I looked at this book and the movie in a different way. Both the book and the movie had a message to the people and to those that have read it. I think that the unknown place of Tralfamador was created in a time of desperation. It stated in the book and in the movie that Tralfamador was a place of just is. It just is this way and nothing can be done to change that fact. It just is so accept it. They always conveyed to Billy to treat things as good and ignore the bad that way you can get back to reality. If you just think positive, things will get better.
Billy created this planet as a way to escape the horror that he saw in Dresden. He saw and did so much and yet never had an answer of why Dresden ever occured. I think he was searching for a way to explain to himself what happened and why it occured. Only he found that he just had to accept it and that it just was that way. He created this as a way to gain perspective and in order for him to make sense out of things. He was looking for a way to be happy and knew that he had to get rid of those memories in order to move on. Was he crazy? Was he brain damaged? Well, that we never really truly find out, but we can say that he was trying to sway from reality and trying to understand why he was this way.
The character Kilgore Trout was mentioned in the book and was central to the story. However, I don't recall him being mentioned in the movie at all.
I think that in life we get hung up on "why" and "what if" and have difficulty accepting that certain things just "are". I absolutely think that Billy (or Vonnegut) created this place or ideal to deal with his experiences and be able to detach a certain amount of emotion from them. If things just "are" (predestined, that is)it is easier to deal with the potential flood of painful emotion that could follow. As long as we still have a notion that things could be or could have been any different, we are holding on to hope that the effects might change. If events could be as concrete as objects then we could deal with them as such. Simply move around them if they are in the way.
ReplyDeleteI think labels such as "crazy" and "brain damaged" automatically discredit the very real coping mechanisms that we all utilize after experiencing trauma (trauma being quite relative). Is it so absurd to think that only a crazy or brain damaged person would create a mental place of solace? Don't people just do what they feel they need to in order to survive?
Again, I agree with you on the labels. I dont think it is fair to call him "crazy" as the books states or brain damaged either. That's why I wrote Is he really what they thought or is he just trying to do as we all do and create a place of solitude? I don't really think the book nor the movie answer this. They never come out and say what is wrong, they make us speculate, but like I said before, we could all be wrong. The message here was to accept that of what we cannot change and live what is to be your destiny however that is for you. You should make your own happiness how you want to make it and if that means inventing in your head and alien place with a strange woman... well than so be it. Most of the "crazy" people that do so are genuises and not understood. I don't know at all if this is his case or if he really is menatlly ill, but he wants to be happy and all the things created are his way to be happy and move past that traumatic time in the war.
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