Billy Pilgrim's Mourning in Slaughterhouse-Five

According to the theory of Sigmund Freud, there are two categories of symptoms that a victim of trauma could suffer, mourning and melancholy. Mourning is explained as “the person realizes that the loved person or object that is lost is truly gone and turns away from reality….marked by dejection, loss of interest, inability to love and inhibition of all activities” (Aryckman) Someone in mourning can eventually come to terms with reality and overcome their trauma, unlike someone suffering from melancholy.

Symptoms of melancholy “exists the additional symptom of a lowering of self-regard” (Aryckman). This means that the sufferer will lose their self-worth on top of the feeling of depression over their loss. Melancholy also has the element of reliving the past experience as a common occurrence of sufferers Bill Pilgrim suffers symptoms of both mourning and melancholy when coping with his traumas in both the novel and the film.

The novel and film have different ways of showing the character’s traumas and coping, but the novel is more efficient and effective at showing this.

To prove this, the original text will be examined followed by the accompanying film. First it must be made clear exactly what traumas Billy Pilgrim faced in both of the works, this character suffers from numerous traumas during the course of the plot In both the film and the text of Slaughterhouse-Five he receives trauma from World War Two, drowning in the pool as a child, and the plane crash in his later life. During the entire course of his life, not only has he had many near-death experiences, but he has also witnessed the deaths of several thousands of people including his own family.

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It is understandable why Billy Pilgrim would have a hard time grasping the reality after all he has lived through in the plot. 50 how does the original text express this to readers?

Bill Pilgrim seems to overlap with symptoms from both melancholy and mourning in the novel, It could be theorized that the jumps in time are actually flashbacks, or reliving the trauma, and thus would be a symptom of melancholy. The past seems to creep into and affect his everyday life, for example: “a siren went off, scared the hell out of him He was expecting World War Three at any time” and “the war had ruined his stomach”. This constant reliving of these traumatic events has made him greatly disconnected to the present, which is apparent where Billy “tried hard to care”. More proof of being a victim to melancholy is evident in the fact that he seems to be self-loathing Billy on several occasions seems to welcome death, and neglected caring for himself to the point where; ”his bare feet were blue and ivory”. In the novel Billy Pilgrim has many symptoms that both melancholy and mourning sharer. He has a few nervous breaks, he has episodes of “weeping”  and has even stopped going to church.

Mourning on the other hand seems to have occurred after his final major trauma, the plane crash. After this crash, it could be argued, that he escapes reality by instead letting his mind go to Tralfamadore. It’s in that mind set he finds a method of coping and possibly accepting. The idea of the alien’s that one “only appears to die” and is “still much alive in the past…” helps him with the sheer number of people’s death he witnessed. A prayer is referenced more than once in the novel and always seems to be near Billy, which gives evidence of his efforts to find comfort and move forward. The prayer reads “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to always tell the difference”.

On page 56 of the novel the reader is told that Billy “worried about it, about his mind in general”, which shows him being concerned about something in the present tense. This passage shows that even before the alien-reality, Billy knows he is troubled and needs to move on. The amount of evidence of Billy’s trails with melancholy and mourning is vast, but what about in the film adaption? The film seems to make up for the lack of a lot of examples by making the few seen very strong, For melancholy the film really laid the time jump/flashbacks on heavily. The bookjumped to the war specifically 18 times, while the film jumped 27 times. What was effective in this was the rapid overlapping of the current moment in his life and the past event, showing how similar both are, This effect is seen throughout the film; the first time jump occurs was as early as 2 minutes and 43 seconds into the film Other examples of melancholy are more subtle.

He is just as willing to die as he is in the original text but the film also shows low appetite, a common sign of depression, at time 37:45. The film shows Billy Pilgrim to be more in the stage of mourning rather than melancholy in the film he actually bonds with others, something that is unlike Billy in the original text. He bonds more with Edgar Derby, a wartime comrade, in the film and also bonds closely with his dog as seen in time 29:30. At time 1:21:30 Billy claims he is “not ready yet” to view his recently deceased wife’s grave and almost seemed sad over his father‘s death both of which are not witnessed in the original text, These examples show that he has formed relationships even though he is traumatized. Billy also seems better adjusted in the film than he does in the novel. Even though he witnessed the bombing of Dresden, at time 30:53 Billy is seen as possibly a volunteer firefighter.

Billy Pilgrim has seemed to have, and still wants to again, communicate his traumas over the war and functions well as a father as seen several times in the film. Just like the novel, the aliens helps Billy start heading towards acceptance which Billy even attests to by saying: “if it were not for Tralfamadore I might have needed an institution”. The alien part of Billy’s plot was rushed and placed at the end of the film, which gives the viewers less time to grasp its importance. So while the movie did have similarities to the original text, it could be argued that it is less effective at showing Billy’s struggles with coping The film made Billy seem closer to acceptance being that he was primarily in the mourning stages rather than melancholy like in the book.

The novel showed a greater number of symptoms than the film, showing the complexity of what he has to go through during the entire plot. It is understandable why the film could not show all the details the book provides, the film had to focus on the more predominate details In this case the film showed the flashback sequences very strongly, perhaps better than the novel could. Both the text and the film have Billy being a victim of Freud‘s melancholy and mourning, but the novel drives the tragedy of his traumatic experiences closer to home for the readers in a way the novel did not As much as it is a cliche to say that the novel is better than the film, in this case it is true.