Slaughterhouse V Analysis

In Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim is unable to cope with the realities of life. He tries to cope through multiple means, but ultimately the fact is that he does not cope well with the horrors and tragedies of life. Sometimes Billy will time travel and other times Billy will be completely despondent to death – either way Billy is not the model for a person who copes with the world because he is often still haunted by certain memories. Undoubtedly, Billy Pilgrim would not be considered a good model of a person who copes well because he is unable to move on. It is evident that Billy has not yet gotten over the memories of the bombing of Dresden. At his anniversary party, certain lyrics of a quartet song bring back memories of the aftermath of Dresden. Although he doesn’t realize it at first, Billy does realize he was affected by the barbershop quartet song because it brought back memories of the Dresden bombings: “Billy thought hard about the effect the quartet had had on him, and then found an association with an experience he had had long ago” (Vonnegut 226). The fact that a song that isn’t related at all to the firebombing of Dresden completely affects Billy the way it did (causes him to make faces and flee the party) means that he hasn’t coped. If he had coped, he would not have been affected by the song or even not reacted to it. Evidently, Billy Pilgrim has not yet moved on from the bombing of Dresden. When Billy does try to cope with things, the things he does to cope are not helpful. As said before, Billy occasionally time travels. It is found that he time travels whenever the situation he is in is unpleasant. For example the first time he time traveled was in World War II while he was leaning on a tree, grasping for his next breath. Because time traveling takes him away from unpleasant situations such as that, it can be considered one of Billy’s coping mechanisms. However, this does not mean he is a role model for a person who copes. Time traveling proves to be only an escape for Billy, helpful for some but not in his case. To elaborate, after time traveling, Billy’s condition has not improved in the slightest: “Now somebody was shaking Billy awake. Billy still felt drunk, was still angered by the stolen steering wheel” (60). It may even be argued that before Billy was fatigued, but now he feels drunk and angry because the experiences he had during time travel made him drunk and angry. Billy also tries to grapple with the concept of death through the Tralfamadorian view of life. Billy attempts to make life seem like a sequence of events which can be visited in out of order for those who are enlightened like him. He doesn’t consider dead people truly dead but only a bad condition and that in some other moment, that person is living. While this could be an effective method of coping by lessening the finality of death, Billy makes it however by trying to interact with other people and talk about his view of life. To the mother of the little boy in the optometry office and to most readers today, Billy’s conversation with the boy where he “told him matter-of-factly about his adventures on Tralfamadore, assured the fatherless boy that his father was very much alive still in moment’s the boy would see again and again” (172) seems insane and evidently crazy. Talking to people and trying to spread his message about Tralfamadore undermines the coping he has done with the Tralfamadorian view of life. If Billy were to live in his own world (much like on Tralfamadore) and could live in his own illusion, that is arguably comforting and is effective coping. It is evident that living on Tralfamadore is good coping for Billy because he able to relate stories of the war to Montana Wildhack without breaking down. However, once again we see Billy ruins the positive effects of trying to bring other people into his fantasy world. Taking a Tralfamadorian view of life may be effective coping but trying to convince other people about it is ineffective coping because ultimately people will alienate him further by thinking Billy is crazy. Billy Pilgrim is not a model for those who have been able to cope well with traumatic events. The Dresden bombings still haunt him and cause him to relive that event when he hears something he associates with Dresden. Time traveling is not effective because it only provides a temporary escape and he does not show any signs of improvement. Finally, viewing death as only a temporary state could potentially be a good coping method but when Billy tries to relate this to other people, he finds people think he is insane. In the end, If Billy Pilgrim had coped with the war, he would have been like any other veteran, which does not make for an interesting story. Thankfully, Billy did not cope which makes Slaughterhouse Five all the more interesting.