Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With
Death, is a post-modern anti-war science fiction novel dealing with a
soldier's experiences during World War II and his journeys with time travel.
Slaughterhouse-Five deserves its reputation of being a piece of great
American literature. The book follows a young man, Billy Pilgrim, through
his life. Billy believes aliens, Tralfamadorians to be exact, have abducted
him. We assume that it's through these aliens that he learns to time travel, a
skill he frequently uses. In the book Pilgrim bounces around time to all the
various portions of his life, many times returning to World War II where he
was captured, taken prisoner, and held in slaughterhouse five (schlachthof-
fünf) in Dresden, Germany. He seems to be defined by this moment in his
life as he frequently returns there. If you know anything about Vonnegut, you
know that he too was held, in schlachthof-fünf, in Dresden, Germany when
the city was firebombed.
Don't let the ease of reading fool you — Slaughterhouse-Five isn't a
conventional, or simple, novel. Vonnegut writes, "There are almost no
characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because
most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of
enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are
discouraged from being characters..."
Slaughterhouse-Five is Vonnegut's most powerful book. Like Catch- 22, it
fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an
eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority.
Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful
appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's
basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique humor.
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut thoroughly explores the ideas of fate,
free will, and the illogical nature of humans. Billy Pilgrim, the main
character, is "unstuck in time," meaning that he experiences the events of
his life in a seemingly random order, with no idea which part of life he will
"visit" next. As a result, his life does not end with death; rather, he
experiences his own death jumbled amongst so many of his other
experiences. This is followed with confirmation by one of the
Tralfamadorians, who says, "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the
universe... Only on Earth is there any talk of free will". This device is central
to Vonnegut's belief that the vast majority of humanity is completely
inconsequential; that is, they do what they do because they must.
Vonnegut (as the narrator) seems to believe this theory in the way he states
in chapter one, that "writing an anti-war book is like writing an anti-glacier
book." However, Vonnegut's writings elsewhere (for example, see The
Sirens of Titan) suggest that the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five
are intended to satirize the idea of Fatalism. In the main body of the book,
the Tralfamadorians represent the belief that war is inevitable. Their
hapless destruction of the universe suggests that Vonnegut does not
sympathize with their philosophy. To humans, Vonnegut seems to say,
ignoring a war is not an acceptable choice when we actually do have free
will.
This illogicality of human nature is brought up with the climax of the book.
Ironically the climax occurs not with the bombing of Dresden, but with the
execution of a man who committed a petty theft. In all of this horror, death,
and destruction, so much time is taken on the punishment of one man. Yet,
the time is still taken, and Vonnegut seems to take the outside opinion of
the bird asking, "Poo-tee-weet?". The same birdsong ends the novel God
Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, as the protagonist gives away his entire fortune
to the plaintiffs of hundreds of false paternity suits brought against him. It
seems to represent a comment on the absurdity of humanity.
Because of its realistic and frequent depiction of swearing by American
soldiers, its irreverant language (including the sentence "The gun made a
ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty,")
and some sexually explicit content, Slaughterhouse-Five is among the
most frequently banned works in American literature, and in some cases is
still removed from school libraries and curricula. Conversely, this book has
also become a part of the curriculum of certain schools. The suitability of
the work has even been considered by the Supreme Court of the United
States, where it was one of the works at issue in Island Trees School
District v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982). The novel appears on the American
Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of
1990-2000 at number sixty-nine.
/tdw/
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With
Death, is a post-modern anti-war science fiction novel dealing with a
soldier's experiences during World War II and his journeys with time travel.
Slaughterhouse-Five deserves its reputation of being a piece of great
American literature. The book follows a young man, Billy Pilgrim, through
his life. Billy believes aliens, Tralfamadorians to be exact, have abducted
him. We assume that it's through these aliens that he learns to time travel, a
skill he frequently uses. In the book Pilgrim bounces around time to all the
various portions of his life, many times returning to World War II where he
was captured, taken prisoner, and held in slaughterhouse five (schlachthof-
fünf) in Dresden, Germany. He seems to be defined by this moment in his
life as he frequently returns there. If you know anything about Vonnegut, you
know that he too was held, in schlachthof-fünf, in Dresden, Germany when
the city was firebombed.
Don't let the ease of reading fool you — Slaughterhouse-Five isn't a
conventional, or simple, novel. Vonnegut writes, "There are almost no
characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because
most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of
enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are
discouraged from being characters..."
Slaughterhouse-Five is Vonnegut's most powerful book. Like Catch- 22, it
fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an
eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority.
Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful
appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's
basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique humor.
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut thoroughly explores the ideas of fate,
free will, and the illogical nature of humans. Billy Pilgrim, the main
character, is "unstuck in time," meaning that he experiences the events of
his life in a seemingly random order, with no idea which part of life he will
"visit" next. As a result, his life does not end with death; rather, he
experiences his own death jumbled amongst so many of his other
experiences. This is followed with confirmation by one of the
Tralfamadorians, who says, "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the
universe... Only on Earth is there any talk of free will". This device is central
to Vonnegut's belief that the vast majority of humanity is completely
inconsequential; that is, they do what they do because they must.
Vonnegut (as the narrator) seems to believe this theory in the way he states
in chapter one, that "writing an anti-war book is like writing an anti-glacier
book." However, Vonnegut's writings elsewhere (for example, see The
Sirens of Titan) suggest that the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five
are intended to satirize the idea of Fatalism. In the main body of the book,
the Tralfamadorians represent the belief that war is inevitable. Their
hapless destruction of the universe suggests that Vonnegut does not
sympathize with their philosophy. To humans, Vonnegut seems to say,
ignoring a war is not an acceptable choice when we actually do have free
will.
This illogicality of human nature is brought up with the climax of the book.
Ironically the climax occurs not with the bombing of Dresden, but with the
execution of a man who committed a petty theft. In all of this horror, death,
and destruction, so much time is taken on the punishment of one man. Yet,
the time is still taken, and Vonnegut seems to take the outside opinion of
the bird asking, "Poo-tee-weet?". The same birdsong ends the novel God
Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, as the protagonist gives away his entire fortune
to the plaintiffs of hundreds of false paternity suits brought against him. It
seems to represent a comment on the absurdity of humanity.
Because of its realistic and frequent depiction of swearing by American
soldiers, its irreverant language (including the sentence "The gun made a
ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty,")
and some sexually explicit content, Slaughterhouse-Five is among the
most frequently banned works in American literature, and in some cases is
still removed from school libraries and curricula. Conversely, this book has
also become a part of the curriculum of certain schools. The suitability of
the work has even been considered by the Supreme Court of the United
States, where it was one of the works at issue in Island Trees School
District v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982). The novel appears on the American
Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of
1990-2000 at number sixty-nine.
/tdw/
| Thom's Review Slaughterhouse-Five |
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