Billy West

establish a strong central and over-arching theme for their writings. Authors such as Herman Melville, Kate Chopin, and John Steinbeck use setting and conflict to create theme. In his nautical novel, Billy Budd, Herman Melville deliberates the idea of conscience versus law and the vulnerability of innocence. Billy Budd, a newly impressed crew member…

Vonnegut through the voice of Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five. The strength of Vonnegut’s novel lies in his own personal experiences, as he himself was an American prisoner of war, was captured in Germany, and then was transferred to the city of Dresden. Throughout the novel, Billy Pilgrim suffers flashbacks of the horrors of war, specifically those associated with the bombing of Dresden. By narrating the novel through the voice of Billy, Vonnegut conveys…

“I am a history nut.”- Billy Joel. With the media as it is today is making it harder to learn truth and querying things like, who was Marilyn Monroe, What is Berlin, and what does birth control contribute to society? Choosing three things from the iconic Billy Joel song was a tough decision, but I lucked out in the end. Always intriguing me with posters and t-shirts, Marilyn Monroe, and moreover with her famous photos and flirtatious dances on the screen. Knowing Berlin was a subtopic within our…

Billy Graham was involved in the Fourth Great Awakening, which mainly took place through the years of 1960 and 1980 (press.uchicago.edu). Some still believe that we are currently living in the Fourth Awakening but, the bulk of the Christian challenging of social norms was solely between those 20 years. Some people have a tough time accepting the ideas of the Fourth Great Awakening as a true “awakening.” This is because the changes and outcomes of the awakening and the actions of the concerning…

reality. Billy Pilgrim copes with American life and war through disruption of reality in the long term. Billy has the curious ability to mentally distance himself from the present using very vivid memories either from his past or delusions from an alien planet where he was kept in a zoo, naked with a Hollywood starlet, and he discovered a fourth dimension where time is not linear and can see the future but no death. Billy’s tralfamadore is a reaction to the trauma of war, that resurfaced when…

change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” (Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five p. 60) Slaughterhouse Five is an anti-war book written by a veteran named Kurt Vonnegut. The main character is a broken man named Billy Pilgrim. Billy had been captured by the Germans and had to bear witness to the allied bombing of Dresden. According to History.com, “The bombing was controversial because Dresden was neither important to German wartime production nor a major…

Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five comments largely on the destructive nature of war. Our childlike protagonist Billy Pilgrim was essentially robbed of his innocence due to his drafting into the military. My first thoughts on this novel were about how Billy’s story extends to other soldiers and victims of war. The breaking of men and women’s’ ability to cope with the world extends far past the case of Billy. This is not just an isolated incident, it occurs much more often than most people care to…

hardships of World War 2 through the experiences of the main protagonist Billy Pilgrim. It is a controversial novel that has created multiple perspectives (right and wrong) and one of those perspectives can be obtained in an article titled “Dystopian Cybernetic Environment in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse five” which is authored by three journalists Babaee, Yahya, and Sivagurunathan. The article through the focus on Billy Pilgrim’s experiences in the era of World War 2 reaches to a cold…

free will and Billy Pilgrim’s destiny is predetermined. Both novels present a great degree of determinism, yet how it is approached differs in each character’s experiences. In Heart of Darkness, when Marlow enters the Company’s office, he encounters two women knitting black wool. This…

Similarly, in Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim is thrown into war, and labeled as weak and useless by those around him, and in turn he lacks the motivation to give his life purpose. Billy and the Hailsham students both have been defined by society, ergo they have…