Is Billy Pilgrim or Kurt Vonnegut insane?
Right from the beginning (beginning of the actual story, not the book!) of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim is a peculiar character. His narrative voice and lack of emotion seem very out of place in a book that deals with such a sensitive topic such as war. Although these characteristics would be extremely weird for a person in a "normal" universe, Billy Pilgrim is constantly traveling through time which influences his life and the way he experiences different events. It is an interesting choice of Vonnegut's to add this character to his book, as from the first few chapters you get the impression that he is trying to create an anti-war novel. The addition of a complex character with such a complex sub-plot such as Billy's would seemingly take away from the perceived main purpose of Slaughterhouse-Five.
Billy's general air of nonchalance and calmness certainly seem weird when his time traveling takes him to places where other people would be the complete opposite of calm. When Billy gets transported to the Second World War, he is exceedingly calm and confident. This is extremely weird to both the readers and the other characters with him in Europe, as most of the other people in the scene are scared out of their minds that they're about to die. When Billy is with Weary and the other soldiers in the forest, Vonnegut narrates the scene as "Billy was involuntarily making convulsive sounds that were a lot like laughter. "You think it's funny, huh?" Weary inquired" (Vonnegut 64-65). After this, Weary starts kicking Billy's spine with the intention of breaking it. This makes it clear that the other characters in the book feel the same way many of the readers do when seeing Billy's personality.
After the Second World War, when Billy has aged a bit, he starts talking about having been abducted by aliens from Tralfamadore. No one believes him and his daughter thinks he is insane should be institutionalized. Even though what he's saying seems completely crazy to the people around him (and would also probably sound crazy to many of us if someone had said the same thing!) we see Billy actually be abducted by aliens in the book. Therefore, it seems like Billy was not crazy and was telling the truth the whole time. This makes us have to think about who to believe: Billy's version of events in Vonnegut's narrative or our own beliefs?
This leads to another question: For Vonnegut to write his anti-war novel, is it necessary for Billy to be insane or sane? If Billy is sane, it just changes the focus of the narrative from just descriptive war scenes in WWII to scenes of life before and after WWII, which just happens to involve alien abductions. If Billy is insane, and his abduction by the Tralfamadorians was just him (and Vonnegut) messing with us, then the argument could be made that the war, and his experiences in it, made him into the insane person he is. This would fit with Vonnegut's anti-war narrative. Therefore, it seems like it doesn't really matter if Billy is sane or insane. Even though the narrative and how Vonnegut presents his story would change a bit depending on the saneness of Billy, the actual message of the novel would stay the same. It seems like Vonnegut doesn't want to impose a judgment of Billy on us, but wants us to create our own opinion of Billy and let that opinion influence our own reading of the book.
What do you guys think about this? Is Billy insane? And does Billy's sanity actually matter?
Billy's general air of nonchalance and calmness certainly seem weird when his time traveling takes him to places where other people would be the complete opposite of calm. When Billy gets transported to the Second World War, he is exceedingly calm and confident. This is extremely weird to both the readers and the other characters with him in Europe, as most of the other people in the scene are scared out of their minds that they're about to die. When Billy is with Weary and the other soldiers in the forest, Vonnegut narrates the scene as "Billy was involuntarily making convulsive sounds that were a lot like laughter. "You think it's funny, huh?" Weary inquired" (Vonnegut 64-65). After this, Weary starts kicking Billy's spine with the intention of breaking it. This makes it clear that the other characters in the book feel the same way many of the readers do when seeing Billy's personality.
After the Second World War, when Billy has aged a bit, he starts talking about having been abducted by aliens from Tralfamadore. No one believes him and his daughter thinks he is insane should be institutionalized. Even though what he's saying seems completely crazy to the people around him (and would also probably sound crazy to many of us if someone had said the same thing!) we see Billy actually be abducted by aliens in the book. Therefore, it seems like Billy was not crazy and was telling the truth the whole time. This makes us have to think about who to believe: Billy's version of events in Vonnegut's narrative or our own beliefs?
This leads to another question: For Vonnegut to write his anti-war novel, is it necessary for Billy to be insane or sane? If Billy is sane, it just changes the focus of the narrative from just descriptive war scenes in WWII to scenes of life before and after WWII, which just happens to involve alien abductions. If Billy is insane, and his abduction by the Tralfamadorians was just him (and Vonnegut) messing with us, then the argument could be made that the war, and his experiences in it, made him into the insane person he is. This would fit with Vonnegut's anti-war narrative. Therefore, it seems like it doesn't really matter if Billy is sane or insane. Even though the narrative and how Vonnegut presents his story would change a bit depending on the saneness of Billy, the actual message of the novel would stay the same. It seems like Vonnegut doesn't want to impose a judgment of Billy on us, but wants us to create our own opinion of Billy and let that opinion influence our own reading of the book.
What do you guys think about this? Is Billy insane? And does Billy's sanity actually matter?
I think what you say about Billy's sanity having little effect on the message of the novel makes a lot of sense. I have been thinking about Billy as a sane characters and the Tralfamadorians as being real within the novel. It seems to me that the effect of being thrown through time and knowing everything that is going to happen to him would give Billy the emotional distance from what is happening to him that we see throughout the novel. However, I think whether Billy is insane or not, the things he experiences in the war allow Vonnegut to make his point and the question of his sanity has little relevance to the larger moral questions about the war that Vonnegut is asking.
ReplyDeleteI feel like it actually has an effect. I think that if Billy is not sane and imagined the whole thing, then we get a very Anti-War depiction because we can pretty clearly relate what is indifferent and distant about Billy, and take those moments as the moments that Vonnegut has the most "PTSD" about.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand if Billy didn't imagine the whole thing, then we have to legitimize and reconcile the tralfamadorian viewpoint and think about whether there are times when it's a useful way to view the world, and the pitfalls it may have. Like how it manages to both remove the ability to justify war, but also justifies inaction, and so we have to decide whether we think it's a useful perspective.
I think he leaves it open ended, and I personally prefer not crazy, because I really like science fiction, but both leave me with a lot of interesting food for thought.
Perhaps part of Vonnegut's "plot" to keep it from being a "war-novel" is the inclusion of so much of Billy's personal life. I don't think we can say Billy is confident during the war, or even calm. Rather, he seems unaffected because of his Tralfamadorian perspective. Asking about his sanity or whether it matters is similar to our questions in class: "did Billy really travel in time? Are the Tralfamadorians real? etc. I agree that it doesn't matter so much whether the story is real, but more how Vonnegut uses Billy to interpret the events at Dresden. Like a panel presentation yesterday mentioned, historical narratives lose their relevance as a newer, better narrative is developed, whereas Slaughterhouse Five is now a "classic" piece of literature. It's value is in the interpretation, rather than in the concrete narrative itself. If we apply the same logic to the novel, the concrete events (such as life in the Tralfamadorian zoo) don't matter, and what is more relevant is Billy's descriptions of humanity given his Tralfamadorian/PTSD/enlightened perspective.
ReplyDeleteI think this question can be answered in different ways depending on the viewpoint. To a soldier next to him being sent to a POW camp a smiling Billy Pilgrim would certainly seem to be insane. As a reader (kind of) inside Billy's head, I think we can sympathize more with Billy than those in the story. In addition, I think the time which the book is being read effects how the reader perceives mental health. Given what we now know today about PTSD and the shock of intense combat, it would make sense for us to have a different opinion than somebody who read the book in 1975. I firmly think Vonnegut created Billy to be a sane (yet troubled) character. I think creating Billy as a sane character specifically shows the internal turmoil that veterans go through, which is one of the major points of the book. A message of "the war makes people insane" is a much flimsier message than showing how internal turmoil from war leaves a scar on veterans, even if it is far below the surface.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think it's a little bit of both. Tralfamadore being real seems fairly solid, especially if you look at Vonnegut's other work, and therefore so is Billy's involvement with them. However, I do think that Billy is still suffering from untreated PTSD- he's still a human, after all. For me, the main difference between Billy being sane and insane is on the narrative. Regardless of anything, we know how Billy sees and interacts with the world- the question, I think, is whether he's coming from a place of being unable to cope with war, which presents a far more tragic view of his character, or if he's merely an experiment.
ReplyDeleteI personally think that Billy Pilgrim has gone completely off the deep end. We are told that Tralfamadore exists by none other than Billy - we only believe it because of how often it is mentioned, and by the manner with which it is brought up, whereas everything else said by billy seems to be fairly reliable. I see Tralfamadore entirely as a coping mechanism with which Billy reconciles with the death that he experienced during war.
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