Slaughterhouse V

Even though it is not absolutely sure that Kurt Vonnegut suffers from PTSD, the research that I have done tells me otherwise. But hopefully this talented novelist is part of the percentage of war veterans that has been through tough situations, but because they are mentally strong they are not victims of the psychiatric disorders caused by stress. So it goes that Kurt Vonnegut escaped the hangman in World War II but eventually life happened and his long life came to an end in the 21st century.

 After reading Slaughter House Five, a science fiction, semi-biographical, war novel written by former prisoner of war and novelist Kurt Vonnegut it made me curious to figure out if Kurt’s military experience caused him post-traumatic stress disorder. And if so, is writing novels his way of coping with that problem

  From this information one can conclude that Kurt Vonnegut has always had a passion for writing. But it seems after he returned from war he got more involved into writing for profit and pleasure. But why was he so obsessed with writing when he could have continued to study chemistry, mechanical engineering, or anthropology. Perhaps he was trying to contain and hide the common signs of post-traumatic stress disorder which include trauma-related thoughts and avoidance. Kurt must have spent a lot of time by himself while he would write articles for the several newspapers he worked for and his own personal projects. His trauma-related thoughts were expressed clearly in his novel slaughterhouse-five when he depicts the actual events that he experienced during war but with one of his made up characters. For example when Kurt was captured he was locked up in a meat locker slaughter house during the Battle of Bulge and that same slaughterhouse protected them during the firebombing of Dresden.  He incorporated all that into his novel but his made up character Billy Pilgrim was faced with his war experiences.

Curiosity caught my attention and I did further research on the effects of PTSD, how it is commonly treated, and facts and statistics of war veterans and PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or otherwise known as shell shock and battle fatigue, is estimated to have affected one of every 20 World War II veterans.  The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder estimated that these veterans suffer from symptoms such as bad dreams and flashbacks. In a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Affairs, PTSD in the military is caused by horrible life-threatening events such as being shot at or seeing a fellow soldier being shot and/or killed. In an article belonging to a Clinical Psychotherapy Review, it explains the dozens of ways to treat PTSD patients. The top five ways to help treat PTSD include psychological interventions, behavioral activation, yoga/ acupuncture, imagery-based treatments, and virtual-reality treatment. Of these five different treatments Kurt seems to be using the imagery-based treatment by writing and expressing what he sees in his mind through his novels.

What happens when you stress out a veteran.

Shortly after reading the novel I began to do my research on Kurt Vonnegut from his early-life throughout the end of his time. Kurt was a third generation German-American that was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on November 11, 1922. He began writing for the school newspaper while attending the Cornell University where he was majoring in chemistry. While attending Cornell he enlisted for the United States Army and was transferred to the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee to study mechanical engineering. As a private for the 423rd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division, Vonnegut was captured during the Battle of the Bulge on December 19, 1944. As a prisoner of war he witnessed the firebombing of Dresden in February 1945, which destroyed most of the German city. He was part of one of a few groups of American prisoners of war to survive the attack in an underground slaughterhouse meat locker used by the Germans as detention facilities. The meat locker that he was kept in was called Slaughterhouse-five which the Allied POWs adopted as the name for their prison. Kurt and the other POW’s were liberated by Russian Red Army troops. After the war he was awarded the Purple Heart medal.

In his post-war life he attended the University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology while working at the City News Bureau of Chicago. Then he left Chicago and moved to Schenectady, New York to work in public relations for General Electric, where his brother Bernard worked in the research department. Even though Vonnegut was a professional writer who engaged in technical writing and produced technical documentation for technical, business, and consumer audiences, he was known for writing past his typical hours while working. Kurt was renting a second floor apartment that was across the street from a fire station while living in New York. He even became an active Volunteer Fire-Fighter. In the mid 1950’s Kurt was working for sports illustrated but when he had to write about a racehorse that had jumped a fence and attempted to run away he hit a mental wall and was on the verge of abandoning writing. But luckily he was offered a teaching job at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. While he was there, Cat's Cradle, the novel that was first rejected by the University of Chicago but later published and granted him an M.A., became a best-seller. He then went on to create his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-five and other well-known novels.

Genre: Dark Humor, Science Fiction, War Novel

While the mysterious wonders of the unknown world and the possibility of beings of outer space bring fear into many, the possibility of what knowledge they hold which can disrupt human’s perception of the world can be more haunting. As we see in Slaughterhouse-V, in an attempt to provide solace to a child whose father died in Vietnam, Billy Pilgrim shares the knowledge he gained from the Tralfamadorians. However, almost immediately the boy’s mother calls Billy crazy and has him removed. Through Billy Pilgrim’s interactions with the child and others after his time with the Tralfamadorians, Vonnegut displays how humans fear the possibility of getting their perception of the world twisted. Specifically, the agent of free will is held sacred by people and the Tralfamadorians predeterminist belief of every event in the universe being out of individuals control scare many. 

Since the Tralfamadorians way of thinking comes from their holistic understanding of time, they hold a very fatalist approach to explain the nature of all events that occur in the universe. They point out how although humans understand time as being linear, really “all moments, past, present and future always have existed, always will exist” (27). Thus, when it comes to death, Billy states the Tralfamadorians do not weep, for in other moments in time that same person will be fine. Furthermore, as the they understand it, all events that occur happen for no specific reason and will always hold that place in time, so they are unpreventable. To help Billy understand, the two feet aliens explain how when the universe ends, it will by accident at the hand of a Tralfamadorian test pilot pressing a button. Moreover, the destruction of the universe will be inescapable, for “the moment is structured that way” (117), the test pilot “always pressed [the button], and he always will” (117). 

Early on in Slaughterhouse-V, Billy Pilgrim gets abducted by aliens of a planet called Tralfamadore. He goes on to describe them as being “two feet high, and green and shaped like plumber’s friend” (26), implying they look like toilet plungers. Additionally, Billy describes them as having at the top of their shaft “a little hand with a green eye in its palm” (26). While aesthetically these characteristics already exemplify a great division from the classic monstrous alien appearance, the greatest difference between the Tralfamadorians and the rest of the alien cultural lies in their behavior.

(Below) [Aliens as depicted in Independence Day starring Will Smith]

Throughout the years different media outlets like movies and TV shows have shown aliens in a negative light. Since H.G Wells 1898 release of his sci-fi novel War of the Worlds, most works of fiction written thereafter about visitors from outer space have portrayed extraterrestrials as merciless fiends seeking to annihilate and enslave our civilization. Being one of the the earliest pieces that describe a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race, War of the Worlds became an influential work in the science fiction canon, for it was one of the first notable depiction of aliens being monstrous  like beings. In the story, “the Martians” were described as being large octopus like beings with two eyes and multiple tentacles, whose goal was to colonize Earth. Today, television networks and movie studios constantly release movies and TV shows of what occurs when humans finally make contact with beings from outer space.

Winston, Kimberly. "On Faith." Washington Post. N.p., 13 Aug. 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. It helped with knowledge about how people are viewing religion in today’s society. Also, statistical data helps to solidify the claim that people no longer believe.

The story of Slaughterhouse-Five shows that the destructiveness of war can destroy someone. Billy before the war was going to school, but being drafted changed his life forever. He was given post-traumatic stress disorder from his time at war. Seeming like he was time traveling, but actually just his mind playing tricks on him. His whole twenty year residency in Tralfamadore was just a way for him to cope with the reality of death and destruction. The philosophy that he learned was already in his mind, he just had to find a way to bring it out. His anti-war message was sent to his mind when he was in the war, I think it was the moment he became unstuck from time. When he was captured by the German soldiers, he became someone that needed to pass on the message of how destructive war was and how it should be stopped. Billy Pilgrim was put on the Earth to try to stop the destructiveness of war.

After Billy’s twenty year of residency on Tralfamadore, he adopts their attitude and is sent back to Earth to spread their philosophy. When he arrives back to Earth, it is like he was never gone. Billy was able to now time travel throughout his life, reliving every moment, including his birth and death. He was set out to explain his new insight to someone that would listen. Billy told his daughter about how he could time travel and how he was abducted by aliens on the planet of Tralfamadore. After she heard the story she thought that her father was insane. This was a correct response if you ask me. After going through post-traumatic stress disorder and then telling a story like that, no one would ever believe him. After Billy’s story gets rejected by his daughter, he feels like he needs to tell the world about his new insight. He is now set out to go to New York to give a speech on his time in Tralfamadore. Because Billy is able to travel in time, he knows how he dies, so when he gives his speech he tells the audience of his assassin. He speaks to the audience about the cruelty and destruction of war, trying to change the mind of as many people he can. Telling how many people have died in all the wars in the world and how it changed him. During his speech, the audience starts protesting after hearing about a possible assassin. Billy says to the crowd, “If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said.” Later after that, Billy was assassinated. So it goes.

            Billy then went back to living a normal life, but he was still time traveling without his control. He could be walking around in his apartment, and then be transported back in time to the prison in Dresden. Billy never thinks of his time travel as something that he got from war or stress, but after a few months back from war he is institutionalized. He is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and put into doctor’s care to recover. As he is in the hospital, a man with the name of Eliot Rosewater shows him weird science fiction books by the author Kilgore Trout. These science fiction books might have planted something in Pilgrim’s head to trigger later events. After his release, he marries Valencia Merble, her father owns the Illium School of Optometry. The same school that Billy went to before he was drafted to go to war. He goes back to the school after their marriage. Throughout this time Billy is still traveling back in time seeing the war that he had fought over and over again. He realized that he knew what was going to happen in the future so his life was no longer linear in his mind. Billy and his wife had two kids together, Robert and Barbara. On Barbara’s wedding night, the most important thing in the story happened. Billy was abducted by an alien space ship and taken to a planet billions of miles away.