decided against it, providing the opposite of comfortability to

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He was tried and shot” (Vonnegut 95). Ironically, Derby died for something trivial even though the fighting and the air raid were the most life-threatening situations he was in and would have been the most probable cause for his demise. Vonnegut’s decision to make Derby’s death so unreasonable furthers the expression of his belief that starting and fighting wars is

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