Psychiatric Insights on Vonnegut's Trauma
Psychiatric Insights on Vonnegut's Trauma
Critique: Studies in
Contemporary Fiction
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To cite this article: Susanne Vees-Gulani (2003) Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim: A Psychiatric
Approach to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five , Critique: Studies in Contemporary
Fiction, 44:2, 175-184, DOI: 10.1080/00111610309599944
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Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim: A Psychiatric
Approach to Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse-Five
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SUSANNE
VEES-GULANI
vation. Even his wife, Valencia, who is unaware of Billy’s psychological turmoil,
gets “a funny feeling” that he is “just full of secrets” (121). Attempting to define
Billy’s psychological state more precisely, critics have frequently associated
Slaughterhouse-Five and its protagonist with schizophrenia, most likely inspired
by the author’s own comments on the title page characterizing the novel as “some-
what in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet
Tralfamadore.”’ Yet even some of the critics who describe Billy as schizophrenic
seem uneasy with that assessment. In the introduction to a recent collection of
essays on Vonnegut, for example, Harold Bloom qualifies his description of Billy
as suffering from schizophrenia with the parenthetical comment, “(to call it that)”
(1). Symptoms of schizophrenia have to be present for at least six months before
the disease can be diagnosed, and it is not caused by an external event. Schizo-
phrenics usually suffer from hallucinations,2 in most cases hearing voices, and
from social and occupational dysfunction (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders 285). Those criteria do not apply to Billy. His problems are
directly related to his war experiences. Furthermore, after he returns home from
the war, he manages to lead, at least externally, a very functional life-having a
family, running a business, and being a respected member of society. He does not
suffer from hallucinations. Rather, Billy’s fantasies seem more the result of a vivid
imagination that he uses as a sense-making tool to deal with his war trauma.3
Psychiatry can provide tools for a systematic approach to the trauma visible in
the novel. The psychological consequences of the experience of war and espe-
cially the Dresden bombings can be readily analyzed using the criteria now
established by psychiatrists to diagnose posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Traumatic experiences have been described for centuries, but PTSD has only
been recognized as an independent psychiatric classification since its inclusion
in the 1980 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM). Sparked by extensive research with Vietnam veterans, the 1980 Manual
for the first time provided psychiatrists with both a name and operational criteria
to assess the effects of traumatic experiences in an organized fashion and to lay
176 CRITIQUE
to rest a variety of earlier theories and labels, such as “Soldiers Imtable Heart,”
“Schreckneurose,” “shell shock,” or “combat neurosis” (Saigh and Bremner
1-2). In general, PTSD stems from “an inadequate way of coping with extreme
stress” (Kleber, Figley, and Gersons 234). The most recent edition of the Munu-
ul (1994) describes PTSD as the result of a “person experienc[ing], witness[ing],
or [being] confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened
death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others” (427)
and to which he or she responds with “intense fear, helplessness, or horror”
(428). The exposure to the trauma results in symptoms such as persistently re-
experiencing the events “in the form of distressing images, thoughts, perceptions,
dreams, or reliving [them]. ” Being reminded of the event can also trigger “psy-
chological or physiological reactivity” (Kaplan and Sadock 1227). Furthermore,
a diagnosis of PTSD requires symptoms of “persistent avoidance of stimuli asso-
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ciated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness” as well as “per-
sistent symptoms of increased arousal” (DSM424).
These criteria for the diagnosis of PTSD help to explain and summarize the
different facets of Billy’s state of mind in the novel. One important insight is that
PTSD is believed to be caused not only by the traumatizing events themselves;
the “psychosocial atmosphere in a society is clearly a factor that facilitates or
hinders the process of coping with stressful life events” (Kleber, Figley, and Ger-
sons 2). This can also be observed in the novel. When Billy returns home, Amer-
ica does not provide him with the possibility of working through his war experi-
ences, particularly the bombing of Dresden, and thus occassions Billy’s chronic
suffering. The most striking symptom of Billy’s condition is his altered percep-
tion of time. He sees himself as having “come unstuck in time”:
Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day.
He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He
has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his
birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events
in between.
He says.
Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the
trips aren’t necessarily fun. (23)
and flashbacks” in PTSD sufferers (Miller 18). This symptom is readily observed
in the protagonist and explains the novel’s abundance of both psychological and
structural “linking devices” between different scenes of Billy’s life (Klinkowitz
78). For instance, the novel repeatedly mentions certain colors (“ivory and blue,”
“orange and black”) or smells (“mustard gas and roses”) that carry significance
in Billy’s past.4 Other triggers include sounds, such as a siren (57, 1@), which
Billy associates with the Dresden air raid alarms: It “scared the hell out of him”
(57) and “he was expecting World War Three at any time” (57). Not surprising-
ly, seconds later he is “back in World War Two again” (58). In another episode,
the sight of men physically crippled by war going from door to door selling mag-
azines immediately causes great distress to Billy, himself mentally crippled by
the war:
Billy went on weeping as he contemplated the cripples and their boss. His
doorchimes clanged hellishly.
He closed his eyes, and opened them again. He was still weeping, but he
was back in Luxembourg again. He was marching with a lot of other pris-
oners. It was a winter wind that was bringing tears to his eyes. (63)
178 CRITIQUE
Suppression of parts of the trauma goes hand-in-hand with other techniques of
evading the trauma, such as avoiding “thoughts, feelings, or conversations asso-
ciated with [it],” as well as “activities, places, or people that arouse recollections”
(DSM 428). Billy displays all of these symptoms prominently. He hardly ever
talks about his experiences in the war, even eluding the topic when his wife ques-
tions him about it (121-23). This behavior accords with studies of prisoners of
war that “report with astonishment that the men never discussed their experi-
ences with anyone. Often those who married after liberation never told even their
wives or children that they had been prisoners” (Herman 89).
Another striking feature of Billy’s behavior that connects with the symptom of
avoidance and also is among the criteria for PTSD is his diminished responsive-
ness to the world around him. He is described as one who “never got mad at any-
thing” (30) and bears everything without reaction, because “[elverything was
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pretty much all right with Billy” (157). Throughout the novel Billy’s range of
affect is severely restricted, shown most prominently in the much repeated phrase
“So it goes,” his passive and emotionless reaction to tragedy and death. Robert J.
Lifton observed similar reactions toward death in survivors of the Hiroshima
bombing, reactions he labeled “psychic numbing” (1 15) or “psychic closing-off’
(125)? For Billy, avoidance and “psychic numbing” are protective shields, offer-
ing him the possibility to live an “outwardly normal” (175) life.
However, it is impossible for Billy to stop the intrusion of his memories com-
pletely because the events have destroyed him inside, which now mirrors the
ruins he saw in Dresden. At first he seeks help by committing himself to a men-
tal hospital because he felt “that he was going crazy” (100). Yet just as main-
stream American society does not provide an atmosphere conducive to recovery
from the horrors of war, the psychiatric establishment also fails Billy. By neither
providing an accurate diagnosis nor offering any coping mechanisms, it proves
itself completely separated from true world experience. When Billy checks him-
self in, “the doctors agreed: He was going crazy” (loo), but “[tlhey didn’t think
it had anything to do with the war. They were sure Billy was going to pieces
because his father had thrown him into the deep end of the Y.M.C.A. swimming
pool when he was a little boy and had then taken him to the rim of the Grand
Canyon” (100). Billy thus falls victim to the previous tendency in psychiatry to
underestimate the role of “an external factor, something outside the person” in
causing trauma and to focus instead only on “individual vulnerability as the rea-
son for people’s suffering” (Kleber, Figley, and Gersons l l , 13).
Billy and his roommate, fellow war veteran Rosewater, thus embark on their
own path of “trying to re-invent themselves and their universe” (101) in order to
cope with the war events. In what has been referred to as “a desperate attempt to
rationalize chaos” (Merrill and Scholl 69). they resort to science fiction. Billy
claims that he was kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore and dis-
played there in a zoo. Tralfamadorian philosophy, which opposes trying to make
sense out of occurrences, helps Billy deal with the horrible events and their con-
“When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person
is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just
fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is
dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead peo-
ple, which is ‘So it goes.”’ (27)
180 CRITIQUE
of the trauma (DSM428). This is a problem the narrator faces when he simply
cannot remember much about the war (14). Even though he continually tries to
write the novel, he feels unable to do so. On finishing the book after nearly a
quarter of a century, he considers it “a failure” (22). In fact, as Peter Freese points
out, “the thematic center of his novel [Dresden] is endlessly circumnavigated but
never fully encountered” (221). This aspect of the novel is what Herman calls
“the central dialectic of psychological trauma”: “the conflict between the will to
deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud” (1).
This difficulty of expressing the events is enhanced by the political and soci-
etal denial surrounding them. The narrator shares Billy’s experience that Amer-
ica does not offer an atmosphere that easily allows recovery. Because there is
no forum for a discussion of the events, “I wrote the Air Force back then, ask-
ing for details about the raid on Dresden, who ordered it, how many planes did
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it, why they did it, what desirable results there had been and so on. I was
answered by a man who [. . .] said that he was sorry, but that the information
was top secret still” (1 1). Just as there is no public discussion of the events,
there is also no discussion of them in private conversation. Most of the victims
of the air raids were Germans, the aggressors and major victimizers of the war.
Therefore, the question of whether it is even legitimate to talk about the horri-
ble and traumatizing aspects of the bombings is part of every discussion of the
bombings:
182 CRITIQUE
In the telling, the trauma story becomes a testimony. [. . .] Testimony has
both a private dimension, which is confessional and spiritual, and a public
aspect, which is political and judicial. The use of the word testimony links
both meanings, giving a new and larger dimension to the patient’s individual
experience. (181)
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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NOTES
The author would like to thank Prof. Sari Gilman Aronson, M.D. and Vikas Gulani. M.D., Ph.D.,
University of Illinois, College of Medicine at Urbana, for their insightful comments and encourage-
ment in the preparation of this manuscript.
1. A few of the many examples include Leonard Mustazza (“Vonnegut’s Tralfamadore and
Milton’s Eden”) who refers to Billy as “schizophrenic” (302); Lawrence R. Broer (Sanity Plea ), who
characterizes Billy’s state as “schizophrenic deterioration” (91); Peter Freese (“Sluughferhouse-Five
or, How to Storify an Atrocity”), who describes Billy’s story as sounding “suspiciously like the biog-
raphy of a man who develops schizophrenia” (212).
2. Hallucinations are defined as “a sensory perception that has the compelling sense of reali-
ty of a true perception but that occurs without external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ”
(DSM 767, emphasis added).
3. Billy’s more externally observable erratic behavior after the plane crash and his wife’s death
by carbon-monoxide poisoning also does not comply with the criteria for the diagnosis of schizo-
phrenia. Rather, it seems consistent with the consequences of a head trauma he might have suffered
in the crash, adding to Billy’s traumatized state by worsening his psychic condition even further.
4. The combination “ivory and blue” appears throughout the novel, usually as a reference to
bare feet and implying cold or death. The image originates in the war when Billy sees “corpses with
bare feet that were blue and ivory” (65). The significance of the colors “orange and black,” which
reappear in the striped pattern of a tent put up for his daughter’s wedding (72). is connected to the
POW train Billy rides during the war, which was “marked with a striped banner of orange and black”
(69). The recurring smell of “mustard gas and roses” is also connected to death. Its significance aris-
es from Billy’s experience of having to dig out victims from under the Dresden ruins after the raids:
“They didn’t smell bad at first, were wax museums. But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the
stink was like roses and mustard gas” (214).
5. Donald Greiner was the first to note the applicability of Lifton’s ideas to Vonnegut’s text.
For further detail see Donald Greiner’s 1973 essay “Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and the Fiction
of Atrocity.”
6. The “Three Musketeers Candy Bar” is directly related to a scene in which Billy’s wife
Valencia visits Billy in the mental hospital a few years after the war and eats a “Three Musketeers
Candy Bar” (107). The significance of the image, however, lies in the time of the war. After the Bat-
tle of the Bulge, Billy is part of a group of soldiers, called by one of them, Weary, “the Three Mus-
keteers” (48). Weary later blames Billy for breaking up the (completely imagined) great union of the
Three Musketeers and becomes obsessed with wanting Billy dead.
184 CRITIQUE