Rumfoord's Purpose

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kilgore Trout

At first glance, Billy's hospital stay with Rumfoord may appear to be another depiction of Billy acting crazy and contemplating aliens, but it is much more than that.  In Rumfoord, for the first time externally, Billy finds solace.  Having his wife recount all of the details about the Dresden bombings and World War II, Rumfoord makes these events real to Billy.  They are no longer mere points to which he travels in time occasionally, but actual events experienced by many people other than himself.  This realization becomes therapeutic for Billy, allowing him to slowly begin to recover and straighten his mind out.  Eventually, once Billy has regained enough consciousness and sanity, he says to Rumfoord, "I was there," speaking about the Dresden bombings (Vonnegut 191).  Living in imaginary worlds can no longer comfort Billy; he needs sympathy from another human that lived through the same hell he did.  Rumfoord provides that.  Following Billy's first utterance to another person about his time in Dresden, he does not make a complete recovery.  He still utilizes time travel as a coping mechanism as explained in a previous blog, but at least now he knows that what his own personal horrors are not unique.  He is not a suffering anomaly, but rather one of many people victimized by the nasty business that is war.  Ultimately, that knowledge is what Billy needed to truly begin to recover from his time as a soldier.