Ptsd & Slaughter House Five

Amy Smith
Dr. Lee
English 101
December 1, 2011 Post-traumatic stress disorder, also called PTSD for short, is an anxiety disorder. Anyone can get post-traumatic stress disorder, especially war veterans or a survivor of a serious or tragic event. In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, one of the main characters is Billy Pilgrim. He fought in World War II for the United States. After the war Billy is not the same as he was before. Although Billy Pilgrim is not officially diagnosed with PTSD, he shows many signs and symptoms of the disorder. Post-traumatic stress disorder is very serious and many people can develop this disorder. People who have served in a war, a survivor of a natural disaster, or a person in an abusive relationship are all equally at risk. War Veterans especially have seen such traumatic things. Not only are they killing other people but they see those people lifeless and injured. They lose friends every day and are witnesses to those who are lost. Many people feel frightened or stressed after the experience has happened. Some people experience symptoms for a shorter period of time such as a few weeks. This is known as acute stress disorder (ASD). Some serious cases may cause a person to commit suicide. Major symptoms of PTSD are the re-experiencing symptoms. These include flashbacks, bad dreams, and frightening thoughts. Billy Pilgrim experiences all of these. He experiences time travel, in which he ends up in all different time periods. Although it may just be Billy’s imagination, He thinks that he is abducted and travels to space with the Tralfamadorians. Billy travels back and forth between his past, present and future throughout the whole novel. Billy’s flashbacks of the war cause him to live the trauma over and over. The author writes “Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren 't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next” (29). This quote shows both symptoms of flashbacks and frightening thoughts. Billy never knows when he will time travel to the war. The next category of symptoms is avoidance symptoms. This category includes losing interest in enjoyable activities, emotional numbness, depression or guilt and staying avoiding things that remind the person of the experience. Billy Pilgrim shows many signs of emotional numbness. One example is when he is forced to wear a jacket which is too small and everyone laughs and makes fun of him. He doesn’t realize that they are even doing this. Another example is when Billy caught on fire. While on fire Billy was thinking about calling his mother to let her know he is alive and well. An Englishmen was the one to notice Billy was on fire and he pulled him away and put the fire out. Billy still made no comment. The English men looked to Billy and said “’my God- what have they done to you, lad? This isn’t a man. It’s a broken kite’” (123-124). This quote shows just how numb Billy really is. Billy is so very depressed that he breaks down and cries for unknown reasons. His depression and outburst are shown in this quote.
Billy was under doctor 's orders to take a nap every day. The doctor hoped that this would relieve a complaint that Billy had: Every so often, for no apparent reason, Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping. Nobody had ever caught Billy doing it. Only the doctor knew. It was an extremely quiet thing Billy did, and not very moist.
(78)
This quote from the novel shows that Billy is depressed and disturbed. Crying alone and for unknown reasons shows that Billy is depressed and emotionally numb. He is just emotionally pained and troubled. It is hard not to sympathize with him. Another sign of Billy’s depression is that he doesn’t want to go on and he wants to die. When shots were getting fired, Billy stood there and didn’t move. “He wished everybody would leave him alone. ‘You guys go on without me,’ he said again and again” (78). This is an example of Billy giving up and wanted to quit. The last category of symptoms is hyper arousal. This includes having trouble sleeping, having angry outbursts, being easily startled and feeling on edge. Billy Pilgrim has trouble sleeping and concentrating. Billy often had trouble sleeping because he would whimper and sometimes kick wildly in his sleep. On the train, Billy slept standing upright or not at all because others didn’t want to be near him while they were asleep. As the author of the book, Kurt Vonnegut’s character also shows signs of PTSD. He is up all night and has a drinking problem. He calls old friends and girlfriends throughout the night at absurd times, while his own wife is upstairs sleeping. Another sign that Vonnegut shows is his emotional numbness. Whenever someone or something dies in the book he uses the phrase “so it goes.” I interpreted this as him just coming to expect death and bad things to occur. Most people would take death more serious but he passes it off as normal everyday occurrence like it is no big deal. In the novel, Vonnegut’s character of himself is writing a book about the war. He mind gets so wrapped up in the memories and flash backs that he never actually completes the book with the novel. He relives the war over and over by trying to tell and write the novel. Flashbacks and reliving are both signs of PTSD. Vonnegut in the novel is anti-war and promises his friend’s wife Mrs. O’Hare that he will dedicate his novel to being anti-war. Post-traumatic stress disorder can happen to anyone for a number of reasons. There are many symptoms of this disorder which fall in the three categories of re-experience, avoidance, and hyper arousal. Billy pilgrim shows many symptoms of PTSD. Post- traumatic stress disorder causes Billy Pilgrim’s reality to be agonizing. It also affects Vonnegut’s character although it doesn’t seem as severe as Billy’s case. It is sad that Billy and Vonnegut live with post-traumatic stress disorder. It is worse that real people are suffering from this disorder everyday all over the world.

Works Cited
"NIMH · Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)." NIMH · Home. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. <http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/complete-index.shtml>.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Random House, Inc., 1969. Print.

Cited: "NIMH · Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)." NIMH · Home. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. &lt;http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/complete-index.shtml&gt;. Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Random House, Inc., 1969. Print.