The Influence of Kilgore Trout

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Throughout the novel, I struggled with the idea of Billy Pilgrim time traveling.  Aside from that detail, and the Tralfamadorians it brought with it, the rest of the novel was quite realistic and grounded.  This led me to believe that time travel represented something else for Billy.  After reading about the plot lines of Kilgore Trout's novels, my suspicions were confirmed.  One of Trout's novels, The Big Board, revolved around "an Earthling man and woman who were kidnapped by extra-terrestrials" and "put on display in a zoo on a [foreign] planet" (Vonnegut 201).  Remarkably, Billy claimed he lived out the same scenario with Montana Wildhack.  Another of Trout's novels involved a character in possession of a time machine, which explains Billy believing he can actually travel through time.  The similarities between these science fiction novels and Billy's personal accounts of time traveling and alien encounters point to an interesting conclusion.  Billy utilized the works of Kilgore Trout as an escape from the cruelty he had so often encountered in the world.  Immersing himself in Trout's worlds served as a form of escapism for him.  Accepting that he could time travel allowed him to deal with his traumatic memories without actually reliving them.  In this manner, namely choosing a fictitious reality over his own life, Billy Pilgrim lost part of his sanity.  The point Vonnegut aims to make is that without his traumatic memories, without his experiences with war, Billy Pilgrim would have lived a normal, happy life.