The Madness of War

The plot of Slaughterhouse- Five revolves around World War Two, especially the bombing of Dresden from a soldier’s perspective. Vonnegut vividly describes the destructive nature of war through accounts of ambush, mistreatment of prisoners of war, and massacres. However, he also expresses the mentally and emotionally damaging effects of war with the pure insanity of Billy Pilgrim. One of many instances illustrating Billy’s altered state of mind in the war is when he arrives in a prisoner of war camp. The English prisoners put on a production of Cinderella for their American guests and following a comical line Billy loses control. “He not only laughed – he shrieked. He went on shrieking until he was carried out of the shed into another, where the hospital was” (Slaughterhouse 98). This is a single example of the deplorable state of Billy’s mental sanity. The reader is already aware that Billy also begins to hallucinate and have crazy notions that he was abducted by aliens. Billy even acquires a sort of catchphrase that clearly demonstrates how emotionally distant Billy has become because of the war. Every time death is brought up, Billy has only one thing to say about it: “So it goes” (Slaughterhouse 214). This shows that Billy has become numb to pain, anguish, fear, and even life itself. To Billy, the end of the war did not actually bring freedom, but trapped him inside the horrors of his memories and deranged

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 novel, Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut incorporates complex ideas such as the destructiveness of war, the insignificance of time, and the morality of suffering through his first-hand experience of the cruelty of bloodshed in World War II. Desperation dictates the actions of society as the desire of survival urges the importance of crucial decision-making. The fictional world of the Tralfamadorians, the struggle faced by patriotic war soldiers, and the uneasiness among the civilians attempt to pursue the beautifulness of life within perplexing situations. The absence of free will alleviates tormentful lives.

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

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,

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

Since the first time Billy claimed to have come unstuck in time while in the forest leaning against a tree, he has depended on an alternate reality in which he has created a new life for himself to avoid thoughts of the horrific events he witnessed while in Dresden. Although Billy claims that he was abducted by the Tralfamadorians, in reality, he was captured by the Germans. The reason that the Tralfamadorians exist is so that Billy can escape from the harsh reality of being a prisoner of war. Although separate in Billy’s conscience, the Nazis and the Tralfamadorians are interchangeable. Billy’s adventures on Tralfamadore all have significant and undeniable connections to his life:

The author writes of many different human beings, showing that each one thinks war is ultimately, the worst thing. While in the war, Billy is in the hospital during his imprisonment by the Germans. There is an old general there who was a teacher before joining in the war efforts. One day, in a conversation with Billy and another older man in the hospital, the general starts to talk about what he thinks of the war. He says, "You know-- we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "‘My God, my God----’ I said to myself, ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade’" (p. 106). This general feels that war is nothing but babies being murdered by one another. He is disturbed by the thought of war and the fact that so many young people are dying for its cause.

The main event in the novel was the fire-bombing on Dresden during World War II, which both Vonnegut and Pilgrim took part of. Billy Pilgrim was constantly traveling back in time to WWII already knowing this tragedy was going to take place. But again, he went on with life because he knew he could not stop the bombing from

During the war, many Vets were exposed to a lot of stress, confusion, anxiety, pain, and hatred. Many killed children for the sake of winning the war, which many Vets felt like criminals. When the vets were sent back home with no readjustment to the lifestyle nor deprogramming of what was learned from the military. Having the mentality of psychopathic killer with no morals or control over aggression. As a result, this terrifying scenarios affected American Veteran having no solution or cure. In the novel, Rosewater and Billy had similar crisis, in which both thought life was meaningless. “Rosewater shot a fourteen year old fireman mistaking me for a German Soldier. Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history”. Billy seems not to ever have a normal timeline where he can explain from a child to a young adult, and so on, but rather have a constant flashbacks from his past coming back to reality to a fictional life. For instance “ A Siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting World War Three at any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon”, the siren was simply a firehouse across the street, which Billy triggered into his past reliving his horrific trauma symptoms of PTSD. Within Billy’s Trauma he is pertuated from his past within any sort of noise, smell, or event. In the train as they travel everyone was exhausted

The anti-war message is upheld further with the ironies that Vonnegut provides in the book. One example is "when one of the soldiers, a POW, survives the fire-bombing, but dies afterward from the dry heaves because he has to bury dead bodies" (Vit). When Billy and one of his comrades join to other scouts the Vonnegut portrays as well trained, Vonnegut displays irony by killing the skillful scouts and allows the less competent Pilgrim and Roland to survive. Roland does eventually die because he is forced to walk around in wooden clogs that turn his feet to pudding. The greatest example of irony is seen in what Vonnegut claims to be the climax of the story. He explains the situation before the story even begins. He is referring to the:

With this description, Vonnegut vastly distances Billy from the ideal, strong and mighty image of a soldier, yet Billy is a soldier nonetheless. Not only is this weak and ungracious character fighting and representing the honour of his country but also he is one of the few soldiers who survive the war; he outlives many of the other soldiers that could be considered better suited for war. Furthermore, Vonnegut compares Billy to a filthy flamingo, highlighting the distance that exists between society's soldier ideal, graceful and admirable, and the soldiers' reality, harsh and rampageous. In short, Billy is so far from what is expected that he “shouldn't even be in the Army” (51). However, Billy is not the only soldier in this ludicrous predicament. Vonnegut describes the entire Army as chaotic, confused and ludicrous:

The main characters are: Billy Pilgrim is a World War II veteran, a POW survivor of the firebombing of Dresden, a prospering optometrist, a husband, and a father, Billy Pilgrim believes he has "come unstuck in time." Kurt Vonnegut is the author and narrator of the book and in the first chapter reveals that he himself was on the ground as a prisoner of war during the firebombing of Dresden. Roland Weary is a stupid, cruel soldier taken prisoner by the Germans along with Billy. Weary dies of gangrene in a cattle car as the prisoners are being transported from the lines to prison camps. Paul Lazzaro is a soldier in the war and the man responsible for Billy's death. Edgar Derby is a former schoolteacher who is also taken prisoner and sent to Dresden. Derby is sentenced to die by a firing squad for taking a teapot.

At the time Billy is captured, he becomes “unstuck in time,” and he sees various moments of his life occur. Later, Billy experiences a nervous breakdown so the other prisoners give him a shot of morphine which sends him time-tripping once more. Afterwards, he and the other prisoners are sent to the city of Dresden which remains untouched y the war. Here, they work in an abandoned slaughterhouse which carries the name of “Slaughterhouse Five.” One of the nights of their stay, enemies of the Germans bomb the city to compose a firestorm which consequently incinerates roughly 130,000 people. Billy and his allies manage to survive in an airtight meat locker. When they depart the locker, they are introduced to the wreckage and destruction that is left of the

Throughout the novel, Vonnegut uses different characters to display his anti-war feelings and show how many innocent victims end up being casualties in a war. In order to display this effectively, he uses Edgar Derby as an example. Edgar Derby was a high school teacher that willingly left his career to fight in the war. He was much older then most of then most of the men he was serving with including his son who was also fighting in the war. Derby was also one of the soldiers that experienced the firebombing in Dresden with Billy. After the bombing occurred Derby and the others were sifting through the damage and he picked up a teapot. Later on in the book Derby is arrested for stealing this simplistic item and is sentenced to death by firing squad. This really bothered Billy because he saw an innocent man that he was friends with get killed for a teapot. Some can argue that this is just an aspect of war that soldiers need