Liberating Powers of the Imagination Essay

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Billy Pilgrim has a much different method retreating into the dark depths of his imagination, yet the basic reason remains the same -- escape from a disapproving world. For him, a survivor of one of the worst disasters in World War II, he comes home to the States to find a nation that is almost completely ignorant to the plight he was forced to face stuck in the meat lockers in Dresden. While he witnessed the fire bombings, which resulted in the death of thousands of German civilians, soldiers, and American prisoners of war, the rest of the nation never fully understood the happenings of that fateful event over seas. Rather, he came home to a nation which completely ignored that traumatic experience of his, and he was forced to use his own methods to deal with his trauma through the various facets of his imagination. America did not provide him solace or comfort for the tragic event he had just witnessed, instead his society expected him to return unscathed and throw himself back into middle class life as a practicing dentist. In fact, he never even fully acknowledged his trauma to himself until the night of his wedding anniversary when he is reminded through experiencing the sights and sounds of the barbershop quartet. So he adopts a systematic method of retreating into his own mind to deal with the intense experience which was Dresden. He travels both backwards in time into the meat locker prison as well as forwards in time to a distant planet inhabited by the Tralfamadorians.

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This alien race provides him the comfort and solace which he never received from his late wife and fellow Americans upon returning from the war. They help him understand the fleeting nature of life, and the necessity of death, "So it goes," (Vonnegut, 214). In this context, Vonnegut is making a statement regarding the failure of American society to truly console and comforts its people, and within the context of this failure, the imagination can provide a much needed tool to help deal with the horrors of reality. Although this concept does represent the sort of isolated connectedness seen in Potok's work My Name is Asher Lev, in the idea that the imagination can help you deal with life and life a connected existence with the world around you, yet completely isolates you with the idea that that same society can therefore deem you insane.

Both characters depend on their imagination in order to make it through reality. Asher Lev needs it to further foster his artistic talent which provides him a purpose and a world where he can fully express himself; Billy Pilgrim depends on it to provide therapy for a wound ignored by his country. Both of these works represent the power of the individual imagination, and how although it may distance one from the "real world," it saves one's psyche from complete destruction within the confining limits of that "real world."

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