Of PTSD In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter-House-Five

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughter-house Five, the main character Billy Pilgrim does not experience many emotions during the time he spent in World War II. He even lack responses to people or events that had significance in his life. Throughout the novel Billy talks about his time traveling experiences, and describes different moments he traveled to in his life. These descriptions and experiences often include his interactions with the fictional planet Tralfamadore, and the bombing of Dresden. In the novel, Billy states multiple times that he wishes he could die because he is unable to connect with anyone on Earth. Result of the lack of communication Billy has with the world, he uses Tralfamadore to escape the horrors of war and uses it as

Billy is often portrayed in Slaughterhouse-Five as a soldier who is affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as he has problems expressing his emotions as well as coming to terms with his life after war and reality. PTSD affects Billy's life so greatly in the novel that it shows the reader that the war does not end after the fighting stops, but that there is an aftermath that continues to affect the soldier. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy’s life serves as an example of the negative and damaging effects of war on people as individuals, such as misinterpretation of time, disconnection from the world, and inability to feel

The planet acts as an escape for Billy and an easier way to cope with the war. Near the end of the novel the reader finds out that the planet of Tralfamadore and all of Billy’s experiences there are nearly identical to the plot of Kilgore Trout science fiction novel that he use to read all the time. Billy has taken something familiar to him and turned it into something that can control his anxiety. The Tralfamadorians story also helps Billy make sense of all the death around him. Billy finds “the most important thing [he] learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die” (Vonnegut 183). These creatures believe that it is unnecessary to cry when someone dies because he or she is still “living in the past”. By making the Tralfamadorians think this way, it makes Billy feel like his actions and emotions are normal. That is why Billy didn't cry at his wife's funeral. In the war Billy “often saw things worth crying about” (Vonnegut 183), but did not actually react to them. After the bombing of Dresden, Billy is confronted by a couple who noticed a horse in bad condition. He walks over to the horse, looks at it, and then proceeds to sob, even though he “hadn't cried about anything else in the war” (Vonnegut 333). Billy shows how emotionally insecure he is by his response to the horse, and how he has difficulty voicing his emotions at the