Theme Of Death In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

No matter what story you read or even what you may encounter in your real life setting leaves a lasting impression on the character as well as the theme. In Kurt Vonnegut’s “SlaughterHouse-Five'' the character Billy Pilgrim has to deal with jumping through time and experiencing many different settings in an attempt to cope with his PTSD as well as trying to learn about life and death along the way. Throughout Billy’s time jumping, he has been in many settings which have affected his character development and his view on the theme of the inevitability of death. However his experiences in the POW camps and Tralfamadore have changed Billy’s outlook on life and they have made him totally desensitized from reality, making him seem crazy.
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It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber” (Vonnegut 86). This perspective from the Tralfamadorians allows him to accept the inevitability of death and to view it as something natural rather than something to be feared. This knowledge that the setting has encaged in him has helped Billy process and come to terms with his own traumatic experiences and see that death is only a moment in eternity. This realization has helped his character cope with the war in his eyes, however in the mind of everyone else he is crazy. Ultimately this affects his relationships with his daughter and wife in the future. The tralfamadorians also expose Billy to their idea of the “eternity of the universe” in which all moments in time happen simultaneously, this helped shape Billy’s idea that death is only an illusion. Billy used these lessons taught by him in Tralfamadore during his knowingly death. When Billy shifts through time he is at a baseball field in the future giving his death speech. Billy inherits the lessons he received, yelling at the crowd, trying to teach them

The harsh conditions of the camp, including starvation, cold, and the constant fear of death, lead Billy to question the nature of life and death. The traumatic experiences he endures in the camps cause Billy to develop severe mental and emotional issues, including PTSD and a disconnection from reality. The setting of the POW camp serves as a powerful backdrop for Billy’s growing realization of the fragility of life and the inhumanity of war. As a result, he becomes detached from reality, and he begins to believe that he has become “Unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 23). Going to the future and the past Billy sees many deaths along the way reinforcing the idea that death is inevitable, as also Billy is able to witness his own death in the, reinforcing the idea of “So it goes” (Vonnegut 41). Because of these camps Billy’s character changes from a normal man fighting in a war to a man detached from reality, needing to develop coping mechanisms for his mental state and PTSD, by becoming unstuck in time and having a fatalistic attitude towards the world, accepting the inevitability of death as a fundamental aspect of the human experience. This new characterization of Billy caused by this setting has led Billy to become insane to the outside world, fully affecting his character relationships with his kids and wife. Vonnegut’s dialogue of Billy and his daughter speaking about his