Billy's PTSD vs. Veterans' PTSD

We've been talking a lot in class about how Billy's experiences may be manifestations of PTSD - that is, if his jumping around in time and experiences on Tralfamadore are to be taken metaphorically and not literally. (For the purposes of this post, I am going to take them metaphorically, though there is some ambiguity in the way Vonnegut writes the story.) To try to better understand this metaphor, I looked up some basic information on PTSD and found that although Billy exhibits many of the symptoms, he also seems to exhibit unexpected behavior for someone with PTSD.

The article I found cites the main symptoms of PTSD as being: "1. Re-experiencing the trauma through intrusive distressing recollections of the event, flashbacks, and nightmares, 2. Emotional numbness and avoidance of places, people, and activities that are reminders of the trauma, and 3. Increased arousal such as difficulty sleeping and concentrating, feeling jumpy, and being easily irritated and angered" (from https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/posttraumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/symptoms#). The first symptom seems to fit Billy's experiences well. He literally re-experiences the trauma by traveling through time, and the reader gets descriptions of what happened as if it is happening for the first time. Many war veterans comment that their flashbacks feel just like the real battlefield, tasting the same and smelling the same (peep this for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VsVA5p7heQ). Additionally, the second symptom fits somewhat well - he is "numb" in that he doesn't really care what happens a lot of time, and the book even says "Billy didn't really like life" and "Billy was just about fine with anything" (or something. I don't know the page numbers but if you do or you know the lines I'm talking about please comment!). For these reasons, it seems plausible that Billy is indeed experiencing PTSD when he travels in time.

Yet, at the same time, a lot of what I read seemed not to match up. Symptom three, for example, says that people might feel jumpy or angry more often. Billy is never angry. Billy hardly ever feels fear, it seems. Even in his (supposed) flashbacks to the war, he is calm, smiling. His calm disposition doesn't line up with many descriptions of PTSD - but does bring up Tralfamadore in this context. We've also talked about how Tralfamadore is like Billy's coping mechanism, his way to accept that he couldn't have changed what happened because there is no free will. Many veterans struggle with guilt, shame, and fear, but Billy's Tralfamadore allows him to escape that because it takes away any blame. It also helps him rationalize his PTSD, to justify why he "jumps around in time" (relives his experiences in the war). 

I have several (2) questions. 1. How does Tralfamadore fit into the PTSD narrative? Is it a metaphor for the coping mechanisms of people who have PTSD? If so, is Vonnegut criticizing PTSD victims for becoming complacent to the horrible realities of war? That doesn't seem right. But Vonnegut seems to disagree with the idea of "so it goes". 2. Where are we anchored in time? We hear Billy's story from Vonnegut's perspective, so it seems like it must take place after Billy's death (otherwise, how would Vonnegut know Billy dies?). Yet, the most linear progression we get in the story is Billy's arc as a soldier - it seems as though Billy jumps around in his post-war life, going from his death to his honeymoon and back to the war. The events in the war, however, are always linear. We don't get the bombing of Dresden until close to the end of the book, while we get Billy's death halfway through it. So what does this mean about his flashbacks? Are they flashbacks, and the linear progression of the war story shows how concrete the war is to Billy while his post-war life is not, or is Billy really unstuck in time?



 

Comments

  1. Aidan GarrettMarch 16, 2018 at 9:28 PM

    I think that Tralfamadore fit into the PTSD narrative as acting as a coping method for Billy. But I don't think that Vonnegut is criticizing PTSD victims for becoming complacent to the horrible realities of war. Instead I think he is criticizing wars for causing PTSD and in Billy's case forcing him to create the "so it goes" way of looking at life to cope.

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  2. SophiaMarch 17, 2018 at 12:31 PM

    I've also been wondering about where this story is anchored in time/if there is a "present". Regardless of when it is, Billy's wartime experiences seem to be more real to him than anything else. If WWII is the present, then I see Billy's time travel as an escape, and coping mechanism. If the "present" is in Illium, then that makes Billy's war-time experiences something he is unable to escape, and for his time travel to be a form of PTSD makes a lot of sense
    .

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  3. Nathalie SteinMarch 17, 2018 at 8:58 PM

    I think that Tralfamadore is a coping mechanism for both Billy and Kurt Vonnegut himself. I think that, rather than criticizing veterans, Vonnegut is noting this type of disassociation simply as one possible manifestation of PTSD. I also think that Billy is mostly unstuck in time, getting thrown around aimlessly, but he does seem to suffer from PTSD and have occasional flashbacks that are caused by his PTSD rather than Tralfamadore. In general, I think that it's not really a binary- it's not that he's either only being impacted by Tralfamadore or only being impacted by PTSD, but rather a combination of both.

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  4. BetsyMarch 20, 2018 at 8:22 AM

    I think "so it goes" is totally the point the book is trying to make, and it fits with the whole idea of "this was going to happen no matter what." Is nihilistic the right word to describe that? Maybe defeatist. But according to Vonnegut, nothing about the course of events matters anyway, and we're all just going to get thrown around by forces beyond our control. As for the PTSD, I think Billy's time-jumping is a slightly more humorous way to show the flashbacks. Like, Vonnegut could totally have written this as a series of flashbacks (maybe while he's on the plane with his war buddy? Then he wouldn't have been able to see his death...) but it just wouldn't be as quirky and interesting.

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