Physcoanalysis of Slaughterhouse - Five

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The interaction between characters (or lack thereof) in the novel (especially Billy) is an intentional action taken by Vonnegut to express the inability for normal dialogue and interaction between war-involved characters. The social indecency of characters such as Paul Lazzaro and even Billy Pilgrim for that matter are different but similar; different because Paul is an extremely violent, vengeful, bloodthirsty man and Billy is a pathetic, abstract, outcast to the world. Similar because both characters; Paul and Billy are so “sick” in their own mental state that they do not live for themselves, Paul lives for revenge and Billy lives because he isn’t dead (shmoop). The existence of a character like Paul Lazzaro is a condensation of an entire class of people who share his lack of moral. This type of human is the physcopath of the world, living encounter to encounter, deciding who deserves the end of their sword without reason. Paul Lazzaro expresses the unconscious fear of Vonnegut and is symbolic of the fuel that war needs to stay alive. In some cases, characters like Paul are a result of war and the evil it entails but these types of characters could also very likely be the cancer of evil in war. When Vonnegut introduces characters of this nature into the novel, it is meant to instill fear into us, as humans we fear people who defy nature and kill without reason (an example similar to the bombing of Dresden) and Vonnegut uses this to his advantage. He uses this to make us fear the war he has suffered and to expose war for the horror it is.

Kurt Vonnegut uses the character of the novel Slaughterhouse-Five to project his own unconscious fears and anxieties, as well as his abhorrence to warfare. Vonnegut’s anti-war sentiment is a result of his own traumatic experience of war during World War 2, which he provides us directly through the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. The similarity of Vonnegut’s biographical life and Pilgrims fictional story enables readers to explore Vonnegut’s purpose and message throughout the novel, but serves a double-purpose by preventing the illusion of complete fiction in such a tremendous story such as Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut’s use of Billy Pilgrim as a surrogate into the story, is also used to provide a fairly accurate timeline of Vonnegut’s real descend into the madness of post-traumatic stress alongside Billy, who resorts to imagined alien species and other forms of mental escapes from his internal torture. Billy’s reaction to the bombing of Dresden left him mentally unable to return to reality, which was very similar to Vonnegut who struggled assimilating back to civilian life. This is a reality made alive by Vonnegut to further build on his anti-war movement through the novel. In summation Kurt Vonnegut makes brilliant use of literary technique and his characters in the novel to ultimately express the cruel nature of war and the inevitable damage of character to all parties involved.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "The Narrator in Slaughterhouse-Five." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 23 Dec. 2015.

"Bombing of Dresden | World War II." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 23 Dec. 2015.