Billy Pilgrim

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Billy Pilgrim, full name William Pilgrim, is the fictional protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Billy is an optometrist trapped in a loveless marriage and residing in 'Ilium', a fictional duplicate of the city of Schenectady, New York where Vonnegut worked as a publicist for the General Electric company, and where several of his other novels are set. Slaughterhouse-Five describes Billy Pilgrim's random travels through time and space as a result of his abduction by the '"four-dimensional"' aliens known as the Tralfamadorians.

Billy Pilgrim, like Vonnegut himself, was a prisoner of war in Dresden during the Allied firebombing of World War II, and his later life is greatly influenced by what he saw during the war. Indeed, Pilgrim travels between parts of his life repeatedly and effortlessly, meaning that he's literally lived through the events more than once, perhaps a metaphor for the profound effect of war memories on veterans many years after the war has ended.