Dissociating Through Science-Fiction

Baden Rosales

Dr. Weise

AP Literature and Composition

December 16th, 2022

Dissociating Through Science-Fiction: An Examination of Trauma in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

In Kurt Vonnegut’s long acclaimed career he wrote many novels, short stories, and essays of varying success. After releasing three novels each receiving more praise than the last arguably wrote his magnum opus: Slaughterhouse-Five alternatively known as the Children’s Crusade. This was the culmination of decades of work, trial, and thought as Vonnegut sought to explore his experience in the Second World War specifically as he was captured and held as a prisoner of war (POW) in Dresden. Present for the Allied firebombing of a civilian German city Vonnegut was witness to one of the most horrific events in WWII. In Slaughterhouse the character of Billy Pilgrim is used in place of Kurt, so through the protagonist we can psychoanalyze the author. Using the psychoanalytic perspective, I will explore how Kurt Vonnegut uses humor in a non-linear timeline throughout Slaughterhouse-Five to convey the effects of war on the mind. Slaughterhouse was written before post-traumatic stress disorder was understood but was illustrated clearly in the novel’s main character.

“All this happened more or less,” (Vonnegut 1). Slaughterhouse-Five is a science fiction-infused telling of Kurt Vonnegut’s time in the Second World deployed on the western front and fights in the Battle of the Bulge where he and many of his fellow Americans are captured and sent by train car to the German city of Dresden. They are held in a meat locker of a Slaughterhouse (thus the title) sixty feel underground and were therefore protected when the Allied forces carried out a mass firebombing of Dresden, a city with little military advantage. Carried out between February 13th and 15th of 1945 the bombings were conducted by the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces to target the city’s limited industrial infrastructure and civilian population. More than twenty-five thousand people were killed and hundreds of thousands more injured and displaced. The destruction caused by the bombings has been widely condemned as it had little tactical value and was primarily used as a psychological weapon against German people. The bombing of Dresden is remembered for its devastating effects on the city and its inhabitants, serving as a reminder of the horrors of war. Billy saw this tragedy firsthand and while at first glance he was able to return to a life of normalcy his mind, was forever broken. After his daughter’s wedding he claims he was abducted by a group of aliens from a planet known as “Tralfamadore” these aliens took him for research, but along the way, taught him their perception of reality which Billy was quick to adopt. Put into situations much like those faced in Dresden Billy becomes “unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 22). It is through this new perception that the story is told in "brief clumps of symbols separated by stars,” with “no beginning, no middle, no end,” “no moral, no causes” (Vonnegut 88). This nonlinear timeline can facilitate the science fiction story needed to explore a mind as scattered and damaged as Pilgrim’s.

It is now common knowledge that veterans suffer from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but this is a relatively recent piece of medical knowledge. Only in the 1980s did we come to begin to understand the condition previously known as “shell shock” among other titles. It was not properly understood the effects that bearing witness and victim of traumatic events could have on the mind. So, while Kurt Vonnegut did not write Billy Pilgrim with this specific classification in mind it is most evident that the shoe fits. Susanne Vees-Gulani finds the fit quite excellent in her article aptly titled: “Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim: A Psychiatric Approach to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five”.  Vees-Gulani draws attention to many key areas of Billy’s temperament that allow us to analyze not only the character but the creator. Taking a psychological approach to the character will inevitably lead to conclusions of the author as we know many of Vonnegut’s intentions coupled with his novel is a close accounting of his own life. While Billy uses the Tralfamadorians to cope, Vonnegut is using Billy. We are a few steps removed from Vonnegut’s own experience and psyche. It is my goal to examine this relationship in the hyperbole and dark humor that makes up so much of Vonnegut’s work.

“So it goes,” the phrase repeated one-hundred and six times throughout the novel. This is the response to death. Flat plain acceptance. Vonnegut creates a sick sort of boring depiction of death, it is not tragic for it is just, well death just is, so it goes. The matter-of-fact approach to the topic is unsettling but not scary, more curious in how the reader’s mind begins to find it comical after spending time with Billy. We as readers learn to adopt his state of mind as we are forced into his Tralfamadorian storytelling approach. As we see into Pilgrim’s mind, we find that events are often doubled in the telling of his story. There is the German and Alien variation of an awfully similar song. Take for instance the humiliation Billy faced when he was made to strip naked in the POW camp. Their members are described as “shriveled” and “retracted” from the cold. This humiliation appears tame relative to all else seen in war, but this deeply personal insecurity stuck in Billy’s mind over the years. This manifests in his experience on Tralfamadore. He is placed in a zoo once again naked but in this instance feels no shame. He even “began to enjoy his body for the first time,” he is a fine specimen, as there is no comparison. What was once shriveled is so crudely described simply as “a tremendous wang” (104). He is even provided a mate by the aliens, an actress named Montana Wildhack who he respectfully waits to fall in love with him before indulging the eager cast of Tralfamadorians who desperately wanted to see the Earthlings consummate their relationship. The two have a physical chemistry Billy describes as “heavenly” The fabrication in Billy’s mind is a reflection of the trauma faced during his imprisonment. He makes his experience faced in war and translates it to science fiction, so he may restore confidence in himself and forget the humiliation of the past. Coping by providing himself with these positive thoughts in false memories is one of the patterns we see often in Billy. He uses these experiences to give himself a sense of superiority as when he describes the audience that would buy the “old girly magazines” featuring Montana as “lonesome men” he of course had the real thing even having a child with the woman. He finds the question of what happened to her trivial. She is not dead, no, she is on Tralfamadore with his child. He knows far more than the average man after his encounter with extraterrestrials. This manifests most apparently in the man’s reaction to death. Once again, we return to the phrase repeated so often: “So it goes,”

This phrase encapsulates the core struggle of Billy Pilgrim’s trauma. The loss of the human feelings of grief, empathy, or any moral judgment on death. Billy must remove himself or his soul from the horrors and personal trauma faced. He can look to a higher being, not any god but instead an advanced alien civilization. The Tralfamadorians have the answers, when adopting their reasoning life is simpler. If you don’t have to consider death or free will the horror in one’s past might be easier to grapple with. When choice is removed, and consequence made indifferent by the inevitability of the events, anything that has happened or could possibly happen is fine. That’s life, so it goes. “'It was all right.' said Billy. 'Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore,” this statement by Billy at the end of the ninth chapter describes this new dynamic he has formed with the past. Everything is predetermined when the future has already happened so there isn’t much use in caring one way or another. We have a difficult enough time comprehending large numbers of people that it is impossible to understand the death caused in Dresden and the cost of each individual life. Billy’s trauma then becomes to completely shut down his feeling. He does this in part by forgetting, his subconscious response to the horrors seen is to try and black out the memory. Vonnegut’s opening chapter which is written from his first-person perspective we see him struggle to recall what happened on that day in Dresden when conversing with one of his fellow veterans, “We would chuckle or grin sometimes, as though war stories were coming back, but neither one of us could remember anything good” (13). Vonnegut has the feeling he should recall these events better as it was seemingly the most important part of his war story and yet he fails to find the words. Just three pages prior Vonnegut claims, “World War Two certainly had made everyone very tough,” (10).  This toughness is what we’ve been discussing, he is dealing with these extreme events through visions and his absurd humor. Billy’s mind has worked to forget the past and its horror and is actively replacing what it can with extraterrestrial experiences. If he may abstract his life story into science fiction Billy and therefore Vonnegut can find satisfaction inside their chaotic minds.

Reverse learning theory may explain part of Billy’s condition. Reverse learning theory is a cognitive model that explains the development of some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions and hallucinations. According to this theory published by Francis Crick and Graeme Mitchison in “The function of dream sleep,” these symptoms may result from a breakdown in the normal process of learning and forgetting, which leads to the reverse learning of previously unlearned or forgotten information. Every day we encounter new information and store it in memory. Over time, we may forget some of this information, as it is no longer relevant or useful to us. In reverse learning, previously unlearned or forgotten information is "relearned" with the subconscious modifications, which become prominent in a person's thoughts and beliefs, leading to delusions and hallucinations. One of the main ideas behind reverse learning theory is that people with schizophrenia have a deficit in their ability to distinguish between internally generated thoughts and externally generated sensory information. This can lead to the incorporation of internally generated thoughts into a person's beliefs about the external world, resulting in delusions. This provides a scientific basis for why much of Billy’s experience in war is made alien as his Tralfamadorian encounters repeat events with a positive self-aggrandizing tone. Furthermore, the way in which Billy appears in each new location is much like a dream. As with all Tralfamadorian stories, there is no preface in the time jumps; appearing in new surroundings. “Billy sat up in bed. He had no idea what year it was or what planet he was on,” Vonnegut’s choice to reveal that Billy is not perfectly aware of his surroundings demonstrates that even in the world Billy has created for himself he has trouble parsing it (136). If it was perfectly sound to Billy, we might be able to assume greater confidence in Billy’s account but this contradiction in the character makes the mental break more evident. A few pages previous we see how he clues himself into his environment after waking, “Billy Pilgrim went to sleep, woke up as a widower in his empty home in Ilium. His daughter Barbara was reproaching him for writing ridiculous letters to the newspapers (. . .) It was 1968 again,” (Vonnegut 131). These mentions of sleep as well as others throughout the novel indicate a connection to Billy dreaming much of his life story. This theory could explain some of the components of Billy Pilgrim’s PTSD which I have not yet seen discussed in other articles.

Science fiction in the case of this story is a tool for Vonnegut to use his absurd humor. Much of the book is absurd, consisting of aliens and all but at the end of the day, it underscores the dark reality of these historic events. Introduced to the genre by Eliot Rosewater, Billy quickly finds comfort in the works of fictional author Kilgore Trout. In an instance of self-awareness Slaughterhouse directly addresses the function of the book’s genre in dealing with trauma, “So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help.” (Vonnegut 101). In science fiction aliens may be used as an explanation for one’s lack of tears at a funeral. There is a distinct lack of tears from Pilgrim as with time travel everyone is perfectly alive in the past so when a man dies it is “very silly for people to cry at his funeral,” (27). Here we see these feelings of superiority in Billy’s character once again as he thinks himself smarter than his grieving friends. It is darkly comedic how Billy interacts with his environment, his Tralfamadorian customs chief among them most plain when interacting with death, so it goes. It is unclear how we as readers are meant to find this remark as at first it does seem a sincere apology for the random tragedy of life but quickly develops into a scorecard of death. Marking each fallen with the phrase dismissing the grief or meaning in one’s loss. The absurd nature of replying “so it goes” to any mention of death extends from soldiers on mass to drink, “It didn't make a pop. The champagne was dead,” the response was the same “So it goes.” (Vonnegut 73). Merrill describes the relationship between human emotion to a computer citing a statement by Vonnegut where he describes the brain as a “two-it computer” detailing how our minds constantly lie as they cannot obtain “high-grade truths”. Merrill argues the lie in the case of Slaughterhouse is that human life is inherently valuable (Merrill 71). But I don’t believe this to be Vonnegut’s goal in writing Slaughterhouse, as he never fully accepts the nihilism necessary for this approach. Hope is still offered to Billy and while society fails him morally, he is a defensible character. Billy’s experience of war made death meaningless, the killing was on such a scale it shattered his capacity for empathy. This loss of empathy while tragic—as it illustrates a loss in humanity—is one means of coping with the stress. Dresden when described is of such weight it cannot be understated.

“Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn,” (Vonnegut 178). In one of the most gripping lines of the novel, Vonnegut describes what Billy can overhear from the Dresden guards. Everything organic, a truly haunting piece of imagery, and a rare instance where humor ceases. This marks the event that broke Billy. He compares the surface to the moon, “nothing but minerals,” there is true sincerity to these lines. While the whole book is serious in theme, Vonnegut is uncomfortably humorous throughout the work as a means to express trauma, but in these lines, this mask is dropped. This choice is reflective of the day’s significance in the story, for while it is described near the end of the novel, the bombing set the story in motion and is herein marked as the source of Billy’s break. For it is this tragedy as that gave Vonnegut his first reason to try and write this novel. “[I]t would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big,” (Vonnegut 2). In the end, it would not be a simple report, or accounting of the event of the bombing as Vonnegut once believed. Frustrated that it did not come so easily, Vonnegut created a character in Billy Pilgrim far more valuable to society. This character which blends fact with fiction in how closely Kurt is to his character gives us valuable insight into someone struggling with PTSD. Vonnegut uses humor to build an alien reflection of his traumatic war experiences.

Vonnegut uses all these methods to build the picture of Billy Pilgrim. He shows us the Tralfamadorian mirror held to Dresden and using absurd and dark humor he illustrates a sad loss in humanity. The science-fiction genre facilitates the non-linear storyline that we may interpret using reverse learning theory. The dark tone and tragedy underline the text’s main theme of how we cope with trauma. While possibly extreme in its depiction, the tendency of Billy Pilgrim to disassociate himself from emotions around death and losing empathy is a prevalent issue among veterans. According to a 2020 study led by Sarah Herzog, “A total 20.8% of U.S. veterans reported experiencing mild-to-severe dissociative symptoms,” which provides Billy the purpose Vonnegut sought throughout the novel. Kurt Vonnegut questions what it means for a book to be “anti-war” recalling an encounter where Harison Starr asked if Kurt would write an anti-glacier book, “What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too,” (3). So, while Vonnegut was questioning this purpose, he created Billy Pilgrim who serves as a window into the mind of those with PTSD. He does this in his own unique style including his signature dark humor but never compromises his message. In a quote sourced by Robert Merrill in The Requirements of Chaos Vonnegut says, “Mainly, I think [writers] should be—and biologically have to be—agents of change” (Merrill 66). The societal change in the case of Slaughterhouse-Five is significant, as the medical community did not fully understand the subject of post-traumatic stress, and less so by the public, so with this novel, he was able to communicate some of his and millions of others’ experience with PTSD.

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Works Cited

Brown, Kevin. "The Psychiatrists Were Right: Anomic Alienation in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five." South Central Review, vol. 28 no. 2, 2011, p. 101-109. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/scr.2011.0022.

Brown, D.W. “Crick and Mitchison's Theory of Rem Sleep and Neural Networks.” Medical Hypotheses, vol. 40, no. 6, 1993, pp. 329–331., https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-9877(93)90212-9.

Crick, F., Mitchison, G. The function of dream sleep. Nature 304, 111–114 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1038/304111a0.

“Firebombing of Dresden.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 5 Nov. 2009, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/firebombing-of-dresden.

Herzog, Sarah, et al. “Dissociative Symptoms in a Nationally Representative Sample of Trauma-Exposed U.S. Military Veterans: Prevalence, Comorbidities, and Suicidality.” Journal of Affective Disorders, vol. 272, 2020, pp. 138–145., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.03.177.

Merrill, Robert and Peter A. Scholl. "Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five: The Requirements of Chaos." Studies in American Fiction, vol. 6 no. 1, 1978, p. 65-76. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/saf.1978.0031.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. Random House Dell Publishing Group, 1991.

Wicks, Amanda. "“All This Happened, More or Less”: The Science Fiction of Trauma in Slaughterhouse-Five." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 55.3 (2014): 329-340, https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2013.783786.