In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, who are the Tralfamadorians? What do they teach Pilgrim? How does Pilgrim feel about the time he spends...

In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, the Tralfamadorians are a race of aliens who can see in four dimensions and who uphold the philosophy that death is meaningless. The Tralfamadorians abduct Billy Pilgrim on the night of his daughter's wedding and take him to their planet, Tralfamadore, where they keep him in a human zoo with an actress named Montana Wildhack in order to observe the act of mating.

The Tralfamadorians teach Billy about the continuous and anachronistic nature of time. Billy learns that time does not move forward and that all time exists at once, meaning that humans never really die. Billy sees this as a comforting concept.

Billy's experience in Tralfamadore is a sort of welcome relief from the pain and suffering he experiences in his real life, particularly after the experience of living through a war and the Dresden bombings. Billy freely embraces his experiences in Tralfamadore, even though his life as an abductee is devoid of free will (even the abduction itself). Billy is eager to learn to accept things as they are (hence, the repeated philosophy of "So it goes") rather than trying to control or change his circumstances. He longs to share this knowledge and his freedom from suffering with humans on earth.