Slaughterhouse five

So was Billy really time travelling or was it all PTSD induced hallucinations?

neither. it's a work of fiction.

but, OK, leaving that aside, why does it matter? It "really" happened to Billy because the chemicals connecting the neurons in his brain created the experience for him, same as they did in your head when they created the experience of getting raped by your uncle earlier this evening. plato's cave, etc…

There is no riddle to it, no hidden answer that can be found within some labyrinthian logic. Vonnegut doesn't write two possibilities so one can be dismissed, both are there to be considered, both play into the themes of the novel.

Learn to read.

What the fuck is wrong with you

Go back to normieville you piece of shit.

How can you talk to people like this? You are disgusting

*belches*

I want to fuck Michael Area's tiny little twink ass.

Lazy loser. I bet you only read Wikipedia summaries.

These days, people come up with very original "theories" about how "it was all in the character's head" for every work of fiction that is in any way fantastical or over-the-top.

But in SH5, there are actually good reasons to interpret it like that - the time travel occurs between very stressful moments in Billy's life, while the alien trip happens after his head trauma and consists of elements he had seen previously in his life (the religious quote, the porn actress, the setting of the sci-fi novel).

I mean, if you want to insist that it all literally happened then there's not really any evidence in the text to stop you (other than "aliens don't exist lol"). But imo the narrative becomes more elegant if you interpret the fantastical as imaginary for the reasons mentioned above. Either way, like said, what matters is that Billy believed it and lived his life accordingly.

It was all in his head, but it all actually happened.
I mean it all happened, but it was in his head.
Like, it was hallucinations, but he got abducted and everything.
Like he was just traumatized from war, but he could see through time, all in his head, but it all still happened for real, even though he was only imagining it, it all still happened, in his head, for real.

trippy

I think living might not be your thing.

yes boss

He was really time travelling. Trafalmadore (sp?) appears in other Vonnegut works, and its Trafalmadorians talk about their temporal fluidity. Clearly in Vonneguts universe time travel is possible. I don't find the arguments presented here persuasive enough to convince me that he would create a sci-fi-y time travelling species, only to make them not induce any time travel in their debut novel appearance

That's some advanced shitposting

aww poor lil brainlet lmao

The Tralfamadorians are described as having wildly different appearances (and maybe differences in regards to other traits, too? Can't remember, but definitely different appearances) in the different books. If their descriptions aren't consistent between books, why should we assume they are real in Vonnegut's universe? Or at least why should we assume that the Tralfamadorians in SH5 were real when they are so different from the Tralfamadorians in Sirens of Titan (which, for the record, was actually their debut appearance, not SH5)?

Vonnegut's novels have an interesting recycling of characters and places and sci-fi elements like that that I've never noticed in other authors. He reuses Tralfamadorians but changes the details behind them the same way he does that to Eliot Rosewater or Rabo Karabekian. To me, it seems like he used these names almost as generic names for the archetypes they fit under.

I'm guessing you aren't the user I was responding to, but what does that mean for the question I posed? Does his reusing the alien race in another novel provide any evidence at all for the assertion that they are anything more than an hallucinatory creation of a character in one of those novels? Can't they be real in one instance and imagined in another?

They could be real sometimes and imagined another. I agree with this user . It is intentionally left up in the air, but that isn't as important in the book as what they tell Billy.
When I first read it I had already read some of his other novels, including Sirens of Titan, so I assumed that it was just his usual silly sci-fi things happening and took the aliens at face value. I've always suspected the ptsd explanation of just coming from decades of english teachers trying to blow the minds of high school students.

i do
and porn reviews

Kill yourself you father fucking asshole dumb shit I sincerely hope you die in a cesspit filled with maggots who are themselves filled with maggots filled with HItler's mustache. Your mother must be so fucking disappointed in herself to have birthed you you piece of human trash. God, if he exists should kill himself because he let you exist. Jesus died for our sins but not yours. Kill yourself. Maybe the only reason you're alive is because the devil doesn't want you down there.

Holy shit. Sounds like a book review Neil Degrasse Tyson would write.
>feelings are material therefore they have no value

*leans forward on chair* BRAAAAAAAAAPPP

>Vonnegut's novels have an interesting recycling of characters and places and sci-fi elements like that that I've never noticed in other author

Look up Roald Dahl and Gremlins. He didn't invent them, but two of his books brought them into the common imagination out of being an obscure air force joke. The two have different descriptions of gremlins, what they do, what they eat, whether they read, and depending on which version you read, you'll have not just a very different view on how true to form the gremlins in the other book are, or in the air force before that, but also on how true to form Gremlins the movie is and what bits they should have kept as the true form.

There're also many stock characters which under go the same transformation. To get very /co/ for a minute, the harlequin, the philandering shit thrower in the commedia dell'arte, is different from the early Harlequin in comics, who still wears the costume but is obsessed with getting married to the Green Lantern and female, which is of course different to Harley Quinn in any of her forms, though she descends in the same line from the same stock.

Recycling of place (El Dorado, Cockeigne, Vahalla, Mars, ...), character (Falstaff, Faust, Flashman, Thor), and sci-fi elements (DC-8 like spacecraft, wormholes, unconscious writers of the universe, robots who fall in love with you) happens so commonly before post-modernism it's hard to tie it to just Vonnegut's time period, but there has been a proliferation of these since Vonnegut as such deconstruction became more popular.
You can find an example in most genres now but detective/crime/historical fiction tends to be rife with them, not just sci-fi. Even in music you find it with Bowie being a large culprit, writing songs in character for Ziggy, the Thin White Duke, and other recurring versions of himself over the development of their life story who play minor or major roles in his life story.

nothing I said should imply that feelings have no value. I'm just saying perception is reality. OP is asking for objective truth where none exists, both because
- the narrator believes what is happening to him. So, he is reporting it as reality, regardless of whether he is "really" time-travelling or not, there are aliens, etc

- it is a work of fiction to begin with.

also, this theory is compatible with what I said. However clumsily-worded it may be, it is a good point.

I believe feelings have value.

>PTSD induced hallucinations
That's not how PTSD works, you fucking civilian.

Suck a fuck you war mongerer

Neil Degrasse Tyson is cancer