Free Will in "Slaughterhouse - Five"

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse – Five, the existence of free will vs. determinism is explored. In the novel, this philosophical debate is displayed through both alien belief systems and the life story of a man named Billy Pilgrim. These alien beliefs and events in Billy’s life culminate to make a statement upon free will, which is that free will is only an illusion that humans want to believe in. In the novel, Billy’s whole life can be seen as a predestined, with him having no say over what happens to him. His life starts out with him being drafted into World War II, which was something completely against his will. In the war, Billy was a reluctant soldier, who was always ill-equipped and in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet he never died. In fact, even when Billy tried to let himself die in a barrage of bullets, he was saved by Roland Weary, a fellow soldier. After that, Billy was taken captive by the Germans as a prisoner of war where he was told what to do during every second of every day. This shows that nothing Billy did in his career as a soldier was truly of his own free will. Everything was always decided for him and he never had a say in how his life turned out. Even after the war when he became an older man, his daughter ran his life because she viewed him as mentally unstable. Billy lived his whole life without any of his own choices. Everything was laid out for him and Billy was never once able to do something under his own power. Billy’s inability to control his own life was due to the fact that he had adopted the Tralfamadorian belief system and had applied it to his own life.

In the novel, The Traflamadorians developed a belief system in which a person is always alive at one point in their lives and that time isn’t linear and repeats itself constantly. These beliefs allow the Tralfamadorians to accept their future because in essence, they have already lived it. This acceptance of what is to come shows that the Tralfamadorians do not believe in free will and think that they have no power over future events. This line of thinking extended to Billy Pilgrim and how he lived his everyday life. Once he began to see the way the Tralfamadorians do, Billy gave up on controlling his own life. He accepted what was to come and never tried to change it. This is best exemplified when Billy knows that he will be assassinated while giving a speech. Instead of trying to stop it or alert somebody, he lets himself get shot and he dies. How Billy dies sums up the overall meaning of free will in Slaughterhouse – Five. Free will is something that doesn’t exist. People are destined to live a certain life and we can do nothing to change that. Humans live under the guise of free will because it makes them feel better about their lives, but if something is meant to happen, it will happen regardless to if we try to stop it or not.