Slaughterhouse Five Rhetorical Analysis

Rhetorical Devices

As Edwin Starr’s famous anti-war song goes, “War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!” and if Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five had a theme song, this would be the perfect song. Slaughterhouse Five is one of the greatest anti-war books of all time- it even says so on the back cover. In order to convey his anti-war attitude to the readers, Vonnegut uses many different rhetorical devices in Slaughterhouse Five, including analogy, irony, and satire. The first important rhetorical device Vonnegut uses to convey his anti war attitude is analogy. The most blatant example of his anti war attitude in an analogy is when Vonnegut is speaking with moviemaker Harrison Star. Vonnegut explains that he is writing a book about
Dresden and Star replies “‘You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?’...’Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead.’” [3] Vonnegut compares the anti-war attitude to an anti-glacier attitude because they are both inevitable despite efforts to eliminate wars- or glaciers, as the case may be.
By including this quote by Harrison Star in the first chapter, Vonnegut shows that he is aware of, and accepts, the fact that war will never be abolished. Vonnegut realizes that writing an anti-war book is futile in actually stopping wars, yet he continues to write an entire novel with a main theme of anti-war in order to be different from the rest of society, and show that he will not be passive about the wars going on around him. Another example of an analogy that conveys the anti-war attitude comes in Chapter Three, when the German soldiers are taking Billy and
Weary prisoner. As Billy lies in the snow, he looks at the feet of the Germans seeing the gold boots, in which he can see a vision of Adam and Eve, and goes onto describe the feet next to them saying “Next to the golden boots were a pair of feet which were swaddled in rags... Billy looked up at the face that went with the clogs. It was the face of a blonde angel, of a fifteen-year-old boy... The boy was as beautiful as Eve.” [68] Vonnegut uses Eve as an image of innocence and youth. By comparing the fifteen year-old soldier to Eve, as opposed to Adam, Vonnegut is saying that the soldiers in the war are just innocent children when the soldiers should be men, not boys. Just as naive Eve ate the apple causing corruption, the young, naive, boys are taking part in the massacre of war causing them to lose their childish innocence.

Another significant rhetorical device Vonnegut uses to portray his anti-war attitude is irony. One example in Chapter Six is a quote by one to the British prisoners of war. He assures them that they will be safe in Dresden saying “You needn't worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden is an open city. It is undefended, and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance.” [186] The readers knows that Dresden is in fact not a safe city. The American men, as well as the people in Dresden, are completely blind to any possibility of a bombing, leaving them unprotected and unprepared. 135,000 people died in the bombing of Dresden, most of them being civilians. This mindless massacre contributes to Vonnegut’s anti-war attitude by showing the senselessness of war. Another example of irony is in Chapter Two when Vonnegut is talking about Billy’s family, “Billy's son Robert had a lot of trouble in high school, but then he joined the famous Green Berets. He straightened out, became a fine young man, and he fought in Vietnam.” [30] Billy was obviously not the type of person that is usually a good soldier. He was scrawny, pathetic, and passive about everything; however, his son made his way into the Green Berets, a Special Forces operation, and highly selective group of soldiers. This contributes to the anti-war attitude by depicting how there will always be wars. Generations and generations of men, and eventually women, have and will be involved in wars until the end of time. The final rhetorical device Vonnegut uses is satire.
Vonnegut is one of the most famous satirical writers of modern day so when he uses satire to convey his anti-war attitude, it is no surprise. In Chapter Eight, Vonnegut discusses a book about a robot who has bad breath, “Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.” [213] Although the robot did horrible things like dropping jellied gasoline on people, no one had a problem with him. It was because he had bad breath that they did not like him. Vonnegut is making fun of society’s submission toward war and their utter acceptance of the fact that mindless slaughter is going on all around them and they do nothing but accept it. Again in Chapter Three, Vonnegut explains the process in which the Germans took their prisoners of war, “The Germans and the dog were engaged in a military operation which had an amusingly self-explanatory name, a human enterprise which is seldom described in detail, whose name alone, when reported as news or history, gives many war enthusiasts a sort of post-coital satisfaction. It is, in the imagination of combat's fans, the divinely listless loveplay that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called ‘mopping up.’” [66] Vonnegut uses sexual imagery in order
to tantalize society’s glorified image of war, and the way the media associates war and sex. War depicts the image of devastation and slaughter; however, the way the average person sees war is an image of heroism- which is seldom the case- and masculinity. Slaughterhouse Five did not change the world. It didn’t stop all wars. It didn’t change the way society views war. Vonnegut knew it wouldn’t do any of these things but he wrote it anyway, because it is better to show the world his opinions, rather than to be passive just as the main character, Billy Pilgrim. The way he showcases his opinions is through many different rhetorical devices.