Slaughterhouse Five Ap Language Essay

The tone of the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is a mixture of candid and matter of fact, with an underlying tone of indifference and detachment. This tone is displayed throughout the chapter with Vonnegut’s use of informal language and phrases, such as the first sentence “All this happened, more or less.” He conveys this tone not only through phrases such as “and so on” or “so it goes”, but with stylistic elements with his use of punctuation, spaces, repetition, and ellipses. He uses this tone in the first chapter to set the audience up for how the rest of the novel will be written, and to display to the audience his style of writing and how it may not always be reliable.

Within the first line of this novel, Vonnegut sets the tone. The line “All this happened, more or less.” has an unsure tone. He does this to show he is not asking the audience to believe everything that is written, and the novel may contain unreliable information. Some common phrases used within this chapter are “and so on” and “so it goes”. These phrases are used after he states background information, as a transitional phrase into a new subject. They

When discussing the massacre in the war, he doesn’t provide details. He just states that everyone is dead, but the birds are still making noise. An example of this is when he states “Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.” He doesn’t provide details of what he experienced, making it seem like he wasn’t even there to experience it first hand. This makes him seem detached, almost as if he was an outsider looking in. When he says “Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again.” the tone is also very indifferent and apathetic, because he is not showing concern or enthusiasm, just bluntly stating