Preview

Dark Humor In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
222 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Dark Humor In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses dark humor in order to show the harsh reality of war.
After every death in the novel, “So it goes” is said to point out the inevitability of death during both war and life.
This what the Tralfamadorians say when they see someone or something dead.
The phrase does not only apply to humans, but also to animals.
In the book, Billy describes the meat hanging from the ceiling in the slaughterhouse and the Tralfamadorian phrase is said.
Death cannot be stopped because of all the war and destruction that is going on.
The British make the POWs think that everything will be alright.
The British have nice and exciting attitudes towards the POWs. Cinderella music is played the first night at the camp.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the 1969 novel, ‘Slaughterhouse Five’, Kurt Vonnegut successfully manipulates traditional narrative devices and literary techniques to position his audience to align with his ideologies of the catastrophic effects of war and the misconception of freewill. Vonnegut establishes his novel to reflect his beliefs and values, and does so through the narrative structure, symbols and motifs, and point of…

    • 60 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Vonnegut’s life had a tremendous impact on the plot of Slaughterhouse-Five. The first few sentence in the book are “ All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true, One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn’t his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. I’ve changed all the names” (Vonnegut 1). Theses first sentences inform the reader right away…

    • 598 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This independent reading assignment is dedicated to Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut experienced many hardships during and as a result of his time in the military, including World War II, which he portrays through the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim. Slaughterhouse-Five, however, not only introduces these military experiences and the internal conflicts that follow, but also alters the chronological sequence in which they occur. Billy is an optometry student that gets drafted into the military and sent to Luxembourg to fight in the Battle of Bulge against Germany. Though he remains unscathed, he is now mentally unstable and becomes “unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 30). This means that he is able to perceive…

    • 428 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim experiences time differently from any other person. Instead of experiencing time in a linear fashion, Billy jumps randomly throughout all of the events in his life. It is this random experience of time that allows Vonnegut to enforce the themes of senseless violence and the illusion of choice.…

    • 329 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses irony to demonstrate the destructiveness and depreciations of war. Vonnegut incorporated many cases of irony in his book, and they overall enhance the meaning throughout the passage. One of the prime situations of irony took place with Edgar Derby. This poor man had to endure suffering and pain during the course of the war and the firebombing, only to be executed in the end for a meaningless little crime. Vonnegut reveals a bit of this situation in the beginning of the book when he mentions that the "One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn 't his" (1). This shocks the reader because…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Death is no longer a stranger to lives of these men because of their traumatic war experiences, both on the battlefield and on the way home. It shows the fragile state of human life and how easily it can be taken from us. The memories of their comrades’ deaths have been engraved in their mind to point that it becomes strange for them to think about returning to their home and moving on.…

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Aristotle once said “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” It is hard to try to picture a world where every human being is completely equal. A world where that every human being is forced by any means to has equal wealth, equal intelligence and equal physical beauty. Kurt Vonnegut’s Jr. wrote about such a world in his 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron”. Vonnegut makes a good use of irony to show how creating absolute equality would require an absurdly oppressive society. Vonnegut uses the characterization of the Bergeron family members, Harrison, Hazel, and George to demonstrate how absolute equality destroys Individuality and also to show the two-facedness of that idealistic society and the danger of total…

    • 124 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    By accepting that fate as an absolute force that puppeteers the world - “all time. . . .does not change”- he loses his humanity, and becomes apathetic. Hence why all other character’s in Vonnegut's novel are flat and lack depth, because from Billy's perspective they do not matter, their death is imminent, thus he remains numb to the human condition by saying “so it goes.” Vonnegut symbolically convey Billy’s loss of humanity by having him embrace the ideals of the Tralfamadorian, an alien race, and rejecting the mentality of of humans(humanity). Vonnegut also conveys the destruction of his own humanity through the recurrence of “mustard gas and roses.” The scent is associated with corpses in Vonnegut’s novel and thus his breath also retaining that scent is representative of his loss of spirit; war killed Vonnegut’s humanity, and so his breath smells like death. Vonnegut vanished his humanity as a coping mechanism. This is evident when he associates humanity with self-destruction stating “But she did look back. . . it was so human” , however, “she was turned to a pillar of salt.” Vonnegut believes having humanity and compassion for others is not worthwhile, which is further supported in his statement “People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.” And so within Slaughterhouse-Five Vonnegut portrays the effects war has on the humanity of the individual, who becomes enveloped in inhumane…

    • 979 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since Slaughterhouse-Five is going back and forth into Billy's life, everything is happening simultaneously. The novel portrays the difficulty of recounted traumatic experiences which describe how the reality of war contributes to people's lives before and after. Vonnegut uses a huge understatement throughout the book "So it goes", to heighten the horror for every death that has occurred. Vonnegut uses this understatement to show that life and death are inevitable. It is also what Billy learns from the…

    • 431 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although many might heartily defend the villainy of Roland Weary or Paul Lazarro, it is clear that the true antagonists of Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-five are culture, society and history, all of which play a major role in Billy Pilgrim's ascent to death. Characters are not villains; their actions may suggest the contrary, but they are caused by the negative effects of society, which changes with area, culture, which changes with time, and history, which cannot be changed, and yet still yields the same results as the two former.…

    • 661 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    For example, on page 134 it states, “Oh the effects of it were real the rising prices, the shortages of everything, the news that so-and-so had been killed in some far away battle.” Because of this, everyone is affected. Most farmers need to buy some of their supplies, so the rising prices make it harder for them to make a living. Many people will lose their jobs and starve. On page 190, it says “I didn’t see how they could find Sam guilty, he’d fought for three years, he’d risked his life, how could they decide to punish him for something he hadn’t done? It just didn’t make sense.” This shows that many people die unfairly. The generals don’t care for their soldiers as much as they should. They don’t give any soldiers the justice they deserve. This is unfair to many families because their sons die without glory. In Sam Meeker’s case, he died without justice. He joined the army for the glory of it and never got any. As a result of many people run out of business and some of their family end up in the grave. The Meeker’s experienced things no family should ever endure. This ranges from wrongful death to almost losing their business. Life Meeker once said, “In war the dead pay the debts for the living.” This stays true as Life had to give up his life so that his wife and son could enjoy all their moments on…

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In addition to death being portrayed in a negative light from the beginning of the novel, the soldiers are forced to be unaffected by death. As a result, it is seen how war changes people in a negative way.…

    • 879 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This is a concept that will never be understood because of how it affects people as a whole due to emotions and concerns from others about your safety and when you found out that one of your loved ones was killed, your heart sinks into your chest and you don’t know how to handle the situation just dealt to you. “For half a page he talked about how much the book meant to him, how it brought back all kinds of memories, the villes and paddies and rivers, and how he recognized most of the characters, including himself, even though almost all of the names were changed.” (Page 151) The theme of death connects all of the characters back together because of the way that they died and how it all shows the flaws of war as a whole, and some people don’t just instantly understand the concept of war and what comes with it. When it comes to death, people understand the emotional effects of their losses, but then there are deeper explanations and they start to realize what has happened and how no matter who gets killed it shows us at the end of the day they are still human. When you have that sense that these enemies or friends, they are still human and mistakes were going to be made and whether that goes as far as death or not it still…

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Here is a small fact: You are going to die.” Death said this quote. He the narrator of Markus Zuka’s The Book Thief. Although this quote from Death is scary, he says later, “I urge you - don’t be afraid.” Everyone will die eventually, Death himself even said that. Whether that be intentional or accidental, the effects of death can change the direction of someone’s life, for the better or for the worse.…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    slaughter house 5

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Slaughterhouse Five is a novel based off of the fire-bombing of Dresden. This story depicts the horrors of World War Two and the mental turmoil that it caused some of the soldiers that fought in it. Slaughterhouse Five teaches us how anyone can be changed by war not matter what your circumstances before it. War is an atrocity that is commonly glorified in today’s world for no good reason. It not only kills millions but wounds everyone.…

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays