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Lily LeDuc

Mr. Smith

Honors Junior Literature

March 7, 2023

Slaughterhouse-Five Comparative Essay

When someone experiences a traumatic event it is likely for them to develop a disorder

called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD makes it extremely difficult for a person to recover

from a specific traumatizing event that occurred in their life, it reminds them about things they

wish to forget and makes them feel the pain all over again. The novel Slaughterhouse-Five by

Kurt Vonnegut, and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong both show the effect

PTSD has on a person mentally and the people around them. Vonnegut and Vuong’s works are

similar in regards to the fact that they both show the long term effects of trauma on a person such

as PTSD, but they are different when it comes to the source of the trauma.

Vonnegut and Vuong use the main characters in each of the novels, Billy and Little Dog,

to show the effects of trauma on a person and the development of PTSD. In the novel

Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim suffers with PTSD which is clearly shown when it’s said that

“Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened

on his wedding day”(Vonnegut 23). Billy coming unstuck in time is evidence of him suffering

from PTSD because it shows him trying to isolate himself from his pain by reflecting back on the

happy and calm parts of his life where he felt safe. Similar to Billy suffering from PTSD, in the

novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Little Dog also suffered from PTSD. Little Dog

remembers the time when his mom hit him for the first time, “I must have been four. A hand, a

flash, a reckoning. My mouth a blaze of touch”(Vuong 5). Little Dogs memory of the trauma he
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experienced so long ago in his life shows that he is suffering from PTSD from his childhood

because most people don’t remember a lot from their life when they were young and the fact that

he remembers specifically that event shows that it really traumatized him and has stayed with

him throughout his entire life. Although Billy and Little Dog both experienced trauma and were

suffering from PTSD, the source of their trauma was not the same, “And then, one morning, they

got up to discover the door was unlocked. World War Two in Europe was over. Billy and the rest

wandered out onto the shady street. The trees were leafing out. There was nothing going on out

there, no traffic of any kind. There was only one vehicle, an abandoned wagon drawn by two

horses”(215). For Billy there was a direct source of his PTSD, the war. All of Billy’s trauma

came from experiences from the war and led to him developing PTSD. Although there was a

direct source of Billy’s PTSD for Little Dog there wasn’t, “I didn’t know that the war was still

inside you, that there was a war to begin with, that once it enters you it never leaves-but merely

echoes, a sound forming the face of your own son. Boom”(Vuong 4). In terms of the source of

Little Dogs PTSD it is a little more complicated than Billy’s. Little Dog's mother witnessed the

war and even after the war she was still being affected by the trauma of it, the way she coped

with her PTSD and never got help, ended up affecting Little Dog. She would have these times

where she would lash out at Little Dog and sometimes she would hurt him, she didn’t want to

hurt him but she just couldn’t control herself and her emotions. Little Dog’s mom's PTSD from

the war led to Little Dogs PTSD from his childhood. Little Dog never experienced the war but

his mothers trauma from the war still greatly affected his life. In both novels the authors,

Vonnegut and Vuong, use characters such as Billy and Little Dog to display the long term effects

of trauma on a person, Billy and Little Dog were similar in the fact that they both suffered from

PTSD but they were different when it came to the source of their PTSD.
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There are many different symptoms associated with PTSD, for Billy and Little Dog it

was flashbacks. Billy and Little Dog both experienced these flashbacks that would sporadically

go back in time to specific moments in their life. There was one difference between their

flashbacks, Billy would flashback not only to moments that occurred in his life but he also had

flashbacks of going to another world, Tralfamadore, “Billy thought hard about the effect the

quartet had had on him, and then found an association with an experience he had had long ago.

He did not travel in time to the experience. He remembered it shimmeringly”(Vonnegut 177).

After the war there would be certain things that would happen in Billy’s life that would remind

him of an experience or certain memory of the war and he would flashback to that time and

completely disassociate himself with the real world while he was in the flashback. Sometimes he

would flashback to happy moments in his childhood and other times he would flashback to

traumatizing moments from the war. These flashbacks made it very difficult for Billy to move on

with his life after the war because he was constantly remembering all the trauma he had

experienced during the war. Similar to Billy’s flashbacks of his past Little Dog also experienced

flashbacks from his childhood, “The time, in third grade, with the help of Mrs. Callahan, my

ESL teacher, I read the first book that I loved, a children’s book called Thunder Cake, by Patricia

Polacco”(Vuong 5). Little Dog’s flashbacks would sometimes be of trauma from his past and

others like this one were positive and happy memories. Little Dog didn’t have the typical mother

son relationship every little boy has, his mom was dealing with PTSD from the war and didn’t

always treat Little Dog right. Little Dogs flashback to third grade reminded him of the absence of

his mother, she was in his life physically but wasn’t actually there for him. These flashbacks

reminded him of what he missed out on with his mother which led him to feel some sadness and

anger towards her. Even though Billy and Little Dog both experienced flashbacks as a symptom
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of PTSD, Billy would also have flashbacks to an imaginary planet called Tralfamadore, “He

said, too, that he had been kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967. The saucer was from the planet

Tralfamadore, he said. He was taken to Tralfamadore, where he was displayed naked in a zoo, he

said. He was mated there with a former Earthling movie star named Montana

Wildhack”(Vonnegut 25). Billy would flashback in time to certain moments from his past and he

would also flashback to Tralfamadore. Billy would relate an experience from his past, for

example his time at the mental hospital after the war, and take that memory and almost recreate it

in his head but on Tralfamadore not earth. The zoo in this case represents the mental hospital

Billy was emitted to. Although Billy and Little Dog experienced the same symptom of PTSD,

moving back and forth in time, Billy's case was a lot more severe because he was traveling to

another made up planet and having flashbacks of things that hadn’t even happened in real life.

The novels Slaughterhouse-Five and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous explore the

symptoms of PTSD due to trauma and the effects it has on a person’s life. Vonnegut and Vuong

use characters in the novel, Billy and Little Dog, to demonstrate the effects PTSD has on a

person. Billy and Little Dog both suffered from PTSD but the source of their PTSD was

different, Billy’s was from the war and Little Dogs was from certain aspects of his childhood,

specifically those that involved his mother. As a result of Billy and Little Dog’s trauma, they

both experienced flashbacks to certain moments from their past and in Billy’s case from a planet

called Tralfamadore. There are many different severity levels of PTSD and whether your PTSD

is severe or it isn't, PTSD can end up affecting your day to day life and relationships without you

even realizing it. It is important that if you are dealing with PTSD and its affecting your life to

find help because it could potentially lead to other mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression.

Works Cited
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Vonnegut, K. (1991). Slaughterhouse-five: Or The Children's crusade. Laurel.

Vuong, O. (2021). On Earth we're briefly gorgeous: A novel. Penguin Books.

Skill Not Foundational Proficient Advanced

Yet
Identifies a topic Appears in first Thesis establishes a
paragraph complex claim

Thesis establishes a
topic and a claim
Addresses themes
from both texts
Thesis
Comments:

Includes two or Includes evidence Includes specific,

fewer sources from at least 2 meaningful, and
sources that clearly well-chosen
Some evidence relate to the thesis evidence that relates
relates to the thesis to the thesis
Includes evidence
from the text to
Evidence support
understanding of
thematic element

Comments:

Summarizes sources Explains how Explains well-

evidence supports selected points of
topic sentence of comparison among
individual sources and
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paragraphs evidence and their

connection to the
Explains how thesis
Analysis
evidence supports
the thesis of the
essay

Comments:

Little connection Explains how the Clearly explains

between texts; texts/sources are relationships among
difficult for the related, though texts (how they are
reader to see how points could be similar and
the texts are related more selective or different, provide
better developed differing
Synthesis perspectives,
Includes multiple enhance
sources in each body understanding when
paragraph placed near each
other etc.)

Comments:

Some elements Heading is correctly No errors in MLA

missing or some formatted format
errors in MLA format
Pages are numbered

In-text citations are

correctly formatted

Works Cited format:

hanging indent,
MLA Format double-spaced,
alphabetized, starts
on a new page

Works Cited: each

source entry is in
correct MLA format
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Comments:

Shows evidence of Most quotes are All quotes are

basic proofreading correctly integrated correctly integrated

Follows essay Shows evidence of

Conventions organization careful proofreading

Shows evidence of
proofreading

Comments: