Slaughter-house Five

Slaughter-house Five presented with an intersting take on the various reactions to trauma, suffering and pain. Billy Pilgrim, the passive anti-hero, seems to completely deflect the horror he experiences in war. As a sort of psycholgical defense mechanism, he acts as a sponge absorbing the world but never really producing anything out. Billy is an odd paradox in that he plasters the hurt he truly does feel, and shoves it back into the recesses of his psyche. He breaks into tears spontaneously at some points, revealing that he really is wounded and bruised and yet does not congictively label it as his psycholgical wounds of war. What he went through in Dresden did not distort his innate humanity because his apathy for life had been instilled in him from the beginning. Perhaps this was his saving grace; his jelly-like personality made it impossible for anything to shape him because he simply flopped back into lethargy, like a sculptor working with a pile of noodles he lived his life in a constant state of meandering, from time, reality and realtionships. Suffering did not necessarily bring out the best or the worst in Billy and that maybe the most tragic aspect for Billy. Suffering has the potential to shape, and mold, refine our nature but if Billy was inept to recieve this blessing in disguise, his character and whole being would do nothing but plateau. The message that Vonnegut presents his readers with diverges so greatly with the usual theme in literature, illustrating the idea that war can be such a destructive force, a black hole, that it cores out the humanity in an individual, making normal life after impossible. The suffering that pre and post war induces is the most bizarre pain to deal with and ultimately overcome. Phsyical pain may amplify the psycholgical consequences and the veteran may have to conquer both simoultanesouly. Sadly though, there are no real winners in war. Indeed, one may come out in less ruin than the other, but the marks it leaves on a country and its people are everlasting, irreperable.