The Story of Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

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 his novels, Vonnegut aims to educate readers towards a greater understanding of the human condition (Priest). He imbues Slaughterhouse-Five with a moral about war: it dehumanizes and destroys everything in its path (Priest). Billy’s story helps to expresses the Tralfamadorian saying “so it goes” as a crude life philosophy, “shit happens” (Gordon). The most memorable part of the story, the phrase retains fame not for the expression behind the words but the lack of. These “world-weary words simultaneously accept and dismiss everything” (Gordon). Vonnegut’s experience in war helps him tell the story of the greatest trauma in his life, Dresden, in the only way he knows how. Slaughterhouse-Five skillfully epitomizes Tralfamadorian teachings,

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.

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.

Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” is a sardonic novel chronicling the experiences of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran, survivor of the Dresden firebombing, and protagonist of the novel. Billy is a very unreliable narrator who has become “unstuck in time”. Billy is constantly journeying through time; at one moment he’s a flourishing optometrist and the next he’s a prisoner of war in Germany. Billy is forced to deal with an existential crisis presented forth by the great destruction he witnesses. These horrible atrocities that Billy encounters (bombing of Dresden, execution of Edgar Derby, etc.); however, are all really means to an end. They expose Billy to a contrast, that is, a way in which he can assess his own life and search for meaning. Life and being are seldom questioned. Billy is unique. He watches as thousands of lives are extinguished and he can only wonder “why?” The fact of the matter is, there is no answer. There is no reason why. Billy cannot understand this, which, ultimately, leads to his acceptance of the Tralfamadorian view that nothing has any meaning at all.

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

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

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

Regardless of the angle in which Slaughterhouse-Five is approached, there is no escaping the destructive properties of warfare the book entails. The novel chronicles Billy Pilgrim, a New York man who has become “unstuck in time.” As a result, the narrative is structured in sections, jumping back and forth through time and space. Billy begins the novel a boy, already dealing with the perils of life from the bottom of a swimming pool. He grows to become a rather awkward and unattractive adolescent who enrolls in an Optometry school only to be drafted into the army during World War II. A weak youth, his battle skills land him a prisoner of war behind German lines. Throw in a nervous breakdown, morphine, brutal living conditions, and the

There he began to recall the events that occurred there in 1945. The protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five is Billy Pilgrim. His situation in the war was identical to Vonnegutøs, and Pilgrim is used by Vonnegut to examine what happened in Dresden. Pilgrim has the ability to travel in time, the manifestation of Vonnegutøs 1968 trip to Dresden.

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.

The novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut revolves around the firebombing of Dresden that killed an estimated 135,000 civilians. The annihilation of the city’s population leaves the main character, Billy Pilgrim, feeling hopeless and alone, and this eventually leads to his mental breakdown. Vonnegut exposes the horrors of war through the deterioration of Billy’s sanity and the destruction of the entire city of Dresden.

The book Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, is an anti-war book about Vonnegut’s exposure to the vivid events that unfolded during his time at the slaughterhouse in Dresden, Germany and how it affected him. The story is told by Vonnegut through the perspective of the main protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. Billy was a survivor from WWII and the Dresden bombing, but after returning he claims to have traveled through time to explicit memories from life and had been abducted by Tralfamadorians (aliens). However, in the film Slaughterhouse-Five, directed by George Roy Hill, viewers see slight changes to the storyline. Viewers notice that in the opening scene that Vonnegut’s friend Bernard O’Hare and his wife, Mary O’Hare, are never

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

This book can be quite confusing if not read with utmost care. Because the main character, Billy, becomes “unstuck in time,” (29) the book does not go in chronological order. That is solely because of this fact one must analyse the plot, making sure one does not get confused. To start out in the explanation of the plot in Slaughterhouse Five one must first look at where the action starts to incline, otherwise known as the rising action. Rising action would be best represented as Vonnegut’s character Billy “was taken prisoner by the Germans” (30). It is here where the rising action is because suspense is created, which locks the reader into the book, which makes them want to keep reading. This is where the reader becomes apprehensive about the characters safety. After the rising action comes the climax of the story. The climax is the moment of the most intensity in the story. The climax includes the reason why this book was written; Dresden. The most intense moment in this book is when Billy Pilgrim traveled to the time that “...Dresden was destroyed.” (226). To the reader this gives them information which they have been waiting for since they Vonnegut first mentioned it. Although a reader could infer what happened to Dresden the reader didn’t know what happened to Billy in Dresden, including whether he was hurt or not. In this case Billy was not hurt because he was “down in the meat locker…[which] was a very safe shelter.” (226). Although since the plot is always flashing back and forth between the present and past the reader knew that Billy did not die. Lastly is the part where all the loose ends are tied up. This is also called the falling action. The falling actions in this book occurs when Billy is about to present his insight on his findings of the subject of death, which the Tralfamadorians taught him. Billy was finally able to conclude that “we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may seem to be…” (269).