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. If this book were written in present day, I fear it would be about as broadly circulated as a Kilgore Trout novel. 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. Vonnegut's stark portrayal of war and its tragic aftermath would have been, at the time of its publication, a cathartic novel for those veterans suffering from leftover emotional scars received after serving their country some 20 years earlier. Vonnegut was asked by an old war buddy's wife not to glamorize war (pgs. 14-15), which he successfully complied with. Throw in a chronologically challenged story line, a few aliens, and time-travel, and you've got yourself a book that becomes more about its oddities than the spoils of war. Not the course of action I would take, but Vonnegut makes it work. .
Vonnegut's writing style is very casual, and the reader feels like the story is being relayed in conversation rather than written form. The book begins with an unknown narrator explaining what we're about to read. I reread the first chapter after finishing the book, and it's somewhat clearer now that it's a jumbled autobiographic account of Vonnegut's time spent in Germany during WWII and the process he went through write this book. Normally, this would be recorded in a book's foreward, but Vonnegut doesn't appear to do anything normal. Chapter 1 states many times we're about to read a book about Dresden; however, there is one clue that something is amiss when Vonnegut speaks of "someone playing with the clocks" and "as an Earthling" he had to "believe whatever clocks said" (pg. 20). Chapter 2, the actual beginning of the story explains that Billy, the protagonist, is a time-traveling WWII veteran.
Billy, true to character, doesn't respond. ... I think that Billy's just replaying his life over and over in his head, and we're there for the ride right along with him. ... No more mystery as to the trigger of Billy's insane, jumbled life. ... Pilgrim's Progress. ... ...
Slaughterhouse Five is the story of a small, timid man named Billy Pilgrim. ... At first this seems like a good thing, but to Billy Pilgrim, who cannot chose which aspects of his live to relive, brutal acts of war also live on forever. ... Billy Pilgrim, just like any other human being, can not choose which points in his life to relive. ... Billy Pilgrim, however, not only manages to survive the entire war despite his willingness to lie down and die, but leaves Germany with a rather large diamond in his pocket. ... The bird who continually asks Billy Pilgrim, "Poo-tee-weet?" ...
The day after the bombing of Dresden, the protagonist of Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim, emerges from a meat locker in which American prisoners of war were kept, and observes "The sky was black with smoke. ... As the latter, it fits into the strange, delusional mental state of Billy Pilgrim after experiencing the terror of war. ... He is the narrator, and he mentions himself periodically throughout, in some cases encountering Billy Pilgrim. ... The second, which is contained in the first and chronicles Billy Pilgrim's adventures, is called "The Children's Crusade: A Duty Danc...
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." ... Billy slips back into 1967. ... Billy is separated from Weary. ...
