Billy Pilgrim

Billy Pilgrim is a fictional character and protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five. He was portrayed by Michael Sacks in the 1972 film adaption of Vonnegut's novel.

Billy Pilgrim was based on Vonnegut's comrade-in-arms Joseph Crone.^[1]

Biographical summary

Prior story

Billy Pilgrim is tall at 6 feet 3 inches, weak, and skinny at around 140 pounds. He is also friendly and kind toward others even though some other people are often rude or vain toward Billy and sometimes start accusations against him. Billy also tries to pass on wise advice or information that the Tralfamadorians had told him such as to not focus on war and instead focus on peace and enjoys moments of happiness.

William Pilgrim, only addressed as Billy, was born in Ilium, New York on the Fourth of July of 1922. After Billy graduated from high school, he enrolled in the Ilium School of Optometry.

Explanation of the character's name

"Billy" is a common name, identifying him as an everyman, a "Billy Yank". He is the time-travelling pilgrim, seeking truth and peace.^[2]

Actions in "Slaughterhouse Five"

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In 1943, 21 year old Billy Pilgrim is drafted into the Army and serves as a chaplain's assistant in Virginia. By Summer of 1944, Billy is ordered to serve overseas as a chaplain's assistant on the front-lines in Germany. Billy is taken as prisoner of war by Nazi soldiers on December 16, 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge along with another soldier named Roland Weary. This is when Billy first becomes "unstuck in time", allowing him to re-experience any moment of his life, from pre-birth to his own death. Most of the novel takes place while Billy is re-experiencing various parts of his life. This causes Billy to become emotionally detached. For example, whenever a loved one dies, Billy is not burdened with sadness, because he knows that somewhere in time that person is living and is perfectly alright.

After being captured, he, Roland Weary, and other recently captured prisoners of war are sent by boxcar to a Nazi prisoner of war camp in Luxembourg. Roland Weary dies of gangrene and Roland's insane friend Paul Lazzaro promises to find and kill Billy Pilgrim some years after the war. In January 1945, Pilgrim and other American prisoners of war are transported to a prisoner of war camp in Dresden to perform "contract labor". Their living area is an abandoned slaughterhouse called Schlachthof Fünf, which in English reads Slaughterhouse Five. In February 1945, the city of Dresden is attacked with conventional and incendiary bombs by American and British Air Forces, destroying the city and killing (by the book's account) 135,000 residents. Billy Pilgrim, as well as German soldiers and one hundred other American prisoners of war take refuge in an underground meat locker during the raid, and are among the few survivors. By May 1945, a week after Germany surrenders, Billy and other surviving POWs are transported from Germany to the United States where Billy receives an honorable discharge from service in July 1945.

A few months after the war ends, Billy is institutionalized and put into psychiatric care recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder. While institutionalized, he meets a man named Eliot Rosewater, who introduces Billy to science fiction, specifically novels by Kilgore Trout, a failed author who has written 117 novels but has sold less than 100 copies of all his novels combined. Billy eventually meets Kilgore Trout in 1964 in Ilium and Billy invites Trout to his eighteenth wedding anniversary. Billy remains in the mental hospital for four months until January 1946. After he is released he marries a young, heavyset women named Valencia Merble who comes from a very rich family. Valencia's father owns the Ilium School of Optometry and Billy later attends that school, graduating in 1950. In 1947, Billy and Valencia's first child Robert is born and two years later they have a daughter named Barbara. After Billy graduates from the Ilium School of Optometry, he leads an upper middle class lifestyle as an optometrist making around 60,000 dollars a year and living in a three story, white house in Ilium. Barbara grows up to marry an optometrist. On Barbara's wedding night, Billy is captured by an alien space ship and taken to a planet billions of miles away from Earth called Tralfamadore. On Tralfamadore, Billy meets a pornstar (who was also abducted) named Montana Wildhack, who disappeared and is believed to have drowned herself in the Pacific Ocean. She and Billy fall in love and have a child together. Billy is sent back to Earth to relive past or future moments of his life.

In 1968, Billy is one of the two survivors of a plane crash. While Billy's wife Valencia is driving to the hospital where Billy is being treated, she crashes her car and dies of carbon monoxide poisoning outside the hospital. After Billy is discharged from the hospital, he returns to his home in Ilium, were he is taken care of by his daughter Barbara. Billy tells his daughter Barbara about the Tralfamadorians, but she doesn't believe him, considering him to be crazy.

On February 13, 1976, Billy Pilgrim, now 53 years old, gives a speech at a convention in Chicago, Illinois about his alien abduction. Billy also tells the crowd that Paul Lazzaro, a man he knew during the war is going to murder him. The crowd begins to protest and does not want the killing to take place. Billy then says "If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said". Billy Pilgrim is later assassinated by Paul Lazzaro.

Quotations

You see in Tralfamador, where I presently dwell, life has no beginning, no middle, and no end.

Many years ago, a certain man promised to have me killed. He is an old man now, living not far from here. He has read all of the publicity associated with my appearance in your fair city. He is insane. Tonight he will keep his promise.

If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said.

You see it's time for you to go home - to your lives and your children. It's time for me to be dead for a little while. And then live again. I give you the Tralfamadorian greeting: Hello. Farewell. Hello. Farewell. Eternally connected, eternally embracing. Hello. Farewell.^[3]

Major themes

In Billy Pilgrim, we are faced with a Don Quixote-like character: a mad man interpreting his contemporary world through the lens of his madness… making us question all the meanwhile, the very fabric of our times.^[4]

Literary significance & criticism

Billy Pilgrim is the unlikeliest of antiwar heroes. An unpopular and complacent weakling even before the war (he prefers sinking to swimming), he becomes a joke as a soldier ... The novel centers on Billy Pilgrim to a degree that excludes the development of the supporting characters, who exist in the text only as they relate to Billy's experience of events.^[5]

Film, TV or theatrical portraits

In the 1972 film adaption of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim was portrayed by Michael Sacks.

In the play adaptation by Eric Simonson, directed by Joe Tantalo, Billy Pilgrim was played by Gregory Konow.^[6]

The operatic adaptation by Hans-Jürgen von Bose,^[7] premiered July 1996 at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich; Billy Pilgrim II was sung by Uwe Schonbeck.^[8]

References

Sources, external links

• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1969), Allusions in Popular Music
• Billy Pilgrim's two characters, Marel Vit's Kurt Vonnegut Corner
• Major Characters, Slaughterhouse Five
• The effects of War on Slaughthouse Five's Billy Pilgrim, Cameron Batschke, Marel Vit's Kurt Vonnegut Corner
• Is Billy Pilgrim Sane?, Oliver Clothesoff, bignerds
• The Absurd Worlds of Billy Pilgrim, JOANNA GAVINS, SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY, UK [www.pala.ac.uk/resources/proceedings/1999/docs/gavins.doc]
• Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim: a psychiatric approach to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five., Gulani, Susanne
• Isolation: The Little Prince and Billy Pilgrim, Youth and Society, 6, 1, 22-31, Sep 74 [1]
• A critical analysis of Slaughterhouse-Five, Quinn Lewis, Marel Vit's Kurt Vonnegut Corner
• Billy Pilgrim as a Christ Figure in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse Five , azette

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