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Slaughterhouse Five Literary Analysis

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Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” analyzes the events Vonnegut himself experienced as a soldier in WWII. This story is told through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim, a skittish soldier who is often made fun of in his position as a Chaplain’s assistant. He is rarely involved and often finds himself unprepared in times of battle, yet as an inexperienced soldier, he finds himself straight in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge. However unlikely of a hero Billy appears to be, he possesses an uncontrollable ability where he randomly becomes ‘unstuck’ in time, and travels to various points within his own life, both past and future. This creates a story that has several settings and timeframes, some which involve Billy's war moments, others involve personal events like his marriage, days at work, or even his time spent on the alien planet of Tralfamadore. This manipulation of time and setting throughout ‘“Slaughterhouse-Five” allows Vonnegut to convey to the reader his viewpoints on global-conflicts. War is a conflict that has no sense or purpose, it is merely chaos and destruction with no resolution. …show more content…

Billy seems to be telling the story from many different timeframes and different points of view. This chaos of a structure in this story is a direct reflection of how the author truly feels about war. The order of events in this book makes the reader feel confused or wonder ‘What is GOING on?!”, the events seem to have little correlation, or mean nothing to the rest of the story. This is exactly what Vonnegut is trying to say about war, it doesn’t make sense! “Slaughterhouse-Five” reflects this to the fullest, boasting an extreme entropy nothing short of a

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"Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim: A Psychiatric Approach to Kurt Vonnegut 's Slaughterhouse-Five," by Susanne Vees-Gulani is a ten-page article about the after affect of war on Billy Pilgrim. It not only suggests the novel is about PTSD, but investigates Billy Pilgrim and Kurt Vonnegut individually. Susanne takes a close look at both the character and the author, mentally, and suggests Vonnegut writing Slaughterhouse-Five was a remedial, therapeutic, procedure. It is, again, expressed Billy Pilgrims vivid imagination of an altered reality comes as a consequences of war, (along with Vonnegut’s inability to recall his wartime encounters). This article falls around the idea of illustrating the actual detrimental affects and ultimately life ruining stress

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Billy’s use of Tralfamadore and the Tralfamadorians as a Coping Mechanism. The portrayal of war as heroic or glamorous leaves the true nature of war untold. In Slaughterhouse Five the novel follows Billy Pilgrim, who is a World War II veteran that experienced the bombing of Dresden. Forever traumatized, Billy suffers from flashbacks and false memories of aliens and their alien planet, Tralfamadore. Billy uses the planet and people of Tralfamadore to cope with the trauma he has experienced, their beliefs and sayings comfort Billy, which reveals Kurt Vonnegut’s theme, war destroys mental wellbeing, so veterans struggle with assimilating themselves back into society.

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Jadrien Edmiston 5B ELA 9/29/16 - 9/29/16 Slaughterhouse 5 The book I read, Slaughterhouse 5, is a book about a group of soldiers experiences during world war II, told through the eyes of the author who wasn’t exactly related to the main group, or the main soldier. The main soldier, Billy Pilgrim, was a private in world war II, who was convinced he could, for all intensive purposes, time travel. He was also certain he was kidnapped by aliens, and then got lucky with a famous actress in an alien zoo. However, most of the book takes place in dresden, all the way up to the firebombing of dresden.

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Nevertheless, there are many ways of coping with the trauma; however, some of them are not always beneficial, such as Billy’s methods of creating the memory thathe is abducted by Tralfamadorians. “Tralfamadore is a fantasy, a desperate attempt to rationalize chaos, but one must sympathize with Billy’s need to create Tralfamadore” (Merrill and Scholl 6). Billy needs to create Tralfamadore to mask the trauma, but as he invites other accommodations to his fantasy planet, such as Montana Wildhack, the masking of his trauma turns into coping of his pain. There is no past, present or future tense in Slaughterhouse-Five and therefore it is impossible to decipher the time in Billy’s life that he is speaking from. This reflects on the war trauma that haunts Billy until his death because it does not where you are in your life; trauma, pain and anguish will always

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Slaughterhouse-Five: An Escape from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder What does World War II and aliens have in common? Kurt Vonnegut tries to answer this peculiar question in his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969). For twenty-first century readers, it may seem obvious that serving in World War II had a significant impact on Billy Pilgrim’s mental health.

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In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, journeys through space and time reliving the tragedies of World War Two and of the postmodern world where structure and the self are lost. Billy’s typology of INFP allows him to find a fragment of meaning and purpose in a post-war world with help from the Tralfamadorians, alien creatures living billions of miles from Earth, who abduct Billy. Billy’s intuitive nature expands his understanding of purpose and assuages his notion of death. This proves to be crucial during the Dresden bombings, when Billy leaves the slaughterhouse to discover a city savaged by the United States air force leaving over one hundred thousand civilians dead. While his perceiver characteristic inhibits his soldiery success, and at times puts

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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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Kurt Vonnegut enlisted in the United States Army at the time of World War II. He was captured as a prisoner of war where he received much of his literary inspiration for Slaughterhouse-Five. The anti war theme throughout the book is touched on and also rebutted when Vonnegut states, “there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers” (Vonnegut 4). Vonnegut knows he is writing an anti war book but also is aware that wars cannot altogether be halted he is only trying to relay the horrors of war. The number of innocent victims killed by the bombing is alarming and Vonnegut keeping with his anti war theme made it a point to center his novel around the Dresden bombing which increased knowledge of what the historical city Dresden once was.

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With the end of a world war comes the beginning of rebuilding---picking up the pieces and returning, or at least trying to return, to normalcy. It is when the smoke finally clears that the true damage can be assessed. Yet, for authors like Erich Maria Remarque and Kurt Vonnegut, it is the damage that can’t be seen, the damage that lingers, the damage that clearly has a start but no end, that is the worst. In 1929, Remarque channeled those lingering remnants of his time as a German soldier in World War I through the physical and mental tumult of Paul Bäumer in All Quiet on the Western Front. Forty years later, Vonnegut expressed the lasting impression World War II had on him through Billy Pilgrim’s adventures across time in Slaughterhouse Five.

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“Welcome aboard Mr. Pilgrim”, said the loud speaker [Tralfamadorians] (Vonnegut 76). Slaughter house 5 is a satiric, real life situation novel written by Kurt Vonnegut, an Infantry Scout who served as a Chaplains Assistant, and Prisoner of war whom witnessed the great massacre of the bombing of Dresden survived to tell the tale of the slaughtering effects of the war. The irony of the novel initiates where Kurt Vonnegut includes the transformation of Billy Pilgrims life as a young lad before World War II in 1939-1945, fighting in the war and his afterlife. The fictitious protagonist ‘Billy’ experiences the most drastic and traumatizing conditions he ever did in his life, as a teenager. As a result of the changes and events occurring, Billy begins

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Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, explores the horrors of war and its damaging effects on both individuals and societies. The protagonist of the story, Billy Pilgrim, is thrown into a chaotic world and forced to face unfathomable hardships. Through his choices, he demonstrates values such as heroism, resilience and compassion that provide a deeper understanding of the themes in Slaughterhouse Five. His ultimate sacrifice shows how even in dire circumstances one can take charge of their life journey. By analyzing his sacrifice through his values, this essay elucidates how it illuminates an even deeper meaning for Slaughterhouse Five as a whole.

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Hospitality is something the ancient Greeks thought highly of. They treated all their guests with honor and respect. Greeks treated their guests like this because this stranger could be a god in disguise. They believed that if one were to follow the hospitality code, you shall be rewarded. If you were to disregard the hospitality code, you will be punished.

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Many authors regard Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five as a literary masterpiece, mostly due to its underlying themes and chaotic plotline. Vonnegut writes in a purposeful manner, which a fluent literary critic could tear apart word by word and reassemble to form a powerful message. As a result of this, many critics over the years have noticed small, barely-there tropes, which emphasize Vonnegut’s point that the true nature of history is extremely repetitive. In explaining the time traveling escapades of WWII veteran Billy Pilgrim and his life post-war, Vonnegut displays the recurring nature of historic events, and often uses a small phrase to do this-“So it goes”.

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The fact of the matter is that, that kind of imagery is necessary so that the reader can get some kind of sense, even if it is not first hand knowledge of some of the things that happen in war. The kind of things that the government and most people will not tell you about because it does not fit their agenda and it would make war seem less like the kind of adventure they like to portray it as. In the beginning of the book, Billy Pilgrim, the main character believed that to be truth, that war was

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But while some readers will see the elements of fantasy in this novel as just that, others will recognize them as representations of the internal dissociation and detachment from reality experienced by the narrative’s protagonist. In this chapter, I will examine the representation of trauma as dissociation in Slaughterhouse-Five. I will focus on Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five for a number of reasons. First, the representations of trauma found within this text are similar to those in many other World War II narratives in that emotional and cognitive dissociation are central to the depiction of war-related trauma. Second, the lag time from Vonnegut’s war experiences to his writing of Slaughterhouse-Five is indicative of the intense dissociation he suffered during war.

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