A Review of Kurt Vonnegut's Novel Slaughterhouse Five: Billy Pilgrims Past Experiences and How They Affect His Present

The Past

In Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, the character, Billy Pilgrim has experiences in his past that affects his present. In his past, Billy Pilgrim experienced horrific events of war, such as the Bombing of Dresden, which had caused many deaths. Billy’s past events affected him psychologically and causes him in the present to have a disturbed mental state. His relationship to the past shows how war can continue to cause suffering for a person even when the suffering of being directly in the war is over.

Billy Pilgrim’s past in the war affected him psychologically in the present. After returning from war, Billy Pilgrim believes that he was abducted by aliens to their planet Tralfamadore. He starts to believe in the Tralfamadorians’ concept of the fourth dimension, that “all moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist” (16). He also becomes “unstuck in time” (14) and begins to time shift to experience events of the past and the future. After the war, Billy also becomes completely apathetic to deaths and other tragic events, shown with him saying “so it goes” (5) after every time he experiences witnessing deaths. After the war, Billy became mentally disturbed as he starts to live in the fantasized world of the Tralfamadorians and believe in imaginary concepts.

Billy Pilgrim’s relationship with the past shows how war can still affect a person even after they’ve returned home or after the war is over. Billy becomes unstuck in time after the war and time shifts to reexperience his past of the horrific events of war. This shows how even when a person is done participating directly in a war and when the suffering of being in a war is seemingly over, the memories of all the horrific events of war will still continue to affect the person. The war had significantly affected Billy’s mental state. As a coping mechanism for all the deaths he had witnessed, Billy starts to believe wholeheartedly in his imaginary abduction by Tralfamadorians and the fictitious concept of the fourth dimension because it allows him to be apathetic to deaths since he believes that the person is still alive and well at the present but just in another moment of time. This is Billy’s way of escaping reality by refusing to accept the horrific reality of war and deaths.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five, the character, Billy Pilgrim, in the present has to contend with aspects from his past. Billy’s past of war and death affects him psychologically in his present. Billy’s relationship to the past shows how war can psychologically affect a person as he continues to experience the sufferings of war through his time shifting and uses Tralfamadorian and the concept of the fourth dimension as a coping mechanism for all the horrific events and deaths he had witnessed while in the war.