Slaughterhouse-Five: An Analysis of Billy Pilgrim's Mental Trauma

Abstract: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five focuses on Billy Pilgrim’s travels through time and his experiences during World War II. More than that, it is a story about the journey of a clearly troubled protagonist whose mental state, best described as broken, is never fully explored in the novel. The aim of this essay is to bring light to the intricacies of Billy’s curious mental state, and to explore the theory that the alien encounters as well as the time travelling that he experiences are the result of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that Billy suffers from. This is done by analyzing Billy’s experiences with time travel, emotional numbing, and Tralfamadorians and connecting it to known symptoms and causes of PTSD. The results show that Billy does indeed showcase strong signs of PTSD, which were most likely caused by a combination of childhood experiences and trauma during the war. This PTSD manifests itself through Billy’s time travelling and alien encounters, which are used as a coping mechanism.