Being a prisoner of war during World War II, Kurt Vonnegut over went through many traumatic incidents. Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Vonnegut himself, expresses these encounters through a first person stance by using the character of Billy. Many articles and reviews have been written analyzing the themes and overall success of the novel. Amongst them the perspective of Christopher Lehmann-Haupt and Susanne Vees-Gulani, whom believe the book was absolutely exceptional with the perspective of a Psychiatric approach. Although Christopher Lehmann-Haupt believes Slaughterhouse five is successful because it effectively demonstrates that Vonnegut uses his non chronological style of writing to cope from his experiences from the war, I maintain that
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Dresden had a horrible impact on Vonnegut whom doctors where sure had gone mentally ill. Later Billy was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which explains why throughout the books entirety the structure was messy for the most part, bouncing to different time periods in nearly every paragraph. This includes being abducted by extraterrestrials into the sci-fi world of Tralfamadore where life is seen in four dimensions. “The most striking symptom of Billy’s condition is his altered perception of time.” (Vonnegut 177), which is the main cause as to why Vonnegut makes Billy change from difference stances using the fourth dimension perspective of the aliens so called, tralfamadorians. For example, Billy’s wife passes away due to intoxication of carbon monoxide, this is told in the beginning of the book to state how his life was as he got drafted into the military, and is later reenacted towards the end of the novel when he reveals his problem of PTSD in a hospital bed. By having his book designed like this, made the readers confused as to what time he would be talking about, he would begin saying one thing, change the subject, then two chapters later introduce the subject once more and continue on in detail of the occurrences that took
Dresden had a horrible impact on Vonnegut whom doctors where sure had gone mentally ill. Later Billy was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which explains why throughout the books entirety the structure was messy for the most part, bouncing to different time periods in nearly every paragraph. This includes being abducted by extraterrestrials into the sci-fi world of Tralfamadore where life is seen in four dimensions. “The most striking symptom of Billy’s condition is his altered perception of time.” (Vonnegut 177), which is the main cause as to why Vonnegut makes Billy change from difference stances using the fourth dimension perspective of the aliens so called, tralfamadorians. For example, Billy’s wife passes away due to intoxication of carbon monoxide, this is told in the beginning of the book to state how his life was as he got drafted into the military, and is later reenacted towards the end of the novel when he reveals his problem of PTSD in a hospital bed. By having his book designed like this, made the readers confused as to what time he would be talking about, he would begin saying one thing, change the subject, then two chapters later introduce the subject once more and continue on in detail of the occurrences that took