Analysis Of Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five

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By looking at Billy’s condition during the war, we can see that the war was not as glorious as the countries wanted you to think which at the time was not obvious. This adds a critical and significant point of view on the war to Vonnegut’s anti-war book. During WWII, the fighting countries didn’t want to show how terrible war really was, instead they showed images of patriotic men fighting in the war. In reality, these “men” were just kids out of high school and some from college, not ready to fight battles in a war. Vonnegut tries to show this in his book by inserting passages throughout Slaughter House Five, to help explain this to his readers. By describing Billy’s poor body structure and inadequate clothing and tools, one can clearly see …show more content…

This was the type of man that the government wanted you to think was fighting the war for you. No comfort comes from thinking of a scrawny man fighting for your freedom. However, according to Vonnegut, these “scrawny” men were the ones fighting for us. Many were drafted into the military to keep up with the demand for soldiers. According to Vonnegut there were many people like Billy fighting in the war. Billy wasn’t exactly soldier material either, “Billy was Preposterous-six feet and three inches tall, with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches,”(32). Vonnegut does this to explain to people what soldiers were really like during WWII. Sure there were people that were in the war that would have matched up with the U.S. Government’s description of the war, but they were few and far between according to what Vonnegut witnessed. When people see that many of the soldiers were just kids out of high school, then they tend to start to not want to support war so much. It becomes a bad thing in the eyes of society, which is the purpose of this anti-war book, to show how war is bad and should not be supported. Vonnegut goes into detail about these younger soldiers on both sides to get his readers to see his point of view of

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