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Pilgrim As A Hero In Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

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In “Slaughterhouse Five”, Vonnegut writes a whole novel based on World War Two and the bombing of Dresden. Billy Pilgrim, the main character has been drafted into the army during World War two, where he trains to be a chaplain’s assistant, which causes him to be disliked by many of his peers. Billy is thrown into the Battle of the Bulge where he is immediately taken prisoner by the Germans, put into a slaughterhouse prison and assigned to work for the city of Dresden. Due to the war Billy was diagnosed with PTSD and has become unstuck in time. He states that he has seen his birth and death many times, hence pays random visits to events in between. Billy doesn’t see much freedom in his life, which is why he has no shame in believing that there is no such thing as free will.
According to Vonnegut there are no heroes or villains, if there were to be any we would be judging people by their actions and intentions. There is one character that comes close to being a hero, Edgar Derby who stands up to an American Nazi but in this novel he isn’t known for being a “hero”. Billy believes that aliens known as the Tralfamadorians have kidnapped him and have taken him to their planet Tralfamadore. The Tralfamadorians teach Billy their perspective of life and that if someone dies they …show more content…
As he mentions in chapter one “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true”. Billy’s time travel experiences are a kind of mourning towards what has happened to him in the war. Events such as traveling to Tralfamadore and meeting Montana are sorts of delusions that incorporate things that Billy has encountered. Although, Billy sounds insane with all the things he has said, he uses his imagination to cope with all the tragedies he has been through in his

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