Kurt Vonnegut's Nothing Beautiful Can Be Said About War

In “War and Massacre” by Thomas Nagel, Nagel argues that there are limits on what can be done to an enemy even its for the sake of overall good. He believes that such an idea is grounded on the principles of Absolutism, where morality is determined by the action itself (deontology). This is contrary to the view of Utilitarianism, which relies on the premise that Morality is determined by its consequences (Consequentialism). Although could one in fact generate such a moral structure around war? Do the ends justify the means in War? Through identifying with a real-life example, I will look to expand on Nagel’s account where an action taken by a country in war would be prohibited even if it were for the overall good.

War is the third topic that is heavily satirized in Slaughterhouse Five. First, Billy almost gets killed because he is time-traveling. Second of all, Vonnegut always says “so it goes” (12) whenever someone dies, so it sort of mocks death. Also, he is given a woman’s jacket when he becomes a POW and it mocks his position in the war also. On the nights of February 13-14 in 1944 the city of Dresden, Germany was subjected to one of the worst air attacks in the history of man. By the end of the bombing 135,000 to 250,000 people had been killed by the combined forces of the United States and the United Kingdom. Dresden was different then Berlin or many of the other military targets which were attacked during World War II because it was never fortified or used for strategic purposes and, therefore, was not considered a military target. At one point, Billy watches a war movie about WWII. He watches it regularly, showing how reality is.

When British and American forces raided the city with firebombs, Vonnegut and his fellow captives were saved due to their underground imprisonment. The bombing killed more than 135,000 people, most of whom were innocent civilians, more than the deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. After the bombing, Vonnegut was given the morbid task of carrying the corpses from Air-Raid shelters, including women, children, and the elderly; dead from concussions, fire, or suffocation. In a letter to his father, Vonnegut described his job and the reaction of the locals, “Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge pyres in the city,” (Boomhower). His distressing internment in Dresden not only furthered his anti-war sentiments, but also established a reoccurring theme in his books: the irrationality of government and the senselessness of war. Vonnegut saw the bombing of Dresden and the slaughter of innocents as wasteful and meaningless. He could not comprehend the purpose of destroying a “beautiful” and fully functional civilization (Wiswell 5). The annihilation of the city and lives of the innocent affirmed his views of war as a waste, and even lead to his feeling that, “civilization ended in World War I” (Vitale). This view indicated Vonnegut believed World War II was a meaningless act committed by the uncivilized.

The design of this novel was structured from Kurt Vonnegut’s own World War II experiences. The one experience that seemed to stand out the most in the novel was the Dresden air raids. Vonnegut saw the air raids as senseless, so every time Vonnegut is describing the raids in the novel we see a distinct pattern, Vonnegut uses his novel to depict to the reader a feel of senselessness every time the bombing is mentioned. As a witness to the destruction, Billy confronts fundamental questions about the meanings of life and death. Traumatized by the events in Dresden, Billy is still left lost with no answers. Although his life as a working family man is considerably satisfying, he is unable to find peace of mind because of the trauma he suffered in Dresden. (Vonnegut,

“If I truly believe the war is wrong, is it then also wrong to go off and kill people? If I do that, what will happen to my soul?” (pg 60). Tim O 'Brien is an American man who was drafted into the Vietnam War. O 'Brien is not a violent man and struggles because he believes that the war is wrong. He debates whether or not he should go to war or move to Canada to avoid the draft. Tim O 'Brien decides to join the army. O 'Brien uses his personal experiences as a foot soldier in the Vietnam War to convey his possible bias perspective that the Vietnam War was a waste of people 's lives and a shameful venture for the United States.

The excerpt The Ending the War: The Push for National Reconciliation by David Blight, edited by Hoffman, Elizabeth Cobbs, Edward Blum and Jon Gjerde, in Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays (Wadsworth, Cengage Leaning 2012) Blight argues historical memory that holds more importance than that of the Civil War. Like the Revolution, the memory of the Civil War played a role after the conflict. The concurrent issues in American society after the Civil War and against legislation to increase not decrease the racial problem in the South. Newly freed African Americans struggling to assimilate to society and be accepted as equal citizens in the reconstruction of the Union. This excerpt is rhetorically effective with statements on

To the United States, World War II is believed to be a good war, and why wouldn’t it be considered as such? During World War II, in addition to stopping mass genocide and stopping the spread of Nazism and Fascism, the United States beat Japan after their attack on Pearl Harbor. As a result, the U.S. was no longer in the Depression and the United States became a world power. However, in “The Best War Ever,” Michael C.C. Adams argues that as a result of Hollywood’s glamorization of the war, government propaganda/censorship, and the widespread of economic prosperity, Americans were kept in the dark about the truth regarding World War II resulting in the popular belief and myth that World War II was a good war.

No one truly knows what exactly happened during the Revolutionary War, however, the book Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson describes the brutality of the war through a teenage boy’s eyes. Curzon was forged by the hardships of war and slavery, and endured the long winter in Valley Forge, where he forged friendships through hard times in the “mixing pot” of the Valley Forge camp. There are many interpretations for the word forge, and in the book Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson, Curzon explores the meanings of the word forge through the perils of war, the hardships of slavery, and enduring a harsh winter at Valley Forge. In the beginning of the book Forge, Curzon found himself in the middle of a gruesome battle.

Moreover, both the novel Slaughterhouse-Five and television series Black Mirror effectively uses exaggeration in order to empathize how evil war is. In the novel, Vonnegut relies on exaggeration when describing the destruction of Dresden; “When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead” (Vonnegut Despite the fact a sky cannot be completely black, Vonnegut’s exaggeration of the sky’s color signifies the amount of damage the war brought to the once and peaceful city. In addition to exaggeration, Vonnegut uses a metaphor in order to compare Dresden and the moon

But in order to go back to that time period, Billy would have to imagine Adam and Eve-the only time when war did not seem to be part of the human nature. Similar to horses, thousands of people during war simply obey orders to their own demise without every questioning their actions. Both horses and humans are deprived of free will. Also when the horses die and Billy cries, it showcases his emotional struggles. While most people have been physically affected during the war, many others have been destroyed emotionally. The flames of the fire are being personified as hungry beasts. As the fire is spreading rapidly it is engulfing everything in its path leaving nothing behind. War has the same effect by disrupting every component of a person’s life. By comparing the aftermaths of Dresden to the moon, Vonnegut emphasizes that nothing was remaining except for the minerals that are also found on the moon. The destruction was so severe that it left the land devoid of any beauty and humans. The phrase above describes the awful smell of the liquefied bodies in Dresden. The sweet,beautiful smell of the rose juxtaposes with the acrid smell of the mustard

Death; destruction; crawling, bloody men without jaws; and a child in the middle of it is just a glimpse of the grotesque short narrative “Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce. Chickamauga Creek is an area near Chattanooga, Tennessee and northwestern Georgia, plagued by war, suffering, and bloodshed from the Civil War (Bohannon). Bierce served in the Union Army during the American Civil War (Campbell). Many Americans then, and today, romanticize war with glory, heroism, and patriotism. Bierce defied literary status quo, creating graphic accounts of war, in an age of sentimentalism and melodrama (Morris). Lesser publicized were the perspectives, thoughts, and realities of the soldiers after serving and surviving in the civil

With the knowledge of war you have today, would you be willing to volunteer to sign up for the front line?

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.

The great Nobel Prize winner in Literature 2015 was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and bravery in our time. Svetlana Alexievich was born in the west Ukrainian town of Stanislav. Her mother is Ukrainian, and her father is Belarusian. Alexievich grew up in Belarus. After she finished school she worked as a reporter in multiple local newspapers before she graduated from Belarusian State University and became a correspondent for the literary magazine Neman in Minsk. Her books are described as a literary chronicle of the emotional history of the Soviet and post-Soviet individual, as told by means of a carefully constructed collage of interviews. According to writer and critic Dmitry Bykov, her