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An Analysis Of Billy Pilgrim's Slaughterhouse-Five

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In the book SlaughterHouse-Five, the main character Billy Pilgrim, is an anti-hero who jump travels through time and past events in his mind. Billy’s definition of what is going on is that he has “come unstuck in time.” (Slaughterhouse-five 1) The looming question is if the travels that billy experiences are actually true. Could a person actually know what is going to happen before it does, or jump from one moment to the next… no this isn’t the case. Billy is not actually experiencing reality, but instead what Billy is suffering from is a coping mechanism from the condition known as PTSD. Billy uses these jumps into different times, and places from his past to cope with his traumatic stress that he received from the war that he was drafted into. PTSD is a condition linked to events that have happened in peoples lives that aren't exactly enjoyable memories, but rather the opposite. This case becomes present in people who have gone through traumatic experiences. Billy wasn’t shy to that, had had many minuscule traumatic experiences throughout his childhood …show more content…

Billy in no means was a rambo-esque type bloodthirsty killer, but more the awkward what am I doing here type instead. The innocent optometrist was once again forced into a stressful situation. He was the topic of deliberate bullying from other enlisted men, reasons being from his inability to sleep through the night, which could be linked directly to his traumatic experiences when he was younger, to the fact he couldn't keep up with the other men while participating in physical exercise. This lead to a group of men being killed which i’m sure didn't help bialys conscious. The stress only added up more when Billy had to experience the bombing of the beautiful city of dresden in a meat locker. The sight of the countless dead bodies really made Billy think, but the effect that it had on other things pushed Billy to the

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