Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is the perfect novel through which to explore the effects of truth on a work as it challenges readers to think long and hard about the role that the imagination plays in literature. As audiences struggle to keep their head above the tidal wave that is Billy Pilgrim’s story, they are forced to brand him either a maverick or a lunatic. Billy’s fantastic explorations through time and space are exciting despite their occurrence to such a dull man, yet it is this utterly uninteresting persona that makes the reader’s task so difficult. The character of Billy Pilgrim pathetic, bland and boring in every sense and that is what ultimately dissuades readers from attributing his experiences solely to insanity. In this novel, the truth isn’t something that is either given to, or kept away from readers, but rather a decision left to them upon receiving all the facts. Where science rules one head, Billy’s matter of fact testimonials sway many into considering the possibility of truth in his words, or at least believing that such things exist in Billy’s reality. What non-believers might not have considered is the extent to which truth carries into Billy’s ‘normal life,’ how much of this mundane existence is reality and to what degree has Vonnegut gone to distort the facts.
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