Psychological Disorder In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a psychological disorder that can occur after experiencing or witnessing life-threatening situations such as military combat, serious accidents, etc. Unfortunately, not just the people that are diagnosed with this disorder are affected by their past. In the novel, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a man by the name of Billy Pilgrim, a World War Two veteran, suffered through life, claiming time travel because of his inability to control his flashbacks that were triggered by the smallest of every-day events. For example, he would be at his desk at the optometry office and a siren would go off and it would scare him into thinking that World War Three may break out at any point. His reality was not really reality at all. In fact, his reality was his past. He dealt with reliving his …show more content…
In the case of Lazzaro and Pilgrim, Lazzaro held grudges that he would not get over until he got revenge on those who did him wrong, and Pilgrim was always in a state of depression in which he lacked any emotion that could lead to happiness. The one glimpse of happiness Billy experienced was when he would see himself on the Tralfamadorian’s planet, on display as a zoo specimen that the creatures found fascinating. The Tralfamadorians gave Billy a reason for his life, made him feel significant for once. Whether it was on his planet or any other planet, at least Billy now had a reason to want to live. These creatures gave him a way to cope with his past. He now felt as though he had a mission to complete; spreading the word of the truth about time. “The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti”, Billy proclaims (Vonnegut 87). As others saw Billy as depressed and crazy, he saw himself as a pilgrim of a new way of thinking that he needed to make the world aware