Introduction
The modern wars have taken their toll on the common soldiers more than the elite class officers in the shape of making them victims of their own weak mental state of mind. Billy Pilgrim, the central character of Slaughterhouse-Five is an effort of Vonnegut to highlight the plight of such people. Thomas L. Wymer calls him “the major example of victim” of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and war related anxiety (428).
Soldiery of Billy Pilgrim
The story of his soldiery goes thus; the novel Slaughterhouse Five presents him as a common American soldier recruited to fight in Europe against Germany in the WWII where he surrendered with the author in the battle of Bulge. From there, he was taken to Dresden, a peaceful city in Germany devastated by the allied bombing. Thousands of buildings turned to rubble and people into dead bodies within a day. Billy Pilgrim with other American POWs was the survivor. The German soldiers tasked them to dispose of the bodies. He narrates this story through flashbacks, remembering the past, and present as well as predicting the future and weaving fantasies which show that Billy Pilgrim has gone through a hell to become this type of optometrist who sleeps in his own chair and wakes up after a while to attend to his patients and predict his own death at the hands of his former colleague in Dresden. The structure of the story may be the reflection of his state of mind. It is because the author leaves the story abruptly to start with the story of Billy Pilgrim whose catchphrase “So it goes” starts various frames of the story and ends each frame with something else (12). In fact, he suffers from all signs of depression, schizophrenia, intrusive memory and flashbacks which are hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Depression of Billy Pilgrim
Whereas depression is concerned, Billy Pilgrim seems the worst victim. Although he does not clearly show the symptoms, some of his signs are clearly of the depression that he suffered during the Dresden bombing. He does not cry, or cry very little (Vonnegut 90). His dialogue with Rosewater at the asylum is perhaps pointing to the same thing that is a type of depression of the war and the anxiety that he inherits from Dresden. He says “Absolutely everybody gets a little something” and this little something is surely depression (52). Even Vonnegut himself is not articulate about the event if seen from the lens of his artistic creation of Billy Pilgrim. It seems that he has created Billy Pilgrim to show his own depression. Susanne Vees-Gulani has termed this type of depression as schizophrenic where a person is caught in the net of fantasy, coming and going back from reality and seeing hallucinations (176). In other words, Billy Pilgrim is suffering from an extreme type of depression which has transformed into schizophrenia as Susanne Vees-Gulani has concluded in her essay. It clearly means that this was a common depression but the gravity of the incident has transformed this simple depressive state of mind into schizophrenia that has taken its toll on Billy as well as his family.
Schizophrenia of Billy Pilgrim
Billy’s entire episodic thinking is an evidence of schizophrenia and hallucination. He starts his journey from the battle of Bulge with occasional trips to the far-off planet of Tralfamador, his visits to the hospital, his marriage, and even his concept of having sex with the top model at Tralfamadore are the possible symptoms of hallucinations. His description of Kilgore Trout with Rosewater at the hospital shows that he is suffering from schizophrenia. His capacity to “travel in time to the zoo on Tralfamadore” (53) and the details of the situation over Tralfamadore is a case in point where Billy Pilgrim shows himself at best in presenting the picture of his hallucinatory fantasy. This is the worst sort of schizophrenic state of mind that Billy Pilgrim is going through. He is also sometimes aware of it. He goes to sleep when he is to stay awakened. His honeymoon and sex with his wife and even his presence in the asylum are also indications of the worst sort of schizophrenia. The doctors, too, agree with him that he was touching lunacy (96) which means that he is definitely suffering from schizophrenia. In fact, this is a difference that Billy Pilgrims has forgotten to see between the real and the fantastic. It takes him to different locations and situations. The stories of flying saucers, his return to childhood, sexual encounters on Tralfamadore, and even his meeting with Kilgore Trout as discussed earlier are also signs of a schizoid mind.
Intrusive Memory of Billy Pilgrim
Another sign of PTSD is intrusive memory, forgetting everything and remembering things at the most unsuitable times. In fact, it is a sort of traumatic remembering of past events. It is called an abnormal confrontation with reality (Vees-Gulani 177). These signs of PTSD are abundant in Slaughterhouse-Five, specifically in Billy Pilgrims. In Billy Pilgrims, the most important sign comprises traumatic memories. They often come to him in the shape of going to the war, surrendering at the battle of Bulge, then going through a long train journey, his marriage and birth, loving memories of his father and mother, and of his son. This intrusive memory is also the sign of escape from the traumatic and terrible memory, which lies only in losing the sense of time and going to something that is beyond human reach such as Tralfamadore. It is a hallucination on the one side and an escape to forget the real Dresden devastation on the other side. In some sense, “So it goes” (12) is an attempt to make this escape easy as it points to something that remembering past events depends on a stable state of mind, or it could be that he has heard it from some other people. Therefore, this is also the worst sign of PTSD that Billy Pilgrim is the victim of. It is related to flashbacks, too.
Memory and Forgetting in Billy Pilgrim
Flashback means to remember something, and forget and remember another with a new flashback. A person suffering from PTSD often experiences flashbacks and remembers something that comes to his mind immediately and then jumps to another thing. This shift from one memory to another memory is the hallmark of the thinking of Billy Pilgrims that starts from the very first chapter when Billy Pilgrims appears in the novel. The novel shows clearly that it is not a linear narrative but a narrative in chunks due to flashbacks of Billy. He thinks about his childhood, reaches Tralfamadore, and immediately comes down on the train from the battle of Bulge to Germany (56). Here he is talking to Paul Lazarro and there he is appearing with Valencia, his wife. This back-and-forth movement in time not only makes times irrelevant but also makes space a fuzzy thing. This also is due to the flashbacks and working of memory in timeless space. This is the sign of PTSD of which Billy Pilgrims is a victim, but it is clear that this is not the reality that he is going through. It is due to the reality of Dresden that he could not face or describe.
Conclusion
In concluding the argument, it could be stated that Billy Pilgrim is not living in reality, but in fantasy, because he is the victim of the worst form of PTSD, a modern psychological issue. He is facing chronic depression that takes its toll on his health. He is suffering from schizophrenia which has shaken his life and the life of those living around him. He visits the Tralfamadorians and moves back and forth in the world of his own imagination merely because he cannot cope with this sort of hallucination. He is also going through an intrusive sort of memory where it is difficult for Billy Pilgrims to concentrate on one thing at a time. Even he is a victim of flashback and memory attacks which makes him prone to think one thing and then jump to the other one and think about it. The entire novel shows his flashback thinking going on from here to there until it ends on the bird’s twitter of pee-tee-weet where it seems that his narrative has merged with the senseless narrative of the bird.
Works Cited
- Vees-Gulani, Susanne. “Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim: A Psychiatric Approach to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.” Critique. vol. no, 2(2003): pp.175-184.
- Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. St. Albans: Panther Books Ltd, 1975.
- Wymer, Thomas L. “The Swiftian Satire of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.” Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Roger Matuz and Cathy Falk, vol. 60, Gale, 1990. Contemporary Literary Criticism Online, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GLS&sw=w&u=txshracd2512&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CVGOHNC203384081&it=r. Accessed 27 Nov. 2017. Originally published in ., in Voices for the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers, edited by Thomas D. Clareson, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976, pp. 238-262.
Relevant Questions about Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five
- How does Billy Pilgrim’s character in Slaughterhouse-Five exemplify the experiences and symptoms commonly associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?
- What specific events and traumas in Billy Pilgrim’s life contribute to the development and exacerbation of his post-traumatic stress disorder throughout the novel?
- In Slaughterhouse-Five, how does Kurt Vonnegut use Billy Pilgrim’s struggle with PTSD to comment on the broader impact of war on individuals and society?