During World War Two, the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, lasted two days, and killed 135,000 people. Billy Pilgrim survives this tragedy, and lives to tell the tale. In the novel Slaughter-house Five, Kurt Vonnegut utilizes the worst firebombing in war history to illustrate how violence can take a dramatic toll on someone that is irreversible and life-changing, often to the point of mental illness. Vonnegut writes that it is “a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet tralfamadore.” The main character Billy Pilgrim, who shows signs of schizophrenia, is able to demonstrate how the fire bombing affected Billy’s state of mind. He pursues his illusions by even going on radio talk shows. “Billy insisted mildly …show more content…
Billy is at most satisfied of his marriage to Valencia, and he suffers from an immense amount of close people to him dying horrible, unseen deaths. “Billy didn’t want to marry ugly Valencia. He was on of the symptoms of his disease,” (Vonnegut, 107). Vonnegut describes Valencia as “ugly “ and as “big as a house,” proving the point that Billy is unhappy with their marriage, as well as his own life. Billy’s father dies from a hunting accident- “shot dead by a friends while they were out hunting deer, (Vonnegut, 32). His mother makes him feel cowardly, in the way that she gave him the most precious gift, the gift of life. He is ashamed because he flat out doesn’t want it, and doesn’t appreciate it. When she comes to visit Billy in the hospital, he keeps his head covered while she is there. “She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t really like life at all” (Vonnegut, 102). After the war, he was not seeing life as something he was interested in pursuing. Living through any type of violence can change a character for the worst. Billy Pilgrim has witnessed the firebombing of Dresden, which was worse than Hiroshima. Vonnegut utilizes this experience of Billy’s to prove how such an act of violence can alter a person’s