"Maturity" as Told by a Pilgrim

What does Kurt Vonnegut have to say about maturity in Slaughterhouse Five?

Kurt Vonnegut, in his novel Slaughterhouse Five, introduces an antihero protagonist who examples to readers what maturity lacks, as well has its complex relationship with adversity. The audience experiences the life of Billy Pilgrim, who suffers from severe PTSD after experiencing the bombing of Dresden, Germany during World War I. Vonnegut presents a character deeply impacted by trauma, who regresses rather than matures from the adversity he endures. Billy routinely experiences psychological flashbacks that take him away from the current moment he is in, to the point that he is no longer mentally present in reality. Billy describes the moment when he “first came unstuck in time” (Vonnegut, 54), and travels in his mind back to the moment when he was a little boy and first learned to swim. The audiences witnesses as Billy leaves his current situation in the middle of World War I, and reminisces about his "execution" as his dad "was going to throw Billy into the deep end" (54). Then, Billy travels mentally to years past the war, when Billy visits his dying mother who "had caught pneumonia, and wasn't expected to live" (55). Throughout the extent of the novel, Vonnegut tells Billy's life story in fragmented, random parts, with short snippets into the present, as Billy's war-torn mind escapes to other times in his life. The reader struggles to follow this non-chronological pattern, but cannot help noticing that Billy's mind always travels back to the war. Vonnegut describes “crippled human beings” and tragic events (Vonnegut, 191), soldiers who "pranced, staggered and reeled to the gate of the Dresden slaughterhouse" (194), and relays the war through Billy's perspective. He describes that when Dresden was bombed, "the one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn" (227). This event, when the American troops bombed Germany's city of Dresden, serves as a climactic part of the novel, because it is the moment that sends Billy over the edge. Readers assume that based on the title of the book, which alludes to the name of the shelter in Dresden that Billy stayed in, Dresden's bombing is the event that psychologically damaged Billy to his current and severe state. Billy is desensitized to death, and responds to many horrific deaths with “so it goes” throughout the novel (Vonnegut, 2). After Dresden is bombed, Vonnegut describes that "everybody else in the neighborhood was dead. So it goes." (227). He purposefully repeats this phrase throughout the novel so that it catches the audience's attention, alerting them to a crippling problem. Billy cannot comprehend the weight of death, or of life, because his war experience has overwhelmed him. Billy's mind is like a record player that always scratches in one area, stuck in a pattern that catapults him out of the linear flow of time, and out of reality as well. Billy visits an imaginary planet called Tralfamadore, which is his most obvious coping mechanism. On Tralfamadore, aliens reassure Billy that moments are permanent and can be revisited at any time, which is why death is "just an illusion we have here on earth" (34). According to the Tralfamadorians, a "dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments" (34). This line of thinking gives Billy comfort, but escapism is a dangerous tool, and Vonnegut displays that it has no correlation with maturity. Billy's daughter "though her father was senile, even though he was only forty-six-- senile because of damage to his brain" (36). When Billy's wife dies and his son comes back from the war where he served a green beret, Billy is so enslaved to the places he goes in his mind, that he has little response. In fact, "it was generally believed that he was a vegetable" (243). While "Valencia was being put into the ground" (243), Billy's mind "was preparing letters and lectures about the flying saucers, the negligibility of death, and the true nature of time" (243). Billy's adult life is anything but full of mature moments and growth... he is so captured by the idea of Tralfamadore: of a place where all of the pain and suffering life brings is made easier, that he misses crucial moments in his real life. He makes no impact on his children and wife that lead them to respect him. In fact, they must care for him as if he is a child. He embraces a false truth and builds his life upon it, missing real life in the interim. This way of living is impossible to advocate, and requires no integrity or maturity. Escapism and denial sure make the horrors in this world easier to comprehend, but ultimately lead people to miss rich and good moments in their lives, and only backpedal growth.
From his overwhelming amount of flashbacks, it is clear that Billy Pilgrim needs to confront what he went through, because it still plagues him. Billy cannot move on with his life until he addresses the horrible realities he has endured. Through Billy's example, Vonnegut shows that when people experience tragedy, they must confront the truth of what they have endured, or they will be overtaken by their adversities instead of growing because of them. It takes guts to confront our most difficult memories, but if not, how will we ever hope to grow? Vonnegut displays a character who is trapped by trauma, and through this character illustrates that maturity must confront reality and take the time to work through hardship, no matter how difficult. He shows exactly what maturity is not, and reminds readers that someone who is healthy and growing- someone who is mature- lives actively in the present, and sees what is true, although that truth may be difficult to take in. Billy Pilgrim requires real help: probably intensive counseling and years of healing. Yet if Billy does not seek out help, he will never truly be present in his life again, because he is stuck in another world and cannot move forward until he has addressed his traumatic experiences. Mature people do not settle to live enslaved to anything, and strive to be awake to their realities. Shakespeare, Sophocles, Ralph Ellison, and Kurt Vonnegut point out that mature people search for what is true: about themselves and the world around them. Pain must be brought to the surface and made tender again, in order for healing to be possible. If healing never happens, pain will rot within us like a sore that touches everything we do, and we will never become the dynamic individuals we were made to be.