Themes Of Life And War In 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.

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.

Vonnegut calls upon his personal experiences to create his breakthrough work, Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut expresses his own feeling on war, family, and free will through the non-linear narrative of the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. His experience as a soldier and death within his family are mirrored into Pilgrim’s character.

People react differently to tragedies: some mourn, some speak up, and some avoid the sorrow. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut suggests the danger and inhumanity of turning away from the discomfort by introducing Billy Pilgrim as someone who is badly affected by the aftermath of the Dresden bombing, and the Tralfamadorians as the aliens who provide an easy solution to Billy. It is simpler to avoid something as tragic as death, but Vonnegut stresses the importance of confronting it. Vonnegut, like many artists, expresses his ideas through his creations. The significance of art is not confined to helping and inspiring the general public; the process of creating art also becomes another form of coping mechanism for artists.

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.

It is expected for arguments to arise when writing about controversial topics. Many times the meaning of a book is not as obvious as the author intended, which may lead to problems. Other times, books are challenged because they contain sexual or inappropriate material. When Kurt Vonnegut released Slaughterhouse-Five critics were quick to judge his peculiar way of writing. Although Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five was oftentimes misunderstood, interpreted as inappropriate, and judged for the peculiar point of view, critics seem to appreciate and accept one aspect of it: the structure of the book.

Through Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut protests his own feelings about war. Towards the beginning of the novel, Vonnegut visits his old wartime buddy, Bernard V. O’Hare and meets his wife, Mary. She is strangely already mad at Vonnegut because she assumed that he would write a war novel that will glorify the way men fight in wars when they actually send terrified babies off to war, not men. Mary also believed that war movies and books encouraged the chances of war. However, she was not directly angry at Vonnegut; she was angered by the thought of war and how babies are killing other babies on the battlefield.

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:

Free will or the lack thereof is one of the most significant themes throughout the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death written by Kurt Vonnegut. This book follows the story of a man, Billy Pilgrim, throughout his experiences during the World War II or more specifically the bombing of Dresden, Germany, his time on Tralfamadore, and scattered events throughout his lifetime. The readers are told that Billy is a time-traveler; he cannot control when he will leave when he comes back, or to what point in time he is traveling to, but he relives events throughout his life multiple times because of it. In several points in the book, Vonnegut writes about the concept of free will. The Tralfamadorians that

Through Slaughter House Five, Kurt Vonnegut shows how war affects the individual. For Billy Pilgrim this means to go insane and imagine aliens have abducted him, forced him to be a zoo exhibit, and allowed him to impregnate a porn star. There are countless movies, books, and speeches that show war in a positive light. They claim that war is essential, purposeful, and an honorable thing for every man to do. However, this novel claims that not only war yields no great purpose and is self-destructive, but it also destroys anyone who might partake in it. Billy Pilgrim, who represents the average person, is ruined by his short time in war and has to then completely reconstruct his sense of reality. When Pilgrim walks out of the slaughter house for the first time after the bombing of the

While never a defeatist, Billy merely flows through his disjointed life without much heed to the event at hand. Billy realizes that he holds the power to create his own happiness and satisfaction out of life through appreciation of the present moment rather than contemplate the occurrence of past and future. Vonnegut develops Billy Pilgrim as a unique protagonist as a means of forcing the reader to question the application of free will upon society and gain a new perspective on the beauty of the present.

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.

The novel Slaughterhouse – Five uses the theme of war as black humor or dark comedyBlack humor is seen in describing the main character as a "filthy flamingo" or when Billy attempted to publish his encounter with the Tralfamadorians.. Both are even satirical and are even reinforced by comments such as, "nothing tragic, but inexplicable and absurd" (Novels for Students 270). Thus, the somewhat mocking component of dark humor is yet one more method for thoughts against war to be exposed. The novel, "about war and the cruelty and violence in war" (Vit), was written with no sense of being connected which directly relates to Vonnegut's sentiments with war. Billy is unstuck in time, and the novel goes from one to scene to the next, without any specific order (Novels for Students 264). According to Novels for Students, this being unstuck in time is "a metaphor for the sense of alienation and dislocation which follows the experience of catastrophic violence (World War II)", and also is "a metaphor for feeling dislocated after war" (264). The sense of estrangement and solitude is just one of the many themes in the book. These themes are all tied into one major theme: war (Dunstan). Because the principal theme in the book is war, it is apparent that Vonnegut really wanted readers to know how awful war really was (Quinn).