Of Insanity In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

Chaos. Confusion. Repression. Throughout the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, the reader questions the recollection of Billy Pilgrim’s, the main character, life and the insanity that ensues. A man who calls himself “unstuck in time,” Billy Pilgrim brings up his traumatic experiences to his supernatural encounters with aliens. The author of the novel, Kurt Vonnegut, uses Billy as an exemplary character to explain what PTSD truly feels and looks like to others. While Billy has many moments of trauma, he also goes through the boring stages in his life that mean nothing to him other than a reminder of the war he experienced. In the beginning, the readers learn a little preface of what type of story occurs under the narrator Billy Pilgrim. As he describes

In the case of Billy Pilgrim, sexual pleasure was never a main priority, so taking Freud into account seems counterproductive when looking at Billy Pilgrim. Being in the formal operational stage, Billy should be able to think freely and have some meta-cognition about his ability to be unstuck in time. The lack of thought put into this shows how Billy views himself as something normal, and Billy believes that this is something normal that everyone experiences. Being in the post-conventional moral stage, Billy should follow his morals and make his own decisions based on their intrinsic value; however, Billy must lack the social skills and/or mental capacity to understand the idea of his morals. Throughout the story, Billy struggles to make decisions for himself, and when he does, it is because of some higher power he looks up to at the time. Essentially, when he was a child, he made decisions for his parents, when he was in the army, he did whatever he was told, and when he was abducted by aliens, he now follows every single word they told him. Being in the stage of integrity versus despair, he is trying to gain the psychosocial strength of wisdom; however, he seems to have gone crazy throughout his life and is starting to become angry at the world for not understanding him. He even gets

The most obvious psychological disorder he suffers from is PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder). His PTSD manifests itself in his consciousness by making him unstuck in time and relating every current situation by reliving a past traumatic event. Another psychological disorder he may suffer from is OCD (Obsessive compulsive disorder). When Billy was normal or reliving his past, he seems to have these repeated thoughts that make him act in crazy or unusual ways. This is really seen when Billy talks about this one picture he has in his optometry office which is a picture of the all-seeing eye. This all-seeing, omnipotent eye plagues Billy’s every thought by making him think that there is some higher power watching down on him at all times. The other psychological disorder Billy may suffer from is an antisocial personality disorder. This can be seen through the eyes of his kids or others as he has a lack of care for social interactions and he acts as if he does not care about what others