Kurt Vonnegut's Reaction to Emotional Pain -Siena H

Siena Hoaglund
American Studies English
B-Day 1/2 + 3/4
Ivory
12/14/15

"Kurt Vonnegut's Reaction to Emotional Pain"

In Chapter 3, the author's personal feelings towards pain is easily seen through the time traveling of Billy. Every time Billy is put in a dangerous, painful, or scary situation; he time travels. Almost as a way to avoid the pain that is to come.

When Billy is captured and forced to give his shoes to the Germans, he time travels right after the Americans are brought into a house full of other captives. If this is looked at by the author's point of view, it shows that Vonnegut knew that being captured was a painful memory for him, as he was captured by the Germans once himself. So he avoids the memory by making his main character time travel to an eye exam. Vonnegut avoids many painful memories this way. Billy time travels before Vonnegut can go into detail about when the Germans make the Americans march in the snow, when the captives entered Germany, and when the trains, they are forced into, start moving eastward.

The last sentence of chapter 3 states, "Somewhere in there was Christmas. Billy Pilgrim...fell asleep, and he traveled in time to 1967 again-to the night he was kidnapped by a flying saucer from Tralfamadore." (Vonnegut,71). In my opinion, it would seem as if Vonnegut was pained to think that American soldiers spent their Christmas inside of a train cart. So he decided to write about Billy time traveling to when he is kidnapped to Tralfamadore, instead of going in depth about the pain a American solider, like the character Billy, would feel spending Christmas as one of the captured.

This method of avoiding pain, reminded me of the last chapter of Night by Ellie Wiesel. In the last chapter, Wiesel stops talking about what happens during his time in the Consecration Camp, because of his father's death. Wiesel says that he believed it was because, after his father died, he became very dehumanized. However, I always thought it was because Wiesel didn't want to remember the pain he felt after losing his father.

I am curious to see if this pattern will continue throughout the novel Slaughterhouse Five, and if Vonnegut will ever admit, somehow, that in his book he talks about time travel and aliens, as a way to avoid talking about his pain. Does Vonnegut really avoid certain memories because they make him feel pain, or is there going to be a greater reason for the convenient time traveling, shown later in the book?