Trauma is a complicated thing. It hurts people deeply and then makes them believe they have forgotten or gotten over it. It lurks deep within a person's soul, perched among fragile emotions and memories, contaminating the surrounding environment until its effects manifest themselves in the person it has taken possession of; these effects often have the ability to alter a person's mind as a means of creating an escape into a more stress-free reality. For Billy Pilgrim of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, the manifestation of his trauma lies in the belief that he was abducted by Tralfamadorian aliens, in particular, and that he has time traveled through all the events of his life. Vonnegut leaves it up to the reader to decide whether Billy has really experienced everything he says he has. However, careful analysis shows that Billy Pilgrim created this story as a way to deal with the horrors he experienced as an American soldier during World War II and the traumas of his early childhood. Despite this, within this fantasy he creates an unorthodox view of life, where every moment is predestined and has already happened. No matter how much Billy Pilgrim would surely have liked to be abducted by aliens and have a more "enlightened" outlook as an escape, he simply wasn't abducted. The real rapture occurred in his mind, when the trauma took over and produced a reality-defying escape. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Billy's need to escape from tormenting traumas becomes evident as he begins to merge his war experiences with his difficult early childhood memories. He recalls a childhood memory at the Ilium YMCA, where his father "was going to throw Billy into the deep end, and Billy would swim damn well" (Vonnegut 55). Billy says it felt like "an execution" and later conflates this traumatic memory with that of being a prisoner of war; he describes the showers they were forced to take in the camps and the “white tiled wall” in them resembling the white tiled walls of a YMCA to connect the severe stress he was subjected to on both occasions (Vonnegut 55, 107). On another occasion, Billy describes the fear he felt as a twelve-year-old when he visited the Carlsbad Caverns on a family trip; he explains how he was “praying to God to get him out of there before the ceiling collapsed” (Vonnegut 113). When the lights went out and they were in total darkness, Billy said he "didn't even know if he was alive or not." This is meant to mirror the existential questions Billy would ask himself in such a lifeless place during the war: "where did he come from and where should he go now?" (Vonnegut 158). The total physical darkness of the caves reflects the dark reality of war, in which prisoners lose hope and feel their lives slipping through their fingers. Billy's childhood traumas and war traumas merge into an incessant pain that consumes Billy. Ultimately, he finds his way to escape into the twisted and invented reality of "Tralfamadore". Going from seeing violence, hunger, and desperation as a prisoner of war to a normal life in the United States was not something Billy The Pilgrim could easily move on to. The horrors were ingrained in his mind and an “escape” to Tralfamadore seemed much more appealing than facing those demons. The similarities are however evident between the war and life on Tralfamadore. When Billy is captured by German soldiers, he is placed for days on a cold, crowded train with other prisoners where the Germans communicated with them through a ventilator. This mirrors Billy's kidnapping by theTralfamadorians, when he is “dragged into the airlock” of the flying saucer, in which there are “two peepholes inside the airlock with yellow eyes pressed into them” (Vonnegut 96). The impersonal sensation of being observed through a small opening while being enclosed is present in both cases. On another occasion, the German soldiers "found it one of the most incredibly funny things they had seen in all of World War II" after seeing Billy in a tiny, ill-fitting overcoat (Vonnegut 115). Once again, this reflects how the Tralfamadorians looked at Billy and found the human need for explanations strange and almost comical. Billy is essentially normalizing the behaviors of the German soldiers by translating them into the behaviors and lifestyles of the Tralfamadorians. It is easier to imagine a little alien with a different accepted reality that treats him as an important study specimen and enlightens him, than to face the truth of the hateful violence and humiliations against him that belittled and traumatized him in war. By creating this correlation, Billy takes difficult experiences in war and turns them into his reality on Tralfamadore, as a way to comfort him from the true horrors of war. Ultimately, what elevates Billy Pilgrim's Tralfamadore coping mechanism is the Tralfamadorian belief that every moment is predestined and has happened in the past, present, and future. Vonnegut also reflects this belief in his non-linear style to further indicate the connection between events that would normally occur at different times; this non-linear style also serves as a metaphor for the way past traumas of war and childhood emerge at random moments and disrupt Billy's mental health. Billy's traumas skip and stop the moment an American soldier asks a German guard, "Why me?", to which the German guard replies, "Vy you?" Vy anyone?" (Vonnegut 116). This is meant to mirror the question Billy asks when he is first kidnapped: "why me?" to which the Tralfamadorians simply respond: "Why you? Why us, for that matter? Why something? Because the moment simply is” (Vonnegut 97) Billy essentially takes a question associated with a traumatic event, translates it into his reality on Tralfamadore, and provides a deeper meaning of comfort, inspired by predestination , Billy recalls his time as a POW where he and all the other captured Americans were forced to shower in the camp. He explains how "there were no taps they could control" and how "they could only wait for whatever was coming ” (Vonnegut 107). The invisible hand working in the showers is meant to mirror the essentially God invisible hand that Billy alludes to that controls every moment of existence. This reinforces Billy's accepted idea of ​​the absence of free will. This idea allows Billy to fully deal with his trauma by accepting everything that has happened, as he truly trusts in the Tralfamadorian belief that all the death and destruction he witnessed was simply meant to happen. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper now from our expert writers. Get a Custom Essay The truth is, there is no telling how someone will react and subsequently deal with traumatic events. In Billy's case, he created Tralfamadore and found comfort in the escape and enlightenment it provided. The traumas of his childhood that had been nestled deep within him for years, along with the later traumas of the war that would nest alongside them, had come out to devastate Billy..