Essay --

Slaughter house 5 by Kurt Vonnegut is the story of Billy Pilgrim a soldier in WWII that time travels. At the beginning of the story In Slaughterhouse 5 the frequent use of time travel is Billy Pilgrim’s way of coping with the regrets, and reliving the accomplishments of his life Billy has many regrets in the story but there are 3 regrets that really trouble him a lot. The first is the death of Ronald Weary. Billy is in a huge battle and falls next to a tree where Weary helps him only to receive credit for the rescue. When Weary arrives the Germans spot them and they become prisoners of war they are put on a train and sent to a prison. While Weary is on the train he develops a deadly disease in his foot which consequently kills him. â€Å"There was death on the ninth day in the car ahead of Billy’s too. Ronald weary died of gangrene that had started in his mangles feet. So it goes. Weary in his nearly continuous delirium told of the three musketeers acknowledged that he was dying, gave many messages to be delivered to his family in Pittsburg. Above all, he wanted to be avenged, so he said again and again the name of the person who had killed him. Everyone on the car learned the lesson well. Who killed me he would ask. And everybody knew the answer whi ch was this Billy Pilgrim.† The next thing Billy regrets is going on an airplane that is headed to an optometry convention. He knows it is going to crash because of his ability to time travel yet, he still gets on the plane so he doesn’t make a fool out of himself. He survives the plane crash and wakes up in the hospital. â€Å"Billy pilgrim got on a chartered airplane 25 years after that. He knew it was going to crash but he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so.† After the plane ... ... Traflamadorian philosophy he realizes that time travel to cope with his feelings is not a viable solution. The traflamadorians taught him that there is nothing he can to prevent change or alter the future in anyway because from the beginning the moment was is and always will be struvtured that way. Before he went to traflamadore Billy was time travaling quite frequently to try and cope with regrets and relive accomplishments to see if he could have done anything differently in any of the situations he found himself in. Billy seemed to kill himself over what he could and could not have done. After the experience on traflamadore Billy didn’t time travel as much and he seemed to be at peace with the world and his fate. So it is evident that the frequent use of time travel is Billy Pilgrim’s way of coping with the regrets, and reliving the accomplishments of his life.