Essay On Billy Pilgrim's Slaughterhouse-Five

Veterans often resort to a variety of coping mechanisms to help deal with the various tragedies of war. In the case of Billy Pilgrim, he decides to make a fantasy world inhabited by the Tralfamadorians. This helps him create a more enjoyable experience while a prisoner of war. Fantasies of the Tralfamadorians help Billy work out and make sense of the traumatic war experiences he encountered. Billy has the ability to re-write the events of war in his fantasy that are more appealing to him. In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy copes with the guilt of war by adopting the Tralfamadorians culture of space and time.
Tralfamadorians culture of the concept of space and time all occur simultaneously, thus inhibiting one’s free will. This is due to the fact that if the past
The moment someone does not have control of their will, they are absolved of their moral responsibilities. Billy states, “All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains” (27). In the Tralfamadorians world, individuals are governed by their fate. However, Billy Pilgrim’s life choices are not in a sense immoral: he was an optometrist, a chaplain’s assistant in the war, and a loyal father to his family. So why would Billy want to adopt the idea that he should not be responsible for his duties in war? This is because he felt guilt. He wants to be absolved of his moral obligations because he feels guilty about the war. He is shameful for being on the same side that bombed Dresden and profiting from the misfortunes of war. The guilt weighs so heavily on Billy that the only way he could cope with it was so create a culture in which he is relieved of any guilt. Vonnegut presents Billy’s life experiences in random order with no beginning, middle, or