Kurt Vonnegut 's ' Slaughterhouse Five '

Many writers in history have written science fiction novels and had great success with them, but only a few have been as enduring over time as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Slaughterhouse-Five is a personal novel which draws upon Vonnegut's experience's as a scout in World War Two, his capture and becoming a prisoner of war, and his witnessing of the fire bombing of Dresden in February of 1945 (the greatest man-caused massacre in history). The novel is about the life and times of a World War Two veteran named Billy Pilgrim. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses structure and point of view to portray the theme that time is relative.

Vonnegut includes himself in scenes within Slaughterhouse-Five to portray an “author-as-character” unique style. It is in the tenth chapter when Vonnegut switches points of view to reveal himself as one of the soldiers alongside Billy.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one of the most well known World War II authors. His humble beginnings and early life misfortunes shaped not only his writings, but also his view of the world. His imprisonment in Dresden in World War II, however, formed his opinions about war at an early age and later inspired many of his works and style of writing. After the returning from World War II, Vonnegut voiced his sentiments through his writing that war was wasteful and uncivilized. Vonnegut developed a unique blend of sadness, satire, and simplicity, along with his ability to understand the audience, which made his novels comprehensible and inspirational to any

When Kurt Vonnegut traveled home for Mother's day in 1944 his mother had been found dead due to an overdose on sleeping pills. The death of his mother would haunt him for the rest of his life (Farrell n.p.) However, this was not the end to the deaths in his family. In 1958,” Vonnegut’s family life took a traumatic turn...when his sister Alice died of cancer forty-eight hours after her husband, James Carmalt Adams, had been killed in a commuter train crash in New York City.”(Farrell n.p.) Vonnegut lost these three people who were close to him and tells emphasises his feelings about death in his novel. He stresses numerous times that the killing of the people in Dresden was horrible even if it was supposedly necessary for the Americans to win the war. Billy Pilgrim’s family also has a turn of events that end up tearing his family apart within a small window of time just as Vonnegut's had. On the day of Billy's plane crash, which resulted in him being the lone survivor, Billy’s wife rushed to the hospital only to be killed due to carbon monoxide poisoning upon arriving. Death is something that Vonnegut struggled to overcome and influenced this

Kurt Vonnegut writes pessimistic novels, or at least he did back in the sixties. Between Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night, and Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut paints a cynical and satirical picture of the degradation of society using distortion as the primary means to express himself. In Cat's Cradle, the reader is confronted with the story of the narrator, John, as he attempts to gather material to write a book on the human aspect of the day Japan was bombed. As the

Many people returned from World War II with disturbing images forever stuck in their heads. Others returned and went crazy due to the many hardships and terrors faced. The protagonist in Slaughter-House Five, Billy Pilgrim, has to deal with some of these things along with many other complications in his life. Slaughter House Five (1968), by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is an anti-war novel about a man’s life before, after and during the time he spent fighting in World War II. While Billy is trying to escape from behind enemy lines, he is captured and imprisoned in a German slaughterhouse. The author tells of Billy’s terrible experiences there. After the war, Billy marries and goes to school to

Kurt Vonnegut is an American novelist from Indianapolis, Indiana, born in 1922. A very important part of his life was when he served in WWII where he was taken as a prisoner of

This kind-of off the wall opinion can be interpreted as people being physically stuck in this world, that people don't have any choice over what mankind as a whole, do and what people head for. The only thing one can do is think about everything, but it won't affect anything. This idea appears many times throughout the novel. This is one of the examples, when Billy proposes marriage to Valencia:

Kurt Vonnegut was a man of disjointed ideas, as is expressed through the eccentric protagonists that dominate his works. Part cynic and part genius, Kurt Vonnegut’s brilliance as a satirist derives from the deranged nature of the atrocities he had witnessed in his life. The reason Vonnegut’s satire is so popular and works so well is because Vonnegut had personal ties to all the elements that he lambasted in his works. Vonnegut’s experience as a soldier in WWII during firebombing of Dresden corrupted his mind and enabled him to express the chaotic reality of war, violence, obsession, sex and government in a raw and personal manner. Through three works specifically, “Welcome to the Monkey House,” “Harrison Bergeron,” and Slaughterhouse-five,

In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a fictional character named Bill Pilgrim is used to depict the various themes about life and war. Vonnegut went through some harsh times in Dresden, which ultimately led to him writing about the tragedies and emotional effects that come with war. By experiencing the war first handed, Vonnegut is able to make a connection and relate to the traumatic events that the soldiers go through. Through the use of Billy Pilgrim and the other characters, Vonnegut is able show the horrific affects the war can have on these men, not only during the war but after as well. From the very beginning Vonnegut portrays a strong sense of anti-war feelings, which he makes most apparent through Billy Pilgrim.

In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut explains his experience of the World War II bombing of Dresden, Germany. Vonnegut's creative antiwar novel shows the audience the hardships of the life of a soldier through his writing technique. Slaughterhouse Five is written circularly, and time travel is ironically the only consistency throughout the book. Vonnegut outlines the life of Billy Pilgrim, whose life and experiences are uncannily similar to those of Vonnegut. In Chapter 1, Kurt Vonnegut non-fictionally describes his intentions for writing the book. Vonnegut personally experienced the destruction of Dresden, and explains how he continuously tried to document Dresden but was unsuccessful for twenty-three years after the war. Vonnegut let

Kurt Vonnegut’s personal experiences of World War II and the firebombing of Dresden were important factors in determining his writing style and the political and philosophical views that it conveyed. Throughout his works, the overarching message that Vonnegut delivers is the need for love and compassion in a world where humans are helpless against an indifferent fate.

Slaughterhouse-five strives to remember the tragedy of the bombing of Dresden. Kurt Vonnegut constructs his novel around a main character who becomes “unstuck in time” (23). Billy Pilgrim’s life is told out of order, which gives him a different perspective than the rest of the world. Billy lives through his memories, and revisits events in his life at random times and without warning. Vonnegut introduces Billy Pilgrim to the Tralfamadorian way of thinking about memory and time so that he can cope with being unstuck in time. The Tralfamadorian ideology is set up as an alternative to the human ideology of life. In the novel Slaughterhouse-five, Kurt Vonnegut constructs a reality where memory is unproductive through the Tralfamadorian

In 1952, his very first novel, “Player Piano” was published. Over the next 17 years, Vonnegut published 5 more novels, including Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969. This was the book that launched his fame, and a film adaptation of the book soon followed in 1969, which was successful and only increased his popularity further. He went on to write 9 more novels before his death in 2007.

Interrupting his education, he was drafted and sent to Germany in service of the United States Army. While there, he would be captured by German troops and sent to Dresden, and held there while the Allies firebombed the city. After Vonnegut was recovered, he was given the Purple Heart and discharged in 1945. That same year he married Jane Marie Cox on September 1, as well as start to attend the University of Chicago, where he would study until 1947. Throughout the course of his professional career, he wrote several novels, as well as four short story collections. His collection of novels included masterpieces such as Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle, Hocus Pocus, The Sirens of Titan, Welcome to the Monkey House, and of course, Slaughterhouse Five. Later, he was divorced and remarried in the same year, 1979, this time marrying Jill Krementz, a photographer. The two happily lived in New York city raising a large family of biological and adopted children. During Vonnegut’s life several attempts were made to bring his novels to the silver screen, including an adaption of Slaughterhouse Five in 1972, but it was widely considered a failure. (Werlock) Vonnegut spent almost his entire adult life working for the greater good, “He wrote, did advertisements, and spoke for a humanitarian agenda.” (Morse) While Vonnegut gave multiple responses when asked about religion,