\u201c\u2018So,\u2019 said Billy gropingly, \u2018I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too.\u2019 (Vonnegut).\u201d War and literature are sanguinely germane to Kurt Vonnegut. Throughout the Vietnam War, he and postmodern authors analogous depicted the intergalactic\u2014through the wonted use of space travel\u2014as a literal and imaginative frontier to essentially homestead. In Vonnegut\u2019s\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five,<\/i>\u00a0space travel functions as an escape from protagonist Billy Pilgrim\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2014space travel\u2014emerged from the post-depression period, epitomized in\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>: Where celestial crossings and the fourth dimension symbolically imply forms of detachment from reality and the repercussions of war.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t read science fiction\u2026 I just read serious writers like Proust and Joyce and Kafka. When science fiction has something serious to say, I\u2019ll read it.\u201d \u2013Nicholas Brady[1]<\/a>\u00a0once said; yet I believe he would bestow loyalty to Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s \u201cserious\u201d science fiction. Vonnegut\u2019s formidable use of literary escapism for his anticipated audience\u2014the current and post Vietnam War Americans\u2014also creates a full-circle philosophy. To stop what happened to Billy Pilgrim\u2014loosing his mind, among other things\u2014Vonnegut writes\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five\u00a0<\/i>for said anticipated audience. The satirical anti-war novel, also known as\u00a0The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death<\/i>,\u00a0<\/i>peruses quite sober indeed. Pilgrim opens our eyes to his reality: A lost soldier (literally) and completely and utterly alone. The novel \u2013from either the third or fourth dimension perspective\u2014is heart wrenching. Unnerving. All the while still maintaining a sarcastic and trivial and\u2014at times\u2014laughable voice. It functions as anti-war propaganda. Vonnegut emulates sardonic, cynical Henry Chinaski[2]<\/a>\u00a0writing. Science fiction. An escape. The fundamental purpose of\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>, however, needs to be acknowledged. For Billy Pilgrim\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n “So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe… Science fiction was a big help”<\/b><\/p>\n Before science fiction literature reached its peak\u2014 identified as The Golden Age of Science Fiction\u2014our nation read comic books. The Great Depression subsists as the innocuous epoch in which they were established. Afore comic books, American\u2019s read pulp magazines[3]<\/a>: cheap tricks. Seamlessly, Hugo Gernsback, the editor of the pulp magazine\u00a0Amazing Stories,<\/i>\u00a0coined the term \u201cscience fiction\u201d 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\u2019s plot for his famous anti-war novel sprouted. Psychologist Tom Lombardo[4]<\/a>\u00a0deduces that \u201chumans are both free and determined in their behavior (Lombardo, 39),\u201d 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\u2019s fundamental Tralfamadorian philosophy within\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five\u2014<\/i>that time does not linearize and the fourth dimension is a commonsensical theory of time\u2014endures sustainability. Further supporting the possibility of Tralfamadore\u2014and thus, further supporting Billy Pilgrim\u2019s devout belief in his hallucinations\u2014Lombardo states that, \u201cReality is both stability and change; reality contains both order and chaos, where each depends upon the other (Lombardo, 39).\u201d Living on Tralfamadore and on Earth synchronously; the fourth dimension; being both alive and dead and time traveling, are plausible with Lombardo\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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]<\/a>\u00a0in 1945 bourgeoned the longing to live within their comics; when \u201cthoughtful men and women recognized that they were living in a science fiction world (Turshell, 149).\u201d Science fiction literature prospered during post-World War II America (Silverberg, \u201cScience Fiction in the Fifties: The Real Golden Age\u201d), but was not taken seriously until through and trailing the Vietnam War. Lombardo\u2019s fifth concept, purposeful evolution is the belief that \u201cwe are going to purposefully direct our evolution in the future as we have done in the past (Lombardo, 39).\u201d Purposeful evolution pertains to the prosperity of science fiction literature in a post war America because as humans, we \u201cthink about and evaluate ourselves relative to our values (Lombardo, 39).\u201d Bluntly, we do what we do to get what we want and believe in. At this point in history, humans no longer \u201cwant\u201d 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\u2019s national security contingently coexists to art\u2019s gravity.<\/p>\n Science fiction novels authenticity would not seem pertinent due to this contingency, and Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five\u00a0<\/i>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,\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>, in its entirety, is a satirical, anti-war novel. Friedrich explores, \u201cWith 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\u2026for his devices have allowed him to comment with sadness, affection and humor (Friedrich, 1).\u201d 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.<\/p>\n A theme familiar to Vonnegut and the American culture, homesteading on the celestial frontier is a recurring leitmotif throughout science fiction.\u00a0The Martian Chronicles<\/i>\u00a0by Ray Bradbury and\u00a0Farmer in the Sky\u00a0<\/i>by Robert Heinlein both feature protagonists living on and exploring extraterrestrial planets. Carl Abbott[6]<\/a>\u00a0believes authors Heinlein and Bradbury\u2019s \u201cmass-market stories\u201d\u2014much like pulp-fiction magazines and, successively, comic books\u2014were \u201cevangelized for the high frontier of space exploration and its power to redeem or rescue a troubled and threatened world (Abbott, 240).\u201d 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\u2019s style, \u201cScience 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).\u201d Challenging? Feasibly. Alexipharmic? Irrefutably.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cSeen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cListen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time (Vonnegut, 1).\u201d Billy Pilgrim is a paradoxical war hero, \u201ca bug trapped in amber (Vonnegut, 86).\u201d As Otto Friedrich states, essential rules pertaining to how and why and what happens\u2014full circle questions that lead to full circle answers\u2014is enforced in Vonnegut\u2019s novels, including \u201cthat the entire universe is governed by the laws of madness (Friedrich, 72).\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cSlaughterhouse-five\u201d while the Bombing of Dresden[7]<\/a>\u00a0occurs, he receives shock therapy. As an adult, he marries as dentists\u2019 over-weight daughter, Valencia, and has two children. Later, in 1968, Pilgrim survives a deadly plane crash. During Valencia\u2019s drive to the hospital, her car breaks down. Valencia thus dies from carbon monoxide poisoning when the car\u2019s exhaust system breaks down. As Nikko Reiko examines, \u201cThe circumstances of Valencia\u2019s 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).\u201d 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\u2014clearly convinced the tragedy befell her father into a raging lunatic and also \u201cfearing [the] attempt at purposeful evolution (Lombardo, 41)\u201d\u2014has him live with her at home; where his cognitive dissonance begins and does not end. \u201cAmong the things Billy Pilgrim could not change, were the past, the present, and the future (Vonnegut, 60).\u201d 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? \u201cTo preserve the dignity of [Valencia\u2019s] 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).\u201d When one\u2019s entire life is a cosmic joke, homesteading to an extraterrestrial foreign world, building a foreign life is not such a doleful desire.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Just as Billy Pilgrim\u2019s 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, \u201c\u2026two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber\u2019s 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).\u201d The Tralfamadorians are extremely peculiar in their exteriors and dogmas. Particularly, the fourth dimension: They do not believe in linear time\u2014undeviating and day after day\u2014, but that \u201call moments, past present, and future, always have existed, and always will exist (Vonnegut, 27).\u201d This is the quintessential foundation of Pilgrim\u2019s escapism-complex birth; by agreeing and accepting the Tralfamadorian\u2019s 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: \u201cWe are a journey\u2014a motion, rather than a set point. Any valid conceptualization of humanity should incorporate both past a future, producing a temporal\u00a0Gestalt[8]<\/b><\/a><\/i>\u00a0(Lombardo, 41).\u201d By not having to live life day-to-day and moment-to-moment, action-to-action, Billy\u2014and Vonnegut\u2019s first and most significant audience: the current-Vietnam War American society\u2014can choose to \u2018skip over\u2019 unpleasant moments within their own lives; can fade out of the present and float into the abyss of Billy\u2019s fleeting memories.<\/p>\n The precipitous construction of Tralfamadore and the aliens that inhabitant does not appear accidentally. Leon Festinger[9]<\/a>\u00a0observes that \u201cin 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).\u201d Mustazza contends that, \u201cFrom the mythic perspective (Billy\u2019s 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\u2019s creation is pathetic (Mustazza 306).\u201d Psychologically correct, Billy\u2019s creations are in fact \u201cpathetic.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Leonard Mustazza quotes Robert Merrill and Peter Scholl who believe, \u201cTralfamadore is a fantasy, a desperate attempt to rationalize chaos, but one must sympathize with Billy\u2019s need to create Tralfamadore. After all, the need for supreme fictions is a very human trait (Mustazza, 299).\u201d 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]<\/a>\u00a0deems, \u201cWe possess marginal, if not poor, self-control capacities; we struggle with maintaining order, direction, and positive states in our minds (Lombardo, 44).\u201d Unblemished humans\u2014if you will\u2014lack 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.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything was beautiful and nothing hurt\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Much like war, Friedrich argues that Vonnegut\u2019s novel(s) have a recurring theme of \u201cthe laws of madness,\u201d that, \u201cThese are, first, that life in this technological time and pace is increasingly meaningless (Friedrich, 2).\u201d By habitually lacking a sense of linear time throughout\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>, having no undeviating pattern of each day and memory, time\u2019s importance becomes undermined. By removing the encumbrance of time on an individual\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cThe 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).\u201d PSTD once had various names, \u201cdepending on what etiology was ascribed to it,\u201d Ron Langer[11]<\/a>\u00a0states. \u201cIn the civil war, it was \u2018soldier\u2019s heart.\u2019 In WWII, it was \u2018shell shock\u2019, and during WWII and Korea, it was \u2018combat fatigue\u2019 (Langer, 50-51).\u201d Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was coined in 1980 by the APA as PTSD and still the present term used (Langer, 51). PTSD has several \u201cpersistent and recurring\u201d divisions, including: Intrusive Recollection, Avoidance and Numbing, and Hyper-arousal. The APA regards that each \u201cdisturbance\u201d has a duration longer than a month (Langer, 51-52).<\/p>\n \u201cIt was about people whose mental diseases couldn\u2019t be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension, and three dimensional Earthling doctors couldn\u2019t see those causes at all, or even imagine them.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Intrusive Recollection, defined as \u201cthe event is persistently re-experienced\u201d includes the events revisited through \u201cdistressing recollections\u201d which include \u201cimages, thoughts, or perceptions.\u201d Intrusive Recollection also occurs when one experiences \u201crecurrent distressing dreams of the event; acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring.\u201d These dreams include \u201ca sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur upon awakening or when intoxicated.\u201d IR can also transpire when a former combatant endures \u201cintense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.\u201d The APA furthers this definition by confirming that \u201cintense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event\u201d must presently exist to categorize properly. Lastly, \u201cphysiologic reactivity upon exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event\u201d exemplify when IR can occur (Langer, 51). Intrusive Recollection causes \u201ccauses clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (Langer, 52).\u201d<\/p>\n The second form of PTSD, Avoidance and Numbing, is defined as the \u201cpersistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness\u201d Much like Intrusive Recollection, Avoidance\/Numbing has three distinct indications. The first being \u201cefforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma.\u201d These efforts include the (usually successful) attempts to \u201cavoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma.\u201d Secondly, the \u201cinability to recall an important aspect of the trauma\u201d clearly signals AM as well. Appropriately, similar to the symptoms of depression, \u201cmarked diminished interest or participation in significant activities\u201d and \u201cfeelings of detachment or estrangement from others\u201d are also symptoms of AM. A \u201crestricted range of affection\u201d \u2013 unable to have loving feelings such as sympathy or empathy \u2013 and the \u201csense of foreshortened future\u201d \u2013 not expecting to have a long life, get married, have children \u2013 are the final definite manifestations of Avoidance\/Numbing (Langer, 51).<\/p>\n The last\u2014and pertaining the sheerest straightforwardness, honestly\u2014sub-affliction of PTSD: Hyper-arousal, defined as \u201cpersistent symptoms of increasing arousal.\u201d The \u201cincreasing arousal\u201d cannot have been present before the trauma, and has two indicating factors: \u201cdifficulty falling or staying asleep,\u201d and \u201cirritability or outbursts of anger.\u201d \u201cDifficulty concentrating and hyper-vigilance\u201d with \u201cexaggerated startle response[s]\u201d are the final attestations of Hyper-arousal.<\/p>\n Langer believes, along with the American Psychiatric Association, that<\/p>\n Most psychiatric disorders are not real things\u2014which is not to say that psychiatric symptoms do not hurt as much or cause as much disability as physical symptoms\u2026 they are, to a certain extent, man-made\u2026 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).<\/p>\n PTSD was not \u201cofficial recognized\u201d until 1980 (Langer, 52.) Thus, \u201cIt is difficult to determine the prevalence of PTSD\u2026 because the diagnostic criteria were not determined until\u2026years after\u2026veterans with PTSD received\u2026diagnoses as Anxiety Neurosis, Depressive Neurosis, Melancholia\u2026or even Schizophrenia because the correct diagnosis did not yet exist (Langer, 52).\u201d 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.<\/p>\n 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, \u201cWhen Vonnegut\u2019s characters are confronted with the shifting currents of his universe, they are naturally insecure. They want meaning, or a least a recognizable pattern\u2026 Like all people in all societies, they both inherit and make bulwarks against the flux.\u201d 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 \u201cnaturally insecure\u201d about the \u201cshifting current of [their] universe (Mustazza 299)\u201d, and as American soldiers after The Holocaust are \u201cshell shocked,\u201d 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, \u201cWhy do PTSD symptoms become more prominent in midlife?\u201d 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, \u201cMy 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),\u201d precisely prescribing Pilgrim as the quintessential PTSD poster-child.<\/p>\n The protagonist of\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>\u00a0parallels 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\u2014the derelict daughters\u2014the Americans living through the Vietnam War.\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five\u00a0<\/i>was published in 1969, when \u201cThe number of soldiers stationed in Vietnam rose to over 550,000, reaching its peak. Quite naturally, Vonnegut was frustrated at his country\u2019s involvement in the war and wanted to write an \u2018anti-war book\u2019 (Reiko 2).\u201d 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\u2019s plight.<\/p>\n Mustazza states,<\/p>\n \u201cIt becomes quite clear that Billy Pilgrim\u2019s madness is one with a method in it, his \u2018trip\u2019 to Tralfamadore and the knowledge he \u2018brings back\u2019 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\u2019s hospital, tries to \u2018re-invent himself and his universe,\u2019 in which reinvention \u2018science fiction was a big help (Vonnegut, 101)\u2019 (Mustazza 300).\u201d<\/p>\n Vonnegut has a method to the madness, as well. As Friedrich, similar to what Mustazza said, sates \u201cVonnegut\u2019s universe, which may or may not resemble our own, is largely governed by the laws of madness (Friedrich 2).\u201d The madness being the Vietnam War; the method being\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>. 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\u2014with the realities that Pilgrim faced, albeit tangible or not, and the sardonic nature of Vonnegut,\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>\u00a0demarcates 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.<\/p>\n Profoundly, the ongoing Vietnam War society does not need to lose their own minds or create eccentric, God-complex creatures\u2014as Pilgrim did\u2014to have the same nurturing results of the fourth dimension and Tralfamadore; for they can emphasize with Pilgrim through Vonnegut\u2019s style and delineation of Billy\u2019s temperament. As the Tralfamadorians said, \u201c”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).\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrout’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.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Mustazza contends that,<\/p>\n \u201c[Billy] strives to solve the problem, to bridge the gap between lost innocence and possible innocence, and so he uses various materials\u2014his own longings, his readings, his experiences\u2014to 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 \u2018solution\u2019 in a tawdry Times Square bookstore which he visits in 1968, over twenty years after the war. First he notices a Kilgore Trout novel\u2026 (Mustazza, 302).\u201d<\/p>\n As a direct parallel, Kilgore Trout\u2019s 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\u2019s\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>\u00a0is\u00a0for<\/i>\u00a0the America people who are living through the Vietnam War to\u00a0prevent<\/i>\u00a0this 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, \u201cPeople who go crazy need someone to give them their ideas, somebody to write their words for them (Friedrich, 3).\u201d And it\u2019s a sufficient, full circle. Billy\u2019s crucial and fundamental finding for the creation of Tralfamadore was within a science fiction novel. Pilgrim\u2019s 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\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>\u00a0that Billy Pilgrim had read by Kilgore Trout. While there may not have been any Billy Pilgrims during Vietnam,\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>\u00a0served the same purpose: for the masses to escape the realities of what\u2019s 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, \u201cIn short, Vonnegut takes pain to show whence Billy\u2019s fantasy derives, and, in this regard, the novel proves to be quite realistic, a portrait of one of life\u2019s (especially war\u2019s) victims (Mustazza, 302).\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five<\/i>\u00a0is an anti-war, science fiction, metaphorically healing and profound novel. Billy, the quintessential anti-hero, \u201cprevents young people who were born after the war and have not experienced its grim reality, from being attracted by any war experience (Reiko, 10).\u201d 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 \u201cconsciousness is the mind of the universe awakening (Lombardo, 52).\u201d Which universe being played or paused remains up to you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Abbott, Carl. \u201cHomesteading on the Extraterrestrial Frontier.\u201d\u00a0Science Fiction Studies\u00a0<\/i>32<\/p>\n (2005): 240-260. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ardelt, Monika, Scott D. Landes, and George E. Vaillant. “The Long-Term Effects Of<\/p>\n World War II Combat Exposure On Later Life Well-Being Moderated By Generatively.”\u00a0Research In Human Development<\/i>\u00a07.3 (2010): 202-220. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cummins, Elizabeth. \u201cAmerican SF, 1940s-1950s: Where’s the Book? The New York\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nexus.\u201d\u00a0Extrapolation<\/i>. 40.4 (1999): 314-319. The Kent State University Press.<\/p>\n Friedrich, Otto. \u201cUltra-Vonnegut.\u201d Time 101.19 (1973): 71-73. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gitre, Edward J. K. “The Great Escape: World War II, Neo-Freudianism, And The<\/p>\n Origins Of U.S. Psychocultural Analysis.<\/i>“\u00a0Journal Of The History Of The\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Behavioral Sciences<\/i>\u00a047.1 (2011): 18-43. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gouge, Catherine. \u201cThe American Frontier: History, Rhetoric, Concept.\u201d\u00a0Americana<\/i>\u00a06.1<\/p>\n (2007): n.pag. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jorgensen, Darren. \u201cMiddle America, the moon, the sublime and the uncanny.\u201d\u00a0The\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Editorial Board of the Sociological Review<\/i>\u00a057 (2009): 179-188. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Langer, Ron. \u201cCombat Trauma, Memory, and the World War II Veteran.\u201d\u00a0War,\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities\u00a0<\/i>23.1 USAF Academy (2011) 50-58. Web. 13 Nov. 2012<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lombardo, Tom. \u201cThe Future Evolution of the Ecology of Mind.\u201d\u00a0World Future\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Review<\/i>\u00a01.1 (2009): 39-52. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n MacCannell, Dean. \u201cThe Ego Factor in Tourism.\u201d\u00a0Journal of Consumer Research\u00a0<\/i>29<\/p>\n (2002): 146-151. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mustazza, Leonard. \u201cVonnegut\u2019s Tralfamadore and Milton\u2019s Eden.\u201d Essays in Literature\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n 13.2 (1986): 299-309. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nitta, Reiko. \u201cKurt Vonnegut\u2019s Psychological Strategies in Slaughterhouse-Five.\u201d\u00a0PsyArt\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n (2011): n.pag. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Parker, Martin. \u201cCapitalists in Space.\u201d\u00a0The Editorial Board of the Sociological Review<\/i><\/p>\n 57.1 (2009): 83-96. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Robert Silverberg. \u201cScience Fiction in the Fifties: The Real Golden Age.\u201d\u00a0Library of\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n America.<\/i>\u00a0Web. 10 Nov. 2012 <http:\/\/www.loa.org\/sciencefiction\/why_silverberg.jsp>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Smith, Warren. \u201cConclusion: to infinity and beyond?\u201d\u00a0The Editorial Board of the\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Sociological Review<\/i>\u00a057 (2009): 204-211. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Trushell, John M. \u201cAmerican Dreams of Mutants: The X-Men\u2014\u2018\u2018Pulp\u2019\u2019 Fiction, Science<\/p>\n Fiction, and Superheroes.\u201d\u00a0The Journal of Popular Culture<\/i>. 38.1 (2004): 149-168. Print.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a>\u00a0Nicholas Brady was the United States Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [2]<\/a>\u00a0Henry Chinaski is Charles Bukowski\u2019s alter-ego in five of his novels, often referred to as a \u201cpulp fiction hero\u201d \u2013 Chinaski is extremely bitter and existentially angry<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [3]<\/a>\u00a0Pulp fiction was popular and sensational literature that\u2019s regarded as trashy and tacky; trite thrills<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [4]<\/a>\u00a0\u201cTom Lombardo is the resident futurist and faculty chair of psychology and philosophy at Rio Salado College (Lombardo, 39).\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [5]<\/a>\u00a0Hiroshima, Japan, was the first city to be nuclear-bombed by the American Army Air Force on August 6th<\/sup>\u00a01945 (During World War II). The bomb, known as Little Boy, killed approximately 80,000 people and demolished the city.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [6]<\/a>\u00a0Carl Abbott is a professor at Portland State University, \u201cProfessor of Urban Studies and Planning (http:\/\/www.pdx.edu\/profile\/meet-professor-carl-abbott).\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n [7]<\/a>\u00a0The Bombing of Dresden, Germany, was during World War II. The USAAF and RAF (British Royal Air Force) dropped 3,9000+ explosive bombs and incendiary devices, destroying about 15 square miles and holding more than 18,000 deaths.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [8]<\/a>\u00a0\u201cGestalt\u201d is an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [9]<\/a>\u00a0Leon Festinger is an \u201ceminent psychologist\u201d in the area of cognitive dissonance (Reiko, 5).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [10]<\/a>\u00a0Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi (mee-hy cheek-sent-m\u0259-hy-ee) is a Hungarian psychology professor that Tom Lombardo cites in his article \u201cThe Future Evolution of the Ecology of the Mind\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [11]<\/a>\u00a0Ron Langer is a \u201cpsychotherapist in private practice, specializing in the treatment of military veterans (Langer, 58).\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201c\u2018So,\u2019 said Billy gropingly, \u2018I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too.\u2019 (Vonnegut).\u201d War and literature are sanguinely germane to Kurt Vonnegut. Throughout the Vietnam War, he and postmodern authors analogous depicted the intergalactic\u2014through the wonted use of space travel\u2014as a literal and imaginative frontier to essentially homestead. In Vonnegut\u2019s\u00a0Slaughterhouse-five,\u00a0space … Continue reading people aren’t supposed to look back<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[21,24],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","tag-21","tag-research-paper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5HHH1-oldpaper","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.axharrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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