people aren’t supposed to look back

“‘So,’ said Billy gropingly, ‘I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too.’ (Vonnegut).” War and literature are sanguinely germane to Kurt Vonnegut. Throughout the Vietnam War, he and postmodern authors analogous depicted the intergalactic—through the wonted use of space travel—as a literal and imaginative frontier to essentially homestead. In Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-five, space travel functions as an escape from protagonist Billy Pilgrim’s psychological problems, elicited from his particular and personal experience in World War II; thus metaphorically exemplifying the lives of the American people and the austere realities they faced in the 1950s through 1970s during the Vietnam War. Vonnegut’s science fiction novel, published in 1969, (Reiko, 1) creates literary escapism from subsisting with the experiences that Vietnam brought and continued to produce. The recurring theme in American science fiction—space travel—emerged from the post-depression period, epitomized in Slaughterhouse-five: Where celestial crossings and the fourth dimension symbolically imply forms of detachment from reality and the repercussions of war.

“I don’t read science fiction… I just read serious writers like Proust and Joyce and Kafka. When science fiction has something serious to say, I’ll read it.” –Nicholas Brady[1] once said; yet I believe he would bestow loyalty to Kurt Vonnegut’s “serious” science fiction. Vonnegut’s formidable use of literary escapism for his anticipated audience—the current and post Vietnam War Americans—also creates a full-circle philosophy. To stop what happened to Billy Pilgrim—loosing his mind, among other things—Vonnegut writes Slaughterhouse-five for said anticipated audience. The satirical anti-war novel, also known as The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, peruses quite sober indeed. Pilgrim opens our eyes to his reality: A lost soldier (literally) and completely and utterly alone. The novel –from either the third or fourth dimension perspective—is heart wrenching. Unnerving. All the while still maintaining a sarcastic and trivial and—at times—laughable voice. It functions as anti-war propaganda. Vonnegut emulates sardonic, cynical Henry Chinaski[2] writing. Science fiction. An escape. The fundamental purpose of Slaughterhouse-five, however, needs to be acknowledged. For Billy Pilgrim’s to be stopped. The novel is the antidote to Tralfamadore. The antidote to allowing oneself to succumb to the death and dismay war creates. Vonnegut puts a notch in the full-circle effect. He stops the ache by breeding the agony. He prevents pain with prose by epitomizing an ensnaring, abysmally beautiful protagonist.

“So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe… Science fiction was a big help”

Before science fiction literature reached its peak— identified as The Golden Age of Science Fiction—our nation read comic books. The Great Depression subsists as the innocuous epoch in which they were established. Afore comic books, American’s read pulp magazines[3]: cheap tricks. Seamlessly, Hugo Gernsback, the editor of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories, coined the term “science fiction” in the 1920s (Turshell, 149). Our origin of full-circle salutary commenced in the 1920s; the idea of believing that you genuinely reside within a science-fictitious ecosphere serves as where Vonnegut’s plot for his famous anti-war novel sprouted. Psychologist Tom Lombardo[4] deduces that “humans are both free and determined in their behavior (Lombardo, 39),” ostentatiously stating we are in control of what we do. What we choose to do, conversely, examines the importance of this belief: By trusting that humans are in entire ascendancy of what they elect and do not elect to do, Vonnegut’s fundamental Tralfamadorian philosophy within Slaughterhouse-five—that time does not linearize and the fourth dimension is a commonsensical theory of time—endures sustainability. Further supporting the possibility of Tralfamadore—and thus, further supporting Billy Pilgrim’s devout belief in his hallucinations—Lombardo states that, “Reality is both stability and change; reality contains both order and chaos, where each depends upon the other (Lombardo, 39).” Living on Tralfamadore and on Earth synchronously; the fourth dimension; being both alive and dead and time traveling, are plausible with Lombardo’s concept of reciprocity. By (on some meta-plane) trusting that you do in fact live within a fact a comic book or an alien planet, that superheroes will rescue you and linear time structure does not prevail, one can allow themselves to fall into the rabbit hole of literature and not only forget their own worries for a chapter or two, but to also let go.

Incongruously, pulp magazines and comic books allowed the science fiction genre to flourish within literature and become an individual sub-topic in the fiction genre of novels; the themes within these pulps and comics (and later, novels) science fiction evolved adamantly towards the nucleus of American culture. The bombing of Hiroshima[5] in 1945 bourgeoned the longing to live within their comics; when “thoughtful men and women recognized that they were living in a science fiction world (Turshell, 149).” Science fiction literature prospered during post-World War II America (Silverberg, “Science Fiction in the Fifties: The Real Golden Age”), but was not taken seriously until through and trailing the Vietnam War. Lombardo’s fifth concept, purposeful evolution is the belief that “we are going to purposefully direct our evolution in the future as we have done in the past (Lombardo, 39).” Purposeful evolution pertains to the prosperity of science fiction literature in a post war America because as humans, we “think about and evaluate ourselves relative to our values (Lombardo, 39).” Bluntly, we do what we do to get what we want and believe in. At this point in history, humans no longer “want” a society in which war and pain presently perpetuate, and thus gravitates to the fictional delusions of space travel and living somewhere where war and pain are not present. Clearly, the severity of America’s national security contingently coexists to art’s gravity.

Science fiction novels authenticity would not seem pertinent due to this contingency, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-five frequent depiction as a science fiction novel did not raise many questions: with Tralfamadore, the fourth-dimension, and aliens, how could it not be? While the novel has science fiction-based roots, Slaughterhouse-five, in its entirety, is a satirical, anti-war novel. Friedrich explores, “With such unorthodox symbols and signposts, Vonnegut himself has been surveying America for nearly a quarter of a century. In the course of that time, he has created a closed system all his own…for his devices have allowed him to comment with sadness, affection and humor (Friedrich, 1).” At this point in history, Vonnegut had been writing for 25 years, he had gotten fairly good at it: He knows how to weave himself in-between the reader and the pain, and mix in a bit of humor, a bit of a satire, but utterly and completely mix out reality. Vonnegut uses the absurdities of an alien race and foreign planet to express his qualms about war, to also elucidate the repercussions that war has on an individual (Billy Pilgrim) and, putatively, the entire American populace and culture.

A theme familiar to Vonnegut and the American culture, homesteading on the celestial frontier is a recurring leitmotif throughout science fiction. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein both feature protagonists living on and exploring extraterrestrial planets. Carl Abbott[6] believes authors Heinlein and Bradbury’s “mass-market stories”—much like pulp-fiction magazines and, successively, comic books—were “evangelized for the high frontier of space exploration and its power to redeem or rescue a troubled and threatened world (Abbott, 240).” Abbott acquiesces these novels that take place on forged and fictional worlds are written (merely, perhaps) for the similar escapism-complex that Vonnegut bequeaths to Billy Pilgrim. Science fiction literature exists to distract and heal its audience from whatever they may need diversion and retrieval. Concurring with Vonnegut’s style, “Science fiction homesteading stories are most challenging when they step beyond the frames of adventure tale and family saga to place homesteading within larger narratives (Abbott, 250).” Challenging? Feasibly. Alexipharmic? Irrefutably.

 “Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:”

 “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time (Vonnegut, 1).” Billy Pilgrim is a paradoxical war hero, “a bug trapped in amber (Vonnegut, 86).” As Otto Friedrich states, essential rules pertaining to how and why and what happens—full circle questions that lead to full circle answers—is enforced in Vonnegut’s novels, including “that the entire universe is governed by the laws of madness (Friedrich, 72).” Pilgrim, of course, follows that law. Billy, immediately born a weakling; a tragedy, has no control over his fate. As a child thrown into the water by his father, he sinks. Pilgrim’s plans to become an optometrist are cut short, for the draft militaries him to serve in World War II. Never recovering from being a POW in the basement, marked as “Slaughterhouse-five” while the Bombing of Dresden[7] occurs, he receives shock therapy. As an adult, he marries as dentists’ over-weight daughter, Valencia, and has two children. Later, in 1968, Pilgrim survives a deadly plane crash. During Valencia’s drive to the hospital, her car breaks down. Valencia thus dies from carbon monoxide poisoning when the car’s exhaust system breaks down. As Nikko Reiko examines, “The circumstances of Valencia’s unexpected death look all the more absurd and extravagant so that they insinuate that her existence was meaningless and insignificant enough to be lost in such a farcical way (Reiko, 4).” Billy cannot face this reality; thus where our adventure begins and ends. Billy travels to New York City to talk on a radio-show about his alien-encounters. His daughter—clearly convinced the tragedy befell her father into a raging lunatic and also “fearing [the] attempt at purposeful evolution (Lombardo, 41)”—has him live with her at home; where his cognitive dissonance begins and does not end. “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change, were the past, the present, and the future (Vonnegut, 60).” Billy Pilgrim is not to blame, for the fact that a series of absurd accidents that he happens to be the target of does make up the universe that he happens to reside on. And so why stay on such a universe? Why not leave? “To preserve the dignity of [Valencia’s] life, therefore, he believed in such a science fiction element as the Tralfamadorian four-dimensional view, because of those who die only appear to die, he could mitigate the pain caused to him by the loss of his beloved wife as well as annul the absurdity and inhumanity of its circumstances (Reiko, 4).” When one’s entire life is a cosmic joke, homesteading to an extraterrestrial foreign world, building a foreign life is not such a doleful desire.

“I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living”

Just as Billy Pilgrim’s construction of Tralfamadore is a rash attempt to rationalize chaos, so are the aliens; the Tralfamadorians, that inhabited it. Vonnegut describes the Tralfamadorians as being, “…two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber’s friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm (Vonnegut, 26).” The Tralfamadorians are extremely peculiar in their exteriors and dogmas. Particularly, the fourth dimension: They do not believe in linear time—undeviating and day after day—, but that “all moments, past present, and future, always have existed, and always will exist (Vonnegut, 27).” This is the quintessential foundation of Pilgrim’s escapism-complex birth; by agreeing and accepting the Tralfamadorian’s philosophies, by believing that time is not linear, it signifies that he believes death is not permanent. That loss and pain and war are not necessary thoughts to jump back to. His wife did not die in vain. Lombardo has the same beliefs as the Tralfamadorians: “We are a journey—a motion, rather than a set point. Any valid conceptualization of humanity should incorporate both past a future, producing a temporal Gestalt[8] (Lombardo, 41).” By not having to live life day-to-day and moment-to-moment, action-to-action, Billy—and Vonnegut’s first and most significant audience: the current-Vietnam War American society—can choose to ‘skip over’ unpleasant moments within their own lives; can fade out of the present and float into the abyss of Billy’s fleeting memories.

The precipitous construction of Tralfamadore and the aliens that inhabitant does not appear accidentally. Leon Festinger[9] observes that “in an unusual situation one can easily fall into absurd reasoning without facing reality and that the more difficult the situation is to face, the more easily one retreats from reality and relies on an absurd explanation (Reiko, 5).” Mustazza contends that, “From the mythic perspective (Billy’s point of view), the Tralfamadorians are no more or less bizarre than the mythic shapes that people the works of Homer or Dante or Spenser; from the literal perspective, they are ridiculous and Billy’s creation is pathetic (Mustazza 306).” Psychologically correct, Billy’s creations are in fact “pathetic.” The aesthetically pitiable depictions of the aliens and their home serve a cognitive dissonance reduction: When one looks for an answer to an unsolvable question. Rationalizing the un-rational is only human nature.

Leonard Mustazza quotes Robert Merrill and Peter Scholl who believe, “Tralfamadore is a fantasy, a desperate attempt to rationalize chaos, but one must sympathize with Billy’s need to create Tralfamadore. After all, the need for supreme fictions is a very human trait (Mustazza, 299).” The three men all can agree that Tralfamadore appears (accurately) quite pathetic, yet this does not serve as the core problem: the fundamental flaw is that this planet, this pitiful, odd planet has to exist. Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi[10] deems, “We possess marginal, if not poor, self-control capacities; we struggle with maintaining order, direction, and positive states in our minds (Lombardo, 44).” Unblemished humans—if you will—lack a severe sense of self-control, let alone one who has faced enough tragedy than manageable without some form of escapism. Of course, human nature reflexively desires to rationalize the un-rational, in completely un-rational ways; such as what Billy Pilgrim subconsciously chose to do; to create a fantastical planet to homestead. To escape from the one he does not currently want to maintain life on, let alone existent on. Billy Pilgrim cannot cope with the trauma that World War II scarred him with, the chaos that became his life after the war.

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt”

Much like war, Friedrich argues that Vonnegut’s novel(s) have a recurring theme of “the laws of madness,” that, “These are, first, that life in this technological time and pace is increasingly meaningless (Friedrich, 2).” By habitually lacking a sense of linear time throughout Slaughterhouse-five, having no undeviating pattern of each day and memory, time’s importance becomes undermined. By removing the encumbrance of time on an individual’s mentality and future actions, (and creating a fourth dimension) detaching oneself from the realities of time sanctions forgetting about death and war and pain to happen easier and more pseudo-naturally. All Billy Pilgrim and the post-World War II, and current-Vietnam, American society does not necessarily want to forget all of the pain, but to be detached from it. Hence homesteading on a completely foreign planet. In many ways, American people neither after World War II nor throughout the Vietnam War could detach themselves from what they have witnessed and therefore developed what we now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Soldiers of any and all wars all have a collective, stinging reminder of their literal and metaphorical battles: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD, labeled so by the American Psychiatric Association, emerges when “The person has experienced, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others, and his/her response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror (Langer, 51).” PSTD once had various names, “depending on what etiology was ascribed to it,” Ron Langer[11] states. “In the civil war, it was ‘soldier’s heart.’ In WWII, it was ‘shell shock’, and during WWII and Korea, it was ‘combat fatigue’ (Langer, 50-51).” Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was coined in 1980 by the APA as PTSD and still the present term used (Langer, 51). PTSD has several “persistent and recurring” divisions, including: Intrusive Recollection, Avoidance and Numbing, and Hyper-arousal. The APA regards that each “disturbance” has a duration longer than a month (Langer, 51-52).

“It was about people whose mental diseases couldn’t be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension, and three dimensional Earthling doctors couldn’t see those causes at all, or even imagine them.”

Intrusive Recollection, defined as “the event is persistently re-experienced” includes the events revisited through “distressing recollections” which include “images, thoughts, or perceptions.” Intrusive Recollection also occurs when one experiences “recurrent distressing dreams of the event; acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring.” These dreams include “a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur upon awakening or when intoxicated.” IR can also transpire when a former combatant endures “intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.” The APA furthers this definition by confirming that “intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event” must presently exist to categorize properly. Lastly, “physiologic reactivity upon exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event” exemplify when IR can occur (Langer, 51). Intrusive Recollection causes “causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (Langer, 52).”

The second form of PTSD, Avoidance and Numbing, is defined as the “persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness” Much like Intrusive Recollection, Avoidance/Numbing has three distinct indications. The first being “efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma.” These efforts include the (usually successful) attempts to “avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma.” Secondly, the “inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma” clearly signals AM as well. Appropriately, similar to the symptoms of depression, “marked diminished interest or participation in significant activities” and “feelings of detachment or estrangement from others” are also symptoms of AM. A “restricted range of affection” – unable to have loving feelings such as sympathy or empathy – and the “sense of foreshortened future” – not expecting to have a long life, get married, have children – are the final definite manifestations of Avoidance/Numbing (Langer, 51).

The last—and pertaining the sheerest straightforwardness, honestly—sub-affliction of PTSD: Hyper-arousal, defined as “persistent symptoms of increasing arousal.” The “increasing arousal” cannot have been present before the trauma, and has two indicating factors: “difficulty falling or staying asleep,” and “irritability or outbursts of anger.” “Difficulty concentrating and hyper-vigilance” with “exaggerated startle response[s]” are the final attestations of Hyper-arousal.

Langer believes, along with the American Psychiatric Association, that

Most psychiatric disorders are not real things—which is not to say that psychiatric symptoms do not hurt as much or cause as much disability as physical symptoms… they are, to a certain extent, man-made… they are defined by a certain constellation of symptoms identified by professional associations and subject to a certain amount of subjectivity an political pressure (Langer, 52).

PTSD was not “official recognized” until 1980 (Langer, 52.) Thus, “It is difficult to determine the prevalence of PTSD… because the diagnostic criteria were not determined until…years after…veterans with PTSD received…diagnoses as Anxiety Neurosis, Depressive Neurosis, Melancholia…or even Schizophrenia because the correct diagnosis did not yet exist (Langer, 52).” PTSD tinges post-war victims and surviving soldiers; any (or all three) of these sub-syndromes are ample enough to seduce one go mad, much like Billy Pilgrim.

Pilgrim embodies all the effects that any solider could and would have faced: Intrusive Recollection, Avoidance/Numbing, and Hyper-arousal. Mustazza cites Kathryn Hume, who states, “When Vonnegut’s characters are confronted with the shifting currents of his universe, they are naturally insecure. They want meaning, or a least a recognizable pattern… Like all people in all societies, they both inherit and make bulwarks against the flux.” Hume argues that when things (whatever they may be) get difficult, humans have the tendency to shift their current perception of reality to what would be more appropriate for their personal and preferred mindset; such as on a completely different realm of consciousness to continue to live on instead of Earth. Just as the American people throughout the Vietnam War are “naturally insecure” about the “shifting current of [their] universe (Mustazza 299)”, and as American soldiers after The Holocaust are “shell shocked,” Billy Pilgrim also suffers and lives in fear after surviving the bombing of Dresden during the war he was apart of. Langer provokes the question, “Why do PTSD symptoms become more prominent in midlife?” Pilgrim does not (third dimension speaking; linearly, of course) experience portent suggestions of PTSD until after his wife has died, after he has survived a deadly plane crash. Langer concludes, “My clinical observations lead me to think that, besides retirement, other precipitants include the deaths of friends, one’s own deteriorating health, children becoming autonomous, divorce, and other losses associated with aging (Langer, 54),” precisely prescribing Pilgrim as the quintessential PTSD poster-child.

The protagonist of Slaughterhouse-five parallels precisely what the American society in which the time period the novel was published is experiencing: a post war culture. Pilgrim, although satirically and histrionically, nonetheless symbolizes the soldiers—the derelict daughters—the Americans living through the Vietnam War. Slaughterhouse-five was published in 1969, when “The number of soldiers stationed in Vietnam rose to over 550,000, reaching its peak. Quite naturally, Vonnegut was frustrated at his country’s involvement in the war and wanted to write an ‘anti-war book’ (Reiko 2).” Vonnegut did not make Billy Pilgrim a weak protagonist, a tragic hero, a sad solider to mock the Americans stationed in Vietnam, or those who (like Billy) had survived World War II, but to comfort them and to convey the importance of Billy Pilgrim’s plight.

Mustazza states,

“It becomes quite clear that Billy Pilgrim’s madness is one with a method in it, his ‘trip’ to Tralfamadore and the knowledge he ‘brings back’ reflecting primarily his own yearning for peace, love, immutability, stability, and an ordered existence. To come to terms with the horrors he has witnessed in the war, Billy, taking his cue from Eliot Rosewater, his fellow patient at a veteran’s hospital, tries to ‘re-invent himself and his universe,’ in which reinvention ‘science fiction was a big help (Vonnegut, 101)’ (Mustazza 300).”

Vonnegut has a method to the madness, as well. As Friedrich, similar to what Mustazza said, sates “Vonnegut’s universe, which may or may not resemble our own, is largely governed by the laws of madness (Friedrich 2).” The madness being the Vietnam War; the method being Slaughterhouse-five. Billy cannot cope with reality; he creates his own. He reinvents himself and his universe. What Billy and everyone desires, especially those who have seen thousands essentially disappear after the bombing of Dresden and after seeing concentration camps and after fighting countless battles within Vietnam, is have peace and love and happiness in their dreams, Mustazza answers. Pilgrim goes to extremities to achieve these yearnings by creating, essentially, a science fiction novel within his own head. Billy is a deluded old man who believes he time travels and lives on Tralfamadore with Montana Wildhack, that he married Valencia who never died and that he is lost in New York. Vonnegut, fundamentally, gives the American people this said science fiction novel. Literally—with the realities that Pilgrim faced, albeit tangible or not, and the sardonic nature of Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-five demarcates what Billy Pilgrim believes to be true; this seems quite obvious, however necessarily obvious. The aliens of Tralfamadore must have outlandish appearances for the point to be made: Because Billy Pilgrim has already created the odd, the sad, and the understandable corollaries of war, the American people no longer have to become deluded old men themselves. They do not need to become Billy Pilgrim.

Profoundly, the ongoing Vietnam War society does not need to lose their own minds or create eccentric, God-complex creatures—as Pilgrim did—to have the same nurturing results of the fourth dimension and Tralfamadore; for they can emphasize with Pilgrim through Vonnegut’s style and delineation of Billy’s temperament. As the Tralfamadorians said, “”That’s one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones (Vonnegut, 106).”

“Trout’s leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.”

Mustazza contends that,

“[Billy] strives to solve the problem, to bridge the gap between lost innocence and possible innocence, and so he uses various materials—his own longings, his readings, his experiences—to forge a world, Tralfamadore, which is futuristic to all appearances buy mythical in theme. Billy finds what prove to be the most important source materials for his ‘solution’ in a tawdry Times Square bookstore which he visits in 1968, over twenty years after the war. First he notices a Kilgore Trout novel… (Mustazza, 302).”

As a direct parallel, Kilgore Trout’s novels (meta-novels, if you will) were vital to Pilgrim after World War II, so he could create Tralfamadore and thus his escapism-complex mushroomed. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-five is for the America people who are living through the Vietnam War to prevent this escapism desire, this need to leave America. To leave Earth. The same desire Billy devises; to build an individual and unique Tralfamadore accordingly to each wounded solider. Vonnegut has understood, “People who go crazy need someone to give them their ideas, somebody to write their words for them (Friedrich, 3).” And it’s a sufficient, full circle. Billy’s crucial and fundamental finding for the creation of Tralfamadore was within a science fiction novel. Pilgrim’s escapism becomes roused into reality through another science fiction novel in which humans live on a different planet (Vonnegut, 201). Vonnegut creates quite the same concept for the American people with Slaughterhouse-five that Billy Pilgrim had read by Kilgore Trout. While there may not have been any Billy Pilgrims during Vietnam, Slaughterhouse-five served the same purpose: for the masses to escape the realities of what’s going on; to escape the unexpected shifts in their universe; to find peace, love, and everything good. Everything opposite of war. Everything opposite of what Billy Pilgrim must experience for the full circle Vonnegut (so delicately) created to be efficacious. Mustazza concludes, “In short, Vonnegut takes pain to show whence Billy’s fantasy derives, and, in this regard, the novel proves to be quite realistic, a portrait of one of life’s (especially war’s) victims (Mustazza, 302).”

“And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?”

            Slaughterhouse-five is an anti-war, science fiction, metaphorically healing and profound novel. Billy, the quintessential anti-hero, “prevents young people who were born after the war and have not experienced its grim reality, from being attracted by any war experience (Reiko, 10).” The fourth dimension and time travel and green aliens are symptomatic science fiction characteristics; yet serve as the cure to those who have experienced war. Vonnegut epitomizes that “consciousness is the mind of the universe awakening (Lombardo, 52).” Which universe being played or paused remains up to you.

 

 

 

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