Strategic bombing during World War II

The assigned readings for this week were both not only interesting, but equally depressing. Attacks on cities or war itself is never an event that people like to read about because of the destruction and death people face. I thought the use of language in Ernie Plye’s columns were so vivid that I could picture everything happening as I read it. I thought the first column was bittersweet because although Plye is longing for peace, he thinks the night London was attacked and burning in flames, was

empathize how evil war is. In the novel, Vonnegut relies on exaggeration when describing the destruction of Dresden; “When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead” (Vonnegut Despite the fact a sky cannot be completely black, Vonnegut’s exaggeration of the sky’s color signifies the amount of damage the war brought to the

Kurt Vonnegut, one of the most successful and “socially engaged” writers of the twentieth century, dedicated a quarter century to the examination of one of the most devastating blows to humanity in history, World War Two (Bloom). The implications of determinism strike deep into the pride of man, thus the prospect of being nothing but debris floating through time will quickly destroy any delusions of grandeur. In Slaughterhouse Five, the narrative’s non-linear component reveals the insignificance

person has died in the book, which occurs frequently. Vonnegut uses this phrase to demonstrate that whatever happens in life happens and so it goes. Kurt Vonnegut starts off with the main character, Billy Pilgrim, trying to find a meaning in this war world because he finds “life meaningless.” Tralfamadorians however simply reply to a corpse by saying “so it goes.” Soon enough Billy starts seeing corpses the same way and feeling nothing. He does not waste time to feel bad about the death of somebody

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an author of contemporary American literature who was a prisoner of the German Army. As a witness of the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, killing over thirty-five thousands people, he wrote the anti-war book known as Slaughterhouse-five. “He writes about the most excruciatingly painful things. In doing so, his science-fiction heritage is clear, but his purposes are very different: he is nearly always talking about the past, not the future. And as he proceeds, from his anesthetic

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

well as revealing the themes of the illusion of free will through acceptance and indifference, and the destructiveness of war through realism. Kurt Vonnegut uses numerous tones throughout the text in order to portray his feelings in different parts of the novel. In the beginning of the story, for example, Vonnegut narrates his own life during the troublesome era of World War 2. The first couple pages of the novel have a conversational tone that Vonnegut uses, as if to show the readers that although

service during World War Two as intentionally just and good but corrupted and modified by human nature. Their time is not spent protesting the cause of the war, but the people in charge of it. Both show very human characters too surreal to be fictional, inspired by the authors’ personal experiences and interactions, for better and for worse. Most importantly, both express the futility of remaining the same person after experiencing combat, doing little to censor the brutality of the war. Therefore

twenty-three years to finish, due to a internal strife. His book was still in writing during the times he went back to Europe to visit the old battlegrounds he had once fought in. Vonnegut served the during World War 2 and was a American P.O.W., to the town of Dresden, where he and other captured American prisoners were forced to do work. During the years he was captured he lived in an underground made facility. During his stay, Allied Forces fire bombed Dresden, close to 100,000 people were killed.

through his different arbitrary leaps in time. One moment he might be twenty years into the future then leap back in time to when he was in World War II. Vonnegut’s anti-war book was solely based around the two topics of death and depression generating Billy Pilgrim's story. In the text, his intent to show the reader a darker, more unseen, version of the war and the toll