Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

     Critics of Kurt Vonnegut’s are unable to agree on what the main theme of his novel Slaughterhouse Five may be. Although Vonnegut’s novels are satirical, ironical, and extremely wise, they have almost no plot structure, so it is hard to find a constant theme. From the many people that the main character Billy Pilgrim meets, and the places that he takes us, readers are able to discern that Vonnegut is trying to send the message that there will always be death, there will always be war, and humans have no control over their own lives.

… Disorientation and confusion“ ("Trauma/PTSD"). Vonnegut writes, in one of the very first chapters, “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day” (Vonnegut 23). Throughout the book we are taken on a spastic and wild journey from one moment in Pilgrim’s life to another. For instance, Pilgrim is walking through the horribly cold, bleak and depressing German landscape with “The Three Musketeers” and ends up being dragged by Weary most of the way. As soon as the two scouts ditch him and Weary and it seems their ordeal couldn’t get any worse, Pilgrim “time travels” to a moment in which he has just won the Presidency of The Lion’s Club and proceeds to gives an impressive speech. (Vonnegut 48-50). This sort of behavior, completely dissociating oneself from the horrible situation at hand, is typical of PTSD. Pilgrim wanted to escape completely from the cold and depressing “hell” he was in and be back in happiness, where he had just won a successful campaign for the Presidency of his club. This is what happens throughout the book and it is simply another example of Pilgrim’s widespread and horribly debilitating case of PTSD.

The point of view that Slaughterhouse-Five is written from also affects the way the reader fells about time after reading the novel. Since the story is narrated by a omniscient being that is everywhere with Billy Pilgrim, the reader gets a first hand account of every event in his life. Also Billy is very relaxed and accepting all things around him. A good example of this is Billy's habit of following every death with "so it goes". (Vonnegut 69) The repetition of this phrase not only de-emphasizes death, but also helps Vonnegut assert control over the readers response after a death. (Dawley 2) The way Billy

Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut chooses to use special literary techniques that better explain his own encounters in war as well as help his readers bare the horridness of war. Vonnegut adds black humor in his text to benefit readers as well as “an author-as-character” perspective to set barriers and help protect his own memories in the war. Without adding these two specific devices, Vonnegut could possibly have lost reader’s interests in the book or lost his own interest in writing the book.

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

One of the most reoccurring discussions on Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five seems to be on the meaning of the book. Straight into his

In Slaughterhouse Five, Earth is a grim, war torn place. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is haunted by the war throughout the novel. Billy experiences some parts of his past during the war, because of this, events happen simultaneously, outside of the constraints of time. After the war, Billy has a “mild nervous collapse”. His nervous breakdown shows the chaos Earth represents for him. In one scene, Billy is in the middle of a conversation, and a split second later he has finished that conversation and is watching Cinderella (98). The moments in between are wiped from his memory. This scene intensifies the chaos both Billy and the reader associate with Earth. The author enhances the chaotic nature of Earth by changing location on Earth with no warning. At one moment, Billy is honeymooning in Cape Ann, then he’s on a train in 1944, and seconds later he’s back in the war (126-127). Vonnegut does this to clearly show the chaos that is Earth. After Billy returns from Tralfamadore, he sees that the things he learned there were true. Earth

War is a tragic experience that can motivate people to do many things. Many people have been inspired to write stories, poems, or songs about war. Many of these examples tend to reflect feelings against war. Kurt Vonnegut is no different and his experience with war inspired him to write a series of novels starting with Slaughter-House Five. It is a unique novel expressing Vonnegut's feelings about war. These strong feeling can be seen in the similarities between characters, information about the Tralfamadorians, dark humor, and the structure of the novel.

Kurt Vonnegut did a great job in writing an irresistible reading novel in which one is not permitted to laugh, and yet still be a sad book without tears. Slaughterhouse-five was copyrighted in 1969 and is a book about the 1945 firebombing in Dresden which had killed 135,000 people. The main character is Billy Pilgrim, a very young infantry scout who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered to a slaughterhouse where he and other soldiers are held. The rest of the novel is about Billy and his encounters with the war, his wife, his life on earth, and on the planet Tralfamador.

Slaughterhouse-Five has two narrators, an impersonal one and a personal one, resulting in a novel not only about Dresden but also about the actual act of writing a novel - in this case a novel about an event that has shaped the author profoundly. The novel's themes of cruelty, innocence, free will, regeneration, survival, time, and war recur throughout Vonnegut's novels, as do some of his characters, which are typically caricatures of ideas with little depth. Another mainstay is his use of historical and fictional sources, and yet another is his preference for description over dialogue. These aspects of Vonnegut's literary style make the adaptation of Vonnegut to the screen all the more difficult. Ironically, many Vonnegut novels flow with a cinematic fluidity. As described in Film Comment, "Vonnegut's literary vocabulary has included the printed page equivalents of jump-cuts, montages, fades, and flashbacks.

Taking place before, during, and after World War II, Kurt Vonnegut’s achronological novel Slaughterhouse Five depicts the world through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim. During the infamous Battle of the Bulge, Germans capture Billy, a scrawny twenty year old man from Ilium, New York, along with another American soldier. Just prior to his imprisonment, Billy becomes “unstuck in time,” enabling him to time warp to different periods in his life with little to no time passing; after experiencing his life from birth to death, Billy finds himself back in World War II. Amongst other prisoners of war, Billy rides a train to an imprisonment camp in Germany. Here Billy experiences a mental collapse after being issued a large dose of morphine; this collapse

Billy Pilgrim who is the main character in this novel goes through many traumatic experiences while in war that caused him to become unstuck in time. When Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time he begins to experience different bits and pieces of his life. The structure that the narrator uses makes us feel as if we are experiencing Billy’s life the way he did. Pilgrim sees times as the Tralfamadorians (aliens) ,who abducted him, that believe that all moments of time past present and future have and will always exist. According to the Tralfamadorians,”“I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does

Throughout Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, he bestows an ancient question: Are humankind experts of their own future, or are they merely pawns of fate? This novel is used to explore the reality of free will and the theory of predestination. Vonnegut uses the acts and ideals of the characters in his novel to elaborate both ideas. Billy Pilgrim is most frequently the character used to express Vonnegut’s views. He is used as an example of a man living contradictory of Vonnegut’s beliefs. Through literary techniques, Vonnegut analyzes the deprivation of free will, presented by the Tralfamadorian’s, and during the course of the novel refutes it. Slaughterhouse-Five is essentially Vonnegut’s desire for humanity to meet this commitment. It

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.