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Is The Choice Really Ours?: Determinism Versus Free Will in Slaughterhouse Five Is the life of each individual already planned? Is each turn their life takes just in the path that has already been laid out for them? Or does each person have the power to choose the path in which they will follow everyday? In Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut leads the reader to believe in determinism or fate as the essences of life. Billy …

…him to change or do anything different. This was a perfect example of Billy's complete faith in determinism. Slaughterhouse Five was a book all about determinism. Free will was not shown in the characters throughout the novel. Vonnegut must not believe that each individual can make a choice about their life. Billy Pilgrim truely did not, and he was a creation of Vonnegut's. Why should each person believe in free will? Is it even possible?