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What Are Some Examples Of Ptd In Slaughterhouse Five

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Many individuals suffer from PTSD, a disorder caused by stressful experiences in the past. It is an acronym for post-traumatic stress disorder. Many people are influenced by this disorder, causing them to suffer and be unable to live average lives. There are a few characters in the novel "Slaughterhouse Five" that show how the suffering of PTSD has affected their daily lives, provoking them to perform daily tasks. Billy Pilgrim is a character that suffers from many mental illnesses, one being PTSD. He primarily gets this from being in the War. It was said “A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting the Third World War at any time.” (page 57) This quote is an example of the PTSD that the war gave Billy since his first thought when hearing the bell was that the next world war was starting. PTSD can be triggered by anything, in this case, it was the bell. Every time Billy heard that sound in the past it had an association with the war, so when he heard it again, war was his first instinct. Another example is when Billy witnesses a quartet sing and “Billy was emotionally racked again. The experience was definitely associated with those four men and not what they sang” (pages 175-176). …show more content…

Some people tend to overreact or underreact. Others may have a random burst of emotions. In this scene, Billy is going into a wagon that is being pulled by horses but before Billy gets in he “...saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn't cried about anything else in the war.” (page 197) One of the reasons why Billy is crying is because this was his breaking point. Seeing the horses was probably not as traumatic as seeing your friends and soldiers die or suffer, but since he had kept his emotions and feelings in for such a long time this was his last straw. This is one example of how people with PTSD may not be emotionally stable and may experience random emotional

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616 Words | 3 Pages

In chapter one, the narrator comes out and says how it is basically an anti-war book. While following Billy through his time travels, the readers are able to see the war from his point of view. Billy cannot glorify the war in any way. He is in a way thrust into it at first and then he became a prisoner of war.

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1323 Words | 6 Pages

In the song lyrics such as “They were the best pals that I ever had I never thought that I'd want them so bad Gee but I'd give the world to see That old gang of mine” suggest that Billy should be missing and longing for the friendship that he had with his comrades but instead Billy doesn't like to mention the war because he didn't have a “gang” to miss. Billy didn't have a “gang” when the war was going on and he doesn't have a gang in the present because he's not close to his friends or his family members. Vonnegut writes his novel in this manner in order to depict the imbalance of war and comradery as part of his anti-war

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591 Words | 3 Pages

In order to truly understand the significance of Billy Pilgrim's delusion to Slaughterhouse-Five, one must examine it's cause, the delusion itself, and it's justifiability due to the nature of trauma on the human mind. To begin with, war is hell. 1 out of 20 World War II veterans suffered from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (sfgate.com). The bombing of Dresden was so traumatic to Billy that it made him deranged.

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Vonnegut in his opening paragraph discusses the horrors of war. Billy Pilgrim is associated in this environment and is shaped by it. Long after the war, Billy is involved in a plane crash. When the ski instructors search the wreckage, they can hear Billy saying “Schlachthof-funf,” or Slaughterhouse Five. This incident explains just how deeply the Dresden bombing and WWII in general have impacted Billy.

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851 Words | 4 Pages

In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim the hero, encounters war directly. Vonnegut utilizes his individual encounters from war in Dresden to compose Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut's association with Billy and alternate characters sanctions him to examine human responses to death and traumatic occasions. Vonnegut utilizes his characters, specifically Billy Pilgrim, to depict his assurances. An anti war feeling is depicted from the fundamental characters.

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635 Words | 3 Pages

PTSD is a post traumatic stress disorder most veterans get after coming home from war. In the book Slaughterhouse Five it shows how a war veteran has PTSD, shows the reality of war, and how to find a purpose in life. Slaughterhouse Five is a banned book but a reader may believe it should be open to young adults such as teens. They can understand what people go through and they can relate because they all probably have felt sad or depressed at a point in time.

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843 Words | 4 Pages

everybody has their opinion on war and if it's good or bad in society. billy pilgrim's opinion on war it not about if it's good or bad but if it's necessary in human life. in the book slaughterhouse 5 billy's psychological and moral traits are shaped by his experience with war and the tralfamadorians Billy pilgrim is effected by his cultural surrounding that shape his psychological traits. when billy meets the tralfamadorians he learns many thing from their society and culture that changes his beliefs of life. one of the many things he learned was time is divided in particular moments not one constant phenomenon.

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785 Words | 4 Pages

Another way holden shows PTSD is when he is the manager of the fencing team. “I was the goddam manager for the fencing team. Very big deal. We'd gone in to New York that morning for this fencing meet with McBurney School. Only, we didn't have the meet.

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PTSD is short for post-traumatic stress disorder. From start to finish of Slaughterhouse Five there are many showings that Billy has PTSD. In this book Billy is “unstuck” in time, but I think that is just how the author portrays his PTSD. In the very beginning of the book Kurt Vonnegut tells us “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

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He went crazy and did things he normally wouldn’t do. He took out all his anger and frustration on a baby animal. This demonstrates how he was unable to cope, how he lost himself and his mind to the death of war. The platoon didn’t feel bad or intervene for the water buffalo either. This shows how the end of the war changed all of them.

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906 Words | 4 Pages

It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning.” (61) That quote describes how painful it was for the men to listen to innocent creature slowly die. The horses have done no bad deed, they just happened to be standing where the shots were fired and were hit instead of the enemy. This shows how war creates a loss of innocence, in multiple aspects. While the men were listening to the horses cry for hours, waiting to be put out of their misery, the men become depressed.

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1366 Words | 6 Pages

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental disease that develops in those who have experienced a scary or dangerous event and it affects an estimated 6.8% of Americans in their lifetime (National Institute of Mental Health, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”). Post-traumatic stress disorder is also abbreviated as “PTSD.” Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, follows Billy Pilgrim, a World War II soldier, on his adventures through both the war and after the war. Pilgrim believes that he is visited by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore and abducted by them. He also thinks that he is able to “time travel” to different events throughout his own life.

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1162 Words | 5 Pages

“PTSD symptoms include recurring memories of and nightmares about combat, sleep difficulties, overreactions to sudden noises or other startling events, and a numbing of emotions” (Bower). Billy Pilgrim shows all of these symptoms multiple times within the novel. These are just a few examples of how Pilgrim can be proved to have PTSD. There have been a number of times that Billy has shown these same symptoms of PTSD. A symptom of Post-traumatic stress disorder is having recurring memories.

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1648 Words | 7 Pages

PTSD has been associated with long-term exposure to warfare or other threats to a person’s life , to which Billy have had encounters with throughout the duration of the war. Evidence of Billy's PTSD include the fact that he ascribed the faces of the guards in Dresden, in reaction to the bombing, as “a silent film of a barbershop quartet” (pg. 178), likely due to the indescribable nature of the violence. Subsequently in Billy’s life, as he travels with his father-in-law to Montreal via a chartered plane, the singing of a barbershop quartet named ‘The Febs’ triggers a series of memories of the war for Billy, including the hanging of a “Pole” (in reference to a Polish person) “in public, three days after (he) got to Dresden” (pg.

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441 Words | 2 Pages

Furthermore, World War II has not only damaged him physically, but also mentally and has gone straight to his head. For the first time in the novel, Billy Pilgrim remembers a past event rather than time-travelling to it. Time-travel, it seems, would have made the event too immediate, too painful (Harris, Charles

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