The Role Of Death In Slaughterhouse-Five

Death is apart of life, it happens to everything and everyone. In the book Slaughterhouse-Five, the main character, Billy experiences WWII as a prisoner of war. He experiences all the different horrors of war that include the bombing of Dresden and the death of thousands of people. Throughout the book, Billy travels in time to different parts of his life, including his birth and death. Death is something that happens to everything that lives. Death happens everywhere. Every living thing dies in time, it is just apart of the circle of life. Throughout the book, the saying, “So it goes.”shows up many times. It means that death happens and life goes on. When billy is kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, Billy learns new things from
them about humans and death. They tell him that death isn’t a sad thing and that life goes on. They also tell Billy that humans focus on the bad things, like death, instead of the good. During the beginning of the war, while Billy was with a group of other American soldiers, he wasn’t liked very much and often picked on. They were traveling through the woods when Billy was getting picked on by one of the soldiers from the group, Weary. The other two soldiers that were with them, left the group and went on thought the woods. Weary was beating up and almost killing Billy when a few German soldiers stood there watching them. The Germans took their shoes and good clothing and took them as prisoners. “The two scouts who had ditched Billy and Weary had just been shot.” Many of the Germans captured American soldiers, but they also killed them. You don’t usually see a soldier trying to kill another soldier that is on his same side. In the firebombing of Dresden, many people died. “Bodies weren’t brought up any more...The soldiers stood outside the shelters, simply set the fire in.” The whole city was destroyed and there were only maybe a couple people that survived. Billy, the German soldiers, and other prisoners helped to clean the city and get all of the bodies, the bodies had to be set on fire because there were too many bodies to collect and bring up from the underground shelters. Slaughterhouse-Five is a book about war and death. It is about the horrors of war and the deaths of people. Billy is an American soldier and goes through WWII as a prisoner of war. Death is apart of life and happens to everything and everyone.