During World War II, Americans were sent to Germany to fight Nazism, and when they returned home, it was difficult for them to return to normal life. Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five, was one of these soldiers, and in his book he creates a character named Billy who was so affected by the war that he claims to have been kidnapped by an alien race who called the Tralfamadorians. Billy is affected by Tralfamadorian views and to some extent loses his mind by rejecting free will, fantasizing about death, fleeing war, and dreaming of seeing all moments of time at once like the Tralfamadorians. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay It is said that when Billy first arrived on Tralfamadore, he was forty-four years old. Tralfamadore is a fictional alien planet in Slaughterhouse 5 located billions and billions of miles from Earth and inhabited by Tralfamadorians. When he's not time traveling, Billy spends his time in Tralfamadore in a zoo specially designed to mimic a home on Earth. While it is here it is on display for all Tralfamadorians to see. He answers questions from the Tralfamadorians who observe him and goes about his daily routine as best he can. The Tralfamadorians teach him to “detach himself from time” and their vision of death. They view death as just a bad condition in that person's life at that time, and they say that person is perfectly fine at many other times. They use the phrase “So it goes” every time they see a dead body. Billy also views death this way, and the phrase "So it is" is used repeatedly throughout the book whenever death is brought up. Later, after Billy has been on "Tralfamadore" for a while, the Tralfamadorians bring another human, a girl named Montana Wildhack, with whom Billy can mate. Billy's time travel shows that they actually ended up having a child together on Tralfamadore. When Billy is first kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians, he feels trapped in his current situation. Billy doesn't know why he was the one captured instead of anyone else, and the Tralfamadorians respond with "there's no why." The aliens tell Billy while he is captured that "only on Earth do we talk about free will" and that he is stupid to think it exists. On their planet, the beings teach Billy that from the beginning to the end of his life, he will be trapped every moment of his life. They go on to describe the feeling of being caught in a moment, as if you were an insect trapped in amber. Moments will never stop or cease to exist unless a person dies. After the Tralfamadorians explain this to Billy, he begins to realize that free will does not exist like they said. He understands that moments always exist and that humans are stuck in the moment. Life goes on without being able to stop it, and eventually, Billy becomes calm knowing this fact and doesn't fight the way his life is evolving or has evolved. He claims to know when he will die and be murdered, but he doesn't seem to care because that's what he learned on Tralfamadore when he was there. To remind himself that everything that happens happens for a reason, Billy often repeats the phrase: "God grant me the peace to accept the things I cannot change." Another character, Montana Wildhack, has it displayed on a necklace she wears, sowhen Billy sees it, he remembers this sentence and the meaning he gives to it. While Billy is a prisoner of war and aboard the Tralfamadorian spaceship, he thinks about free will in war and if humans had free will then conflict should not prevail. He thinks about everything the Tralfamadorians taught him, and now he no longer agrees with war or any other type of large-scale conflict. After witnessing the firebombing in Dresden, he thinks there must be a way to prevent actions like this. War is inhumane and no human should willingly want to be used as a puppet for an act of war. In Slaughterhouse-Five, most characters are affected by lack of free will and those who are unaffected are often sadistic humans. Roland Weary, for example, considers himself a tough fighter, known for his torture techniques and killing style. In reality, he was abandoned by soldiers better than him, and he was forced to wander in a forest with Billy, so Weary often makes fun of him. Weary ends up dying in the war and Billy just accepts it. Billy, again, is used to the Tralfamadorian way of thinking instead of the grief and mourning of death on Earth. When a Tralfamadorian dies on their planet, they are still alive in all their previous moments, so Tralfamadorians do not view death as a remarkable occasion. On top of that, Billy can also move forward and backward to different points in time like the Tralfamadorians can, and he knows how he's going to die and he's not concerned at all. The Tralfamadorians changed his ideals to make him believe that death is not something sad, according to the Tralfamadorians. In fact, whenever someone dies, the Tralfamadorians simply respond "there you go." Billy's lays out his ideals so that they are clear to readers when he states: "The most important thing I learned about Tralfamadore is that when a person dies, they only appear to die. He is still very much alive in the past... All moments, past, present and future, have always existed and will always exist... It is an illusion that we have on Earth that one moment follows one after another like pearls on a chain, and once that moment passes, it's gone forever. Even though the moments pass quickly, the aliens often advise Billy to focus on the more joyful aspects of life and not dwell on the more serious or sad moments. They go on to say to only look at the finer things in life, because life is mostly wonderful. Even though life can be beautiful and wonderful, there is always conflict and chaos that ensues. While on Tralfamadore, Billy talks about the aliens regarding the wars on Earth and what an extraordinary danger to all life the humans on his planet must pose. The Tralfamadorians view his concerns as incompetent because they know how the world ends and it's not because of humans. The perennial view of the Tralfamadorians is not that humans are absurd and primitive for participating in war. It's because Billy is so simple-minded to hope for such a coherent future and that he overestimates the importance of the human part in the Universe. Specifically, it exaggerates free will and neglects to perceive that war and extreme destruction are happening, because that is how it is supposed to happen. By explaining all this to Billy, they make him “dead to the world” and take away his ability. to live successfully, but Billy's Tralfamadorian encounters allow him to cope with all the deaths he has seen, because.