The Role Of Alienation In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

Living in a world of war and tragedy can cause a disconnect, in Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse 5, he tells the story of a POW survivor during the attack on Dresden. In the book, it shows that, self reliance is important when you live in alienation and loneliness, whether it be from loss of empathy, loss of loved ones, or just being detached from reality.

Billy Pilgrim is a character in the novel that is stuck in a world of death and misery and Billy is in the middle of it where he is connected to all the incidents, from being present during the incidents or directly knowing those involved. He has a saying that he says whenever someone dies or something tragic happens, “so it goes”. That saying shows that there is some sort of disconnect with Billy that he is not feeling empathetic and is looking over it as something that just happens and that people should get over their feelings towards it. That makes him more self reliant because he then always has it in his mind that at any moment anyone could die, and that there is no reason to rely on someone else when you know that they could just be gone, but with yourself, you will always be the one there until the end.
He is going through so much but everyone that he could turn to is away from him. He needs self reliance to live a happy life, to learn to cope with the issues that he has and to turn himself into a better man, to be there for himself when everyone else is gone. He had very few people to turn to, but he always has himself to control how he was feeling and to push it