Slaughterhouse Five Archetypes Character Analysis

Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, describes an archetype to be a primitive mental image that comes from human ancestors. In literature, archetypes can be described as a typical character that represents universal patterns. In the novel Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim encounters many characters that can take on the role of an archetypes. During Billy Pilgrim’s journey as a prisoner to Dresden Germany, Billy finds himself in the middle of a prison camp hospital. One of Billy’s roommates that he encounters in the hospital is Paul Lazzaro. As time progresses, it is clear that Paul Lazzaro starts to play the role of the villain in the novel. The villain archetype is a character that represents sin and is typically opposed to the

When talking with Billy, Paul mentions once that a dog tried to bite him. Fueled with wrath, he decides to get revenge on the innocent animal. Paul decides to cut up a spring into little pieces so that they resembled razor blades. He then inserted the springs into a piece of steak and fed it to the dog. He then says, “ Blood started coming out of his mouth. He started crying, and he rolled on the ground, as though the knives were on the outside of him instead of on the inside of him… That’s me in there with all those knives” (139). Paul was already considered to be senseless for torturing an animal but what demonstrates his heartless personality the most is that he takes pride in his tortues. The gruesome imagery used by Paul can be extended to symbolize how war demoralizes humans. This is shown through many occasions in the novel as soldiers of war start objectifying women, stealing syrup from the factory and most terrifying, torturing other human beings, as shown through the firebombing of Dresden. Billy says, “There was a fire-storm out there. Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn” (178). Billy describes Dresden as, “looking like the moon” (179). The fact that other human beings has the audacity to destroy a whole city and kill