This essay looks into a topic in which authors and directors have tried to paint their own versions of time travel. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a common mental trauma that concerns mainly those who participate in war/war veterans. Slaughterhouse Five goes into the affects of post-traumatic stress disorder (or PTSD for short), the consequences of those affects, and how veterans deal with PTSD differently. The time travel and aliens mentioned in this book are all part of a collection of stories that a man tells himself in order to help deal with the traumatic events he witnessed during a war. Post-traumatic stress disorder is “a debilitating stress reaction observed in a substantial” amount of war veterans (Bower). During and after World
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The “1945 aerial bombing of Dresden shows the difficulty of controlling destruction once unleashed” (Sewall, Taylor). This uncontrolled destruction killed indiscriminately leaving those who survived to see the bodies of burned civilians and soldiers alike. According to The Wilson Quarterly, the Dresden bombing is “uniquely troubling – less for its civilian carnage than for the “erosion of moral sensibilities” it represents” (Sewall, Taylor). Americans “acknowledge[d] that the raids would assist Soviet advance” at the cost of a “refugee-swollen civilian population” (Sewall, Taylor). The bombing of Dresden “highlight[s] the difficulty of maintaining moral lines in the conduct of war – particularly at times when the stakes are high and the outcome uncertain, but even in less trying circumstances” (Sewall, Taylor). The outcome of the bombing was a significantly reduced refugee civilian population along with the POW’s that witnessed many of their own planes bombing them. Billy Pilgrim had to hide in a refrigerator in order to survive. This would turn any one of those POW’s to take an anti-war stance, like Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse …show more content…
PTSD affects a person mentally and physically, often preventing a person from functioning like a normal person in society. Although time travel and evidence of life outside Earth could be a possible reality in the future, it definitely was not one during the time period of Slaughterhouse Five and during Vonnegut’s time. The stories told in this story show that the main character, Billy Pilgrim, and numerous other characters suffer from the effects of PTSD. It is quite sad to see many of these men, who are fittingly labeled as the “Lost Generation”, to be so
The “1945 aerial bombing of Dresden shows the difficulty of controlling destruction once unleashed” (Sewall, Taylor). This uncontrolled destruction killed indiscriminately leaving those who survived to see the bodies of burned civilians and soldiers alike. According to The Wilson Quarterly, the Dresden bombing is “uniquely troubling – less for its civilian carnage than for the “erosion of moral sensibilities” it represents” (Sewall, Taylor). Americans “acknowledge[d] that the raids would assist Soviet advance” at the cost of a “refugee-swollen civilian population” (Sewall, Taylor). The bombing of Dresden “highlight[s] the difficulty of maintaining moral lines in the conduct of war – particularly at times when the stakes are high and the outcome uncertain, but even in less trying circumstances” (Sewall, Taylor). The outcome of the bombing was a significantly reduced refugee civilian population along with the POW’s that witnessed many of their own planes bombing them. Billy Pilgrim had to hide in a refrigerator in order to survive. This would turn any one of those POW’s to take an anti-war stance, like Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse …show more content…
PTSD affects a person mentally and physically, often preventing a person from functioning like a normal person in society. Although time travel and evidence of life outside Earth could be a possible reality in the future, it definitely was not one during the time period of Slaughterhouse Five and during Vonnegut’s time. The stories told in this story show that the main character, Billy Pilgrim, and numerous other characters suffer from the effects of PTSD. It is quite sad to see many of these men, who are fittingly labeled as the “Lost Generation”, to be so