Summary Of Five Quotes From Slaughterhouse Five

     Most of the book is the narrative from Billy Pilgrim a unique character who has the ability to become “unstuck in time”,

Billy Pilgrim is the person that the book is written around. We follow him, perhaps not in a straight order, from his youth joining the military to his abduction on the alien planet of Tralmalfadore, to his older age at his 1960s home in Illum. It is his experiences and journeys that we follow, and his actions we read about. However, Billy had a specific lack of character for a main one. He is not heroic, he has very little personality traits, let alone an immersive and complex character. Most of the story is written around his experiences that seem more like symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from his World War Two days, combined with hallucinations after a brain injury in a near-fatal plane

Where innumerous catastrophic events are simultaneously occurring and altering the mental capability of its viewers eternally, war is senseless killing. The participants of war that are ‘fortunate’ enough to survive become emotionally distraught civilians. Regardless of the age of the people entering war, unless one obtains the mental capacity to witness numerous deaths and stay unaffected, he or she is not equipped to enter war. Kurt Vonnegut portrays the horrors of war in Slaughterhouse Five, through the utilization of satire, symbolism, and imagery.

From the start Billy thought some things were a little odd. The first thing that was odd about her was when she immediately opened the door and little comments she made to him. Then he thought she was a little dotty, but he was getting a deal. Finally, he decided she was off her rocker, but he compensated for all the odd little things she did by reminding himself that she was a sweet old lady. Billy should’ve trusted his instincts when something seemed off, but because he doesn’t, he ends up in a situation where something awful will

In order to illustrate the devastating affects of war, Kurt Vonnegut afflicted Billy Pilgrim with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which caused him to become “unstuck in time” in the novel. Billy Pilgrim illustrates many symptoms of PTSD throughout the story. Vonnegut uses these Slaughterhouse Five negative examples to illustrate the horrible and devastating examples of war. The examples from the book are parallel to real life experiences of war veterans, including Vonnegut’s, and culminate in a very effective anti-war novel.

“The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away. Once there was this and that; and now- and the ship had gone.” Pg 91

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.

Billy Pilgrim's life is far from normal. Throughout most of his adult life he has been moving backwards and forwards through time, from one event to another, in a non-sequential order. At least, this schizophrenic life is hard to understand. Because Vonnegut wants the reader to relate to Billy

The Tralfamadorians teach Pilgrim that time is not linear like we think it is and that all form of time simultaneously coexists. Moreover, the time continuum introduces the notion that there is no “free will” because no matter what one attempts to change an event, it will occur.

Vonnegut's comments on the similitudes amongst himself and other writers, particularly the impacts of adolescence and war on composing, alongside the improvement of varying mentalities toward viciousness that drove Vonnegut to separate himself from Hemingway. War in Slaughterhouse-Five is a principally manly exertion, described by misinformed masculinity and bloodthirstiness. Maybe remembering the toxic manly talks of President Johnson, Vonnegut utilizes includes the "post-coital fulfillment" some war lovers get from what is informally known as "wiping up". This helps him as a author because he has the ability to show the direct impacts of the effects of war.

Have you ever felt like you could be in 2 places at once? The Tralfamadorians have the free will to go fourth dimensional view of their daily lives. It comforts Billy to think that time is totally predetermined and unchangeable and there is no free will.

Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five; or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is, as suggested by the title, a novel describing a crusade that stretches beyond the faint boundaries of fiction and crosses over into the depths of defogged reality. This satirical, anti-war piece of literature aims to expose, broadcast and even taunt human ideals that support war and challenge them in light of their folly. However, the reality of war, the destruction, affliction and trauma it encompasses, can only be humanly described by the word “war” itself. Furthermore, oftentimes this term can only be truly understood by those who have experienced it firsthand. Therefore, in order to explain the unexplainable and humanize one of the most

But ignoring death and its suffering is exactly what Billy should not be doing, Vonnegut suggests. To do so makes him, like the Tralfamadorians, alien and inhuman. He has no sense of his own mortality, an awareness he needs in order to understand that, as Stephen Marten has observed, "life is valuable not because it is infinite but because it is so scarce" (11).

Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Slaughterhouse-Five, an antiwar book that took 23 years to write, is not what he thought it would be. He explained early on to

In today’s world we question the problem of free will and it’s understanding. Is the nature of humanity characterized by the ability to chose for oneself or through our understanding of physical laws. Is there any room for individuality when and if the world operates under these fundamental laws or whether God has already created a “path” for us to follow? When this question comes up people tend to want to forget about it. Kurt Vonnegut abjects this illusion of free will in his novel by his use in ‘characters’ and having free will. In Slaughterhouse-five, Billy Pilgrim question the Tralfamadorians, “Why me?” Their response is simply, “…There is no why.” The Tralfamodorians exemplify the role of “the other” that marks free will as a distinctly a human characteristic. Billy use’s this as a means to cope with the reality that pain and suffering is a guarantee. Vonnegut repetition of the phrase “So it goes” , supports that free will is question with no answer and desensitizes the major suffering and deaths throughout the novel.