Views on War in Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five Essay

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.

As you have read war is a very different type of world everything is turned around and it confuses people. The author of the book The Things They Carried and the writer of the quote "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories. Wrote about war so people could have a better understanding of

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:

Thompson believes that the books meaning lies deeper than the fact that "war is bad." Pilgrim refuses to accept the idea that there are absurd things in life, because if death can be so senseless then what does that say about life itself? The absurd life is essentially one without meaning and that often ends with a ridiculous death. The firebombing of Dresden, the absurd execution of Edgar Derby, the war itself are all really just means to an end. Billy watches as 100,000 lives are snuffed out, and he cannot help but wonder "why?" Ultimately, he cannot answer that question, because there is no answer. There

SlaughterHouse-Five is an antiwar novel written by Kurt Vonnegut. SlaughterHouse-Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim’s capture and imprisonment by the Germans during the last, few years of World War II. Billy comprises the ability to travel forwards and backwards in his lifetime. Therefore the novel contains scattered memories of Billy’s life before and after the war. Along with many moments of Billy’s time travel, the novel constantly goes into his journey to the so-called planet, “Tralfamadore” as well. SlaughterHouse-Five centers around the topic of the Dresden Bombing. As a witness, Billy becomes flustered and questions himself about the meanings of life and death. Although he had so many different roles in his life, because of the trauma he possessed in Dresden, he cannot find peace in his mind.

Many times throughout the novel, the character Billy is put in situations where he knew what was going to happen was inevitable. Going into the war, he knew it was inevitable he would be captured, after capture he knew it was inevitable that he would go, for all intents and purposes, insane. Another character says to Billy, “’Do you know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books? . . . I say, “Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?”’” This shows that war and its atrocities cannot be stopped. No matter how much the adversaries of this book want to preach peach and anti-war, there will always be conflicts. It is quite amazing how hard the opponents of this novel will try to ban it, hoping that it will help spread peace, when even this book explains that war is eternal, it will always be

I do not think that KV is telling us in this novel what it could be different.As I remember in the first chapter KV implies that there is nothing intelligent to mention about the massacre. The novel ending suggests that bird-talk plays a relevant role during the whole story because it is the only subject throughout the whole story that talks about war. By doing this, KV tries to make sense as anyone’s talk about war. Vonnegut maintains the silence about war on purpose and leaves it after the massacre. This way readers can have the feeling that the majority of characters do not care about war and massacre, except the bird. He implies that this subject is meaningless for people but ironically important for the bird. It is like if animals

War never changes, which is what gets described in the book Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. In the book, readers follow Billy Pilgrim a time traveling war victim who survived Dresden. War is the worst thing a human can experience because there is nothing intelligent about it, it kills, and it destroys beautiful things. Every smart person has made at least one stupid decision in their life.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s classic fiction novel, Slaughterhouse Five, we experience the horrors of war through the eyes of fictional character Billy Pilgrim, and their effect on him. Pilgrim, who was a POW in Dresden during the firebombing, is obviously impacted by the war, like many others who experience combat. By channelling his own experiences into Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut explores his belief in the inevitability of our fate, and the effects of war on the human psyche. Vonnegut blends his own life story with historical fact to create a believable and accessible tale that helps validate his experiences as well as comment on the pointless atrocities man commits against his fellow beings.

In Chapter Eight of the novel, Finny says, “Have you swallowed all that war stuff?” (114) This shows the viewpoint of war being far-off and distant, but later in the novel, we see in Chapter 12 this viewpoint changes. Finny says then, “I was going to keep on saying it [there is no war] until two seconds after I got a letter from Ottawa or Chungking or some place saying, ‘Yes, you can enlist with us’...Then there would have been a war.” (190) This shows that as war drew closer, Finny finally admitted to himself that the war was indeed a reality, something teenagers from across America admitted during World War II. As a representation of youthful innocence, Finny’s viewpoints represent a generation’s views on the previous generation. These cultural views on the previous generation and war would have affected Knowles, and therefore his writing.

Slaughterhouse Five is an anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007), one of the most inspirational twentieth century American writers. This book is unique in the fact that it can be classified as historical fiction, science fiction and an autobiography (certain parts of the protagonist’s life are similar to Vonnegut’s life) at the same time. Slaughterhouse Five follows the life and journeys of Billy Pilgrim, the main character in this non-linear novel. Billy has lived his life as a social outcast, a stereotypically weak and unpopular boy. He is a joke of a soldier when he is drafted into the Army and he soon becomes “unstuck in time”, or so he says. The

Kurt claims that “you know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books? [...] I say, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?” (4). Even though war is something that would never change but talking about it and trying send the message about the negative impact it has on the world natural resources is a great idea Kurt introduce and analyzed in his book. The glory of war shouldn't be praised. Slaughterhouse-Five is about the least glamorous account of life as a soldier you can imagine. When he claims that “You were just babies in the war—like the ones upstairs! [...] But you're not going to write it that way, are you [...] You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.”(18) This show that Kurt's not really trying to glorify war in his novel. If war has been prevented in the early years some country would be doing really great in terms having natural resources and money. It's because can lead to waste of money and destruction of many natural resources. Billy's Tralfamadorian philosophy and reverse shows that when he claims that “They did the same for the wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation [...] Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new”(93, 94). Vonnegut conveys his strongly anti-war opinion to the reader. And just to mention war shouldn't be praised or glorified because it has a huge negative

George Roy Hill's movie adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughter-house Five is a fairly accurate version that stays relatively close to Vonnegut's own vision. Throughout Vonnegut novel Billy Pilgrim, a WWII soldier who was captured by the Germans and held captive as an American POW (prisoner of war), demonstrates several extreme compulsive tendencies due to the horrific events he witnessed as an American POW victim. After reading of Billy’s experiences, I did not have faith in the movies ability to accurately present Vonnegut's own personal feelings. On the contrary, after seeing George Hill's movie adaptation of Slaughter-house Five, I felt that the he did an extremely nice job in keeping with what Vonnegut had intended to be seen

(No Subject) jill.l.carlson@kp.org Add to contacts 11:25 AM Keep this message at the top of your inbox To: madisoncarlson@hotmail.com jill.l.carlson@kp.org Callis Slaughterhouse Five Critical Analysis Paper/ Final Exam Madison Callis Mrs. Romney 4/20/2015 Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut is a strong example of an anti-war novel. INTRODUCTION: Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut is a story written with much emotion behind its words. Vonnegut is a survivor of the Battle at Dresden.

Tragedies occur all around us every day, yet we only hear of the massacres the media wants us to hear. For years, wars, famines, and discrimination have torn this world apart, but little has been done nationally to oppress them. However, many individuals have attempted to expose the cruelness of these tragedies through their works of art and literature. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one such novel. This book explores the devastation of World War II, specifically the bombing of Dresden, Germany, with witty humor and anti-war undertones. The novel follows the personal life of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran, optometrist, and time traveler. Billy is able to visit any part of his life that he so chooses, a trick he learned after