Trauma's Unveiling Anonymous College

Trauma is a tricky thing. It hurts people deeply, and then tricks them into believing they have forgotten about it or have overcome it. It nests deep within a person’s soul, perched between fragile emotions and memories, contaminating its surroundings until its effects manifest in the person it has taken ahold of; these effects often have the ability to alter a person’s mind as 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 his belief that he was abducted by aliens―Tralfamadorians, in particular―and has time traveled through all the events of his life. Vonnegut leaves it to the reader to decide whether Billy has really experienced all he says he did. However, careful analysis shows that Billy Pilgrim has created this story as a way to cope with the horrors as an American soldier during World War II and his early childhood traumas. Even so, he creates an unorthodox view of life within this fantasy, in which every moment is predestined and has already occurred. No matter how much Billy Pilgrim would certainly want to have been kidnapped by aliens and given a more “enlightened” outlook as an escape, he was simply not...