PTSD In Slaughterhouse-Five

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“So it goes” is a common phrase that Billy uses throughout the book Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This phrase is referencing death and how it is not a big deal, because that person will always exist in the past. Billy gets this idea from an alien race that lives on the planet Tralfamadore.
The book says,
“He told about having become unstuck in time. He said, too, that he had been kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967. The saucer was from the planet Tralfamadore, he said. He was taken to Tralfamadore where he was displayed naked in a zoo, he said. He was mated there with a former Earthling movie star named Montana Wildhack" (Vonnegut 25).
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut displays Billy's PTSD through him saying he was abducted …show more content…
He also portrays this by putting the reader through Billy’s point of view, and having them see what he goes through.
Vonnegut writes,
“He went home for a nap after lunch. He was under doctor's orders to take a nap every day. The doctor hoped that this would relieve a complaint that Billy had: Every so often, for no apparent reason, Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping. Nobody had ever caught Billy doing it. Only the doctor knew. It was an extremely quiet thing Bill did, and not very moist" (Vonnegut 61).
He also writes, “...and he lay down on the outside of the coverlet. But sleep would not come. Tears came instead. They seeped" (Vonnegut 62). These past two quotes show the effect that the war had on him, and what it caused his life to be like. The whole premise of this novel is how Billy become “unstuck” in time. This means that he randomly lives different moments of his live. Sometimes he relives past moments of his life, especially the bad ones from the war. Things like this demonstrate common symptoms of PTSD, and many other things throughout the book lead to the thought of this. …show more content…
He states, “Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes”" (Vonnegut 27). During the war, and the bombing of Dresden, many people were killed. The Tralfamadorian way of thinking is just how Billy remembers his time in the war. He believes in their ways because he does not want to remember all the death and destruction that was caused. In addition, “Billy Pilgrim, in his travels through time, "has seen his own death many times" and is unconcerned because he knows he will always exist in the past" ("Slaughterhouse-Five." Novels ). This shows that war affected him into believing death is not a big deal, for himself or for others. The war changed the way he thinks about many things, and even makes it hard for him to remember some of the good things from his past. Also, “The aliens from the planet Tralfamadore provide a vehicle for Vonnegut's speculations on fate and free will” ("Slaughterhouse-Five." Novels ). As stated earlier on the article, this shows that Vonnegut portrays the reason Billy thinks this way though the aliens. All of this information leads to a simple conclusion; Vonnegut added the story of Billy being abducted by aliens to create a pathway to show PTSD without actually stating it in the book. This is just one thing that makes the book so
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