1. Book Report- Slaughter House-Five
Normally those two descriptions wouldn't reside in the same sentence, but due to Billy's PTSD, he has created a world for himself complete with time travel, war, and alien abductions. The story's timeline vacillates back and forth between his time being held prisoner in Germany and his adult life as an optometrist. The reader is never really sure where the book's starting point is and where present-time resides. There are three components to Billy's story: his time in Germany, his time as a husband and father, and his time on Trafalmadore. .
Billy is flat, un-emotional, and surprisingly for a protagonist, has very little dialogue. He's a young man in optometry school when he's drafted to the war. Upon his arrival in Germany, he meets the dimwitted bully Roland Weary, who targets Billy mercilessly. Eventually, Roland, Billy, and a few other soldiers are captured by German soldiers. Roland dies of gangrene, but before his death, he falsely slanders Billy, blaming him for his death. Enter the sinister criminal Paul Lazzaro. Paul has a revenge-complex, and takes on the task of avenging Roland's death, informing Billy of his impending doom. Billy, true to character, doesn't respond. The soldiers are then marched to Dresden, where they take up work in Schlachthof-funf i.e. Slaughter House Five. While there, during the night, Dresden, a city in Germany, is bombed and 130,000 people die. Billy and the other POWs wait out the firestorm deep in a cellar, and after surviving the night, walk out the next day to find an incinerated city that looked "like the surface of the moon (pg. 179). The POWs take up the task of excavating the charred corpses. Soon after, Billy is freed and sent home, where the effects of those terrible months start settling into Billy's sub-conscience, twisting and turning his reality into something unrecognizable.
Back at home, Billy has a mental breakdown and commits himself to a veteran's hospital where a roommate introduces Billy to the noteless works of science fiction author Kilgore Trout.
His experiences there allowed him to write the novel Slaughter-House Five. In the book he serves as the narrator, observing, not only the calamities of those who held the status of prisoners of war, but the life of Billy Pilgrim in particular. ... Billy Pilgrim was an optometrist, which causes one to think about sight. ... Billy Pilgrim illustrates that love is good, and war is evil when he is captured by the Germans. "Billy looked up at the face that went with the clogs. ...
Author Kurt Vonnegut was very fortunate to have the bulk of his writing years occur during a time in history in which he wrote Slaughter House Five. ... Slaughter House Five is a fictitious as well as true narrative about WWII, of which the youth of this day have only an inkling of knowledge. ... Slaughter House Five. ... Pilgrim's Progress. ... ...
Author Kurt Vonnegut was very fortunate to have the bulk of his writing years occur during a time in history in which he wrote Slaughter House Five. ... Slaughter House Five is a fictitious as well as true narrative about WWII, of which the youth of this day have only an inkling of knowledge. ... Slaughter House Five. ... Pilgrim's Progress. ... ...
The novel, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, follows the life of Billy Pilgrim. February 13, 1945 was when the German city of Dresden was bombed, but Billy survived the awful experience. ... This alien world is called Tralfamador and it provides Billy with an escape. ... "I, Billy pilgrim, the tape begins, will die, have died and always die in February thirteenth, 1967." (180) At this he is in Chicago giving a speech and, seemingly unafraid of death, Billy states to his audience that it is time for him to be dead for a little while. Billy is then shot by a laser gun. ...
The main character is Billy Pilgrim who is actually Kurt Vonnegut himself. Vonnegut, like Billy Pilgrim, emerged from a meat locker beneath a slaughterhouse into the moonscape of burned-out Dresden. ... In chapter two Billy Pilgrim believes that he has "come unstuck in time." ... She arrives at his house with the newspaper in hand, unable to get Billy to talk sense. ... The two Americans are brought to a house full of other captives. ...
If you have ever read the novel Slaughterhouse Five, you might be left asking yourself, who really is Pilgrim? ... This leads to the question of, is Billy Pilgrim just a character from a Kilgore Trout novel? ... On page 174, Trout believes that Billy saw through a time window, another idea that only Billy is crazy enough to believe. ... Is it possible to say that Billy Pilgrim might just be one of these people, not likely. ... This does leave you wondering though, who really is Billy Pilgrim? ...
The men could not think of any particularly good memories or stories, and the narrator noticed that Mary, Bernard's wife (to whom Slaughterhouse Five is dedicated), seemed very angry about something. ... It has been a couple of years since I first read Slaughterhouse Five, and I'm glad I got the chance to read it again. ... Chapter Two "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." ... Weary and Billy catch up to the scouts. ... Suddenly, Weary realizes that they are being watched by five German soldiers and a police dog. ...
"Slaughter House Five" is his greatest example of this. ... Billy Pilgrim experienced exactly what Vonnegut did in his own life. In many ways Vonnegut used Billy Pilgrim as a puppet to explain his own feelings and emotions from that time. ... This is very prominent in both "Slaughter House Five" and "The Sirens of Titan". ... "Slaughter House Five" was among the most successful of all his works. ...