Slaughterhouse-five is about a man named Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim was born in 1922 and grew up in New York. He does reasonably well in school. While attending college to become an optometrist he is drafted in to the army. He trains to be a Chaplain Assistant. He is taken Prisoner in the battle of Bulge in Belgium. Right before his capture Pilgrim experiences his first flashback were he sees his entire life flashes before him. The Germans put him into a boxcar to Germany. Once he arrives he experiences a breakdown and get a shot of morphine and experiences another flashback. The POW are transported to Dresden to work manual labor. There is a slaughterhouse that is located in Dresden which become important later in the book. The US bombs Dresden and ended up killing 130,000 people. Pilgrim and some other POW survived this…
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut can be described as a novel that is interesting, creative, and well-written. Kurt Vonnegut writes this novel with a satiric voice but also expresses many other emotions as well. The first chapter is very unique because of the way Vonnegut tells the story of how he came about writing this novel and introduces his wartime friend Bernhard O’Hare. Although it seems like it might not belong at all, this chapter gives an introduction that might be needed for a character like Billy Pilgrim. Many times you can see how important Vonnegut is in the story and how important the story is for him.…
Vonnegut then recounts his postwar life and explains how he encounters ignorance about the immensity of Dresden’s destruction and that when he contacted the U.S. Air Force for information, he discovered that the happenings of the Dresden War were still kept top secret. In 1964, Kurt took his daughter and her best friend with him to visit Bernard in Pennsylvania. He met Bernard’s wife, Mary who was disgusted by the fact that Kurt would probably portray him and Bernard in the book as men instead of the “babies” they had been. Kurt then promised to call the book “The Children’s Crusade” and Mary was happy. Later that night he read about the Children’s Crusade and the earlier Dresden bombing of 1760. While teaching at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop he landed a three-book contract. Slaughterhouse-Five would be his first, but it will be jumbled because there is nothing intelligent to write about a massacre. Relating back to when he visited Dresden again, he tells how in his hotel, his perception of passing time became distorted, as if someone were playing with the clocks. He then stated to readers that after writing his war book, he will not look back and he will write more fun books. The first chapter indicates that he wrote it after his war book , because he ends the chapter by stating how his novel will begin, and how it will…
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.…
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…
In 1953 Ray Bradbury wrote a science fiction novel, set in the future, titled Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury uses this setting to show you that things aren’t always going to be quite what you think they are. He implies that everything isn't going to go your way in life. Also, he wants the readers to think for themselves and learn from the things they do and hear. Throughout the novel, Bradbury uses a symbol of birds to express what the books meant to Guy Montag.…
Slaughterhouse-Five is fictional and not written with many shocking, colorful descriptions of atrocities, which occurred during WWII as Elie Wiesel 's Night. The science fiction parts of the book are over emphasized. One does not get a truthful account of the happenings of WWII from Slaughterhouse-Five. The Tralfamadorian 's science fiction aspects of the novel dull the anti-war theme. Their beliefs coerce Billy to forget about the war; the Tralfamadorians tell Billy, "one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones" (Vonnegut 117). They also tell Billy, "we spend eternity looking at pleasant moments;" they cannot do anything about the awful times, so they ignore them (Vonnegut 117). The climax of the novel is the fire bombing of Dresden; the reader is aware of this from the start, it is stated in the first chapter. The description of the bombing it is short; one could almost miss it. Billy does not travel back to the event nor does he re-live it, like he does many other less important events. The book 's climax is supposed to be the fire bombing of Dresden;…
Slaughterhouse Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim who has become “unstuck in time.” Young Billy is born and raised in Ilium, New York, he is "tall and weak, and shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola," and studying to be an optometrist. He is drafted into the U.S. military and despite his scrawny, weak build, he is sent to Europe to fight. While fighting in Germany, Billy is all of a sudden sent to 1968, where the plane he was on has crashed into the mountains of Vermont. He becomes aware that we possesses the ability to travel uncontrollably through time, as he skips around all different events in his lifetime, from being a prisoner of war in Dresden during World War II, to being abducted by Tralfamadorians, an alien race on the planet Tralfamadore…
The story told in Slaughterhouse Five is very much unique to its setting and the time in which it occurs. The story is told by Kurt Vonnegut, who is also a minor character in the book, about the life experiences of Billy Pilgrim during World War II. The story centers on a specific event that occurs during the war, the Allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany. This specific bombing has gone virtually unnoticed by Americans throughout history since the war due to its location, being in Germany. However, certainly the scrutiny would be much greater if such a horrendous bombing was inflicted upon Britain, America, or another Allied power. In addition, the story itself would not have been told if it were not for Vonnegut’s own unique situation…
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.…
Humans believe that they are the highest species and that everything follows. Due to that belief, they think that every thing should be handed to them and that they should not try hard enough in what they choose to accomplish. In Slaughterhouse-five written by Kurt Vonnegut in 1969 focuses on the life of a man born in New York. This man goes by the name of Billy Pilgrim and at the age of 19 is drafted into World War II, after his years of being a prisoner of war he is captured by aliens, the Tralfamadorians and begins to travel within his lifespan. The antagonist in Mark Twain’s “The Mysterious Stranger” states that the human race is “…always claiming virtues which it hasn’t got’”; the content of Slaughter-house-five supports this claim by evidence of humans expecting everything being handed to them, how the captured soldiers…
Tanner, Tony. "The Uncertain Messenger: A Reading of Slaughterhouse-Five." Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut. Ed. Robert Merrill. Boston: Hall. 1990. (125-30).…
In addition, Vonnegut’s decision to write the novel in fiction in contrast to an autobiography creates the development of reader’s curiosity through the use of inner dialogue that produces emotional experiences. As Slaughterhouse 5 opens the plot, Billy Pilgrim states that everything he narrates in the fiction novel really “happened, more or less” (Vonnegut 1). The given information pertaining that “[t]he war parts, anyway, are pretty much true”, questions an interesting fact as to why the novel is written in fiction instead of an autobiography of the author himself (Vonnegut 1). The author’s choice to share his story through a character like Billy Pilgrim creates suspense for readers to follow through Billy’s change of character and his ability to escape the present and connect it to a moment in his future or past. Therefore, producing the start of what may be an emotional experience between readers and the author. Additionally, it creates a relationship between them due to the exposure that the novel is based on a real-life story. Because of this revelation, it grasps the attention of the readers and drags them along through the end of Billy Pilgrims journey as he drifts away from the present and travels back in time or to the future. The use of simple language enough even for children to understand that Billy Pilgrim is trying to get across…
Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut creates an environment shaped by elements of science fiction. These elements, notably time travel and alien contact, make the novel "a science fiction that deals with the topic of free will versus fatalism," (Isaacs 408). Throughout the novel Billy remains "unstuck in time," seeing his whole life flash before his eyes in a random order of events (Vonnegut 15). This random order forces the reader to examine the events in the novel the same way that a Tralfamadorian would, adding to the element of science fiction. Because of the creative freedom associated with the science fiction genre, Vonnegut uses it to express a theme of fatalism in the novel and "as a way of making those ideas [presented] more palatable," (Lundquist 616).…
Living in a world of war and tragedy can cause a disconnect, in Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse 5, he tells the story of a POW survivor during the attack on Dresden. In the book, it shows that, self reliance is important when you live in alienation and loneliness, whether it be from loss of empathy, loss of loved ones, or just being detached from reality.…