Billy Pilgrim's Use Of Trauma

Many different books and movies have a variety of things to say about grief, trauma, and their impacts on a person's life. These topics can cause people to feel, and do, many different things as a result of their trauma. In the classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, his main character Billy Pilgrim projects his trauma into believing that he was abducted by aliens. In the short story Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway, the protagonist Krebs refuses to confront his trauma, and instead decides to run away. And lastly in Arrival (2016) the main character Louise ignores the suffering she will endure, and proceeds with her life anyway. In all these stories, there is one common theme, and it is how the characters deal with trauma. These …show more content…
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim goes to war, and is taken prisoner in Germany. He is placed in a work unit in Dresden, and he ends up witnessing the fire-bombing, and mass murder, of the citizens of Dresden. When he returns from the war, he has to find a way to deal with the trauma he suffered, so he creates the world Tralfamadore based on a book he read. Billy uses Tralfamadore as a way to escape the suffering in his normal life, caused by the trauma he witnessed during his imprisonment. Billy adopts a saying from his made up world, “so it goes,” as a way to deal with any trauma or grief he experiences. After Billy experiences a plane crash, he tries to pretend it doesn’t affect him, as shows here,“Their plane crashed on top of Sugarbush Mountain, in Vermont. Everybody was killed but Billy. So it goes.” (Vonnegut, 25.) By so casually stating the trauma he experienced, Billy is using the phrase as a way to ignore the trauma he suffered. By pretending that it doesn’t affect him, it allows Billy to not have to confront his trauma. In Soldier’s Home the main character Krebs has come back from the war and has been unwilling to talk about what he went through. Hemingway writes about Krebs’s feelings after returning home, “He had tried so to keep his life from being complicated. Still, none of it had touched him. He had felt sorry for his …show more content…
By doing so, they are distancing themselves from the trauma they have, or will, suffer. Billy talks about the firebombing of Dresden in such a detached way so that he is able to distance himself, “The Americans and four of their guards and a few dressed carcasses were down there, and nobody else. The rest of the guards had, before the raid began, gone to the comforts of their own homes in Dresden. They were all being killed with their families. So it goes.” (Vonnegut, 177.) By trying the distance himself from the trauma he faces, Billy makes it possible for himself the ignore the trauma, and pretend it doesn’t impact his everyday life. Dr. Louise Banks in Arrival approaches trauma in a similar manner as Billy. Once Dr. Banks becomes aware of time, she chooses to proceed with her life even though she knows all of the terrible possible outcomes. By doing this, Dr. Banks is choosing to ignore the trauma she is facing, and is attempting to continue on with her life as if it will not happen. When faced with the idea of losing her daughter, Dr. Banks chooses to proceed, and though she knows the outcome won’t change, she is willing to try and live her life as if nothing is different. Dr. Banks and Billy are both capable of travelling through time, in a sense, and they both use it to escape the trauma they have been or will be faced with. Billy uses it as