Essay Comparing Slaughterhouse-Five And The Space Between Us

In every book or novel, the environment the characters are placed in, are essential to the overall story. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar do not fail to meet this expectation. The characteristics the authors gave to their setting reflect both the characters and the plot of the novels.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a work of literary fiction by Kurt Vonnegut in 1969. This book is a satirical novel about World War II events and travels through time of Billy Pilgrim, from his period as an American soldier and minister’s assistant, to postwar and early years. Billy Pilgrim is “…six feet and three inches tall…” (Slaughterhouse-Five 32-33). He is a fatalistic optometrist hidden in a safe, but dull marriage

in Ilium, New York. In World War II, he becomes a prisoner of war in Dresden, which has a lifelong effect on his life after war. He also, supposedly, travels to the planet Tralfamadore and lives there in a zoo, after an accident.
The setting of Slaughterhouse-Five is widespread, but the two most significant scenes are Germany during World War II and "Ilium," the fictional town located in upstate New York where Billy Pilgrim resides for most of his life.

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five reveals people who become subjected to a controlling system of cybernetics that conveys out its power through war and time. The cybernetic system creates a dystopian society and degrades humans into submissive robots. The narrator’s tone is ironic and familiar, and he exposes traces of absurdity and dark humor that do not reduce the emotional and poetic power of the information. Vonnegut uses foreshadowing by summarizing all the events of Billy’s life before going on with the

story.
The Space Between Us is written by Thrity Umrigar in 2006. Thrity Umrigar's novel observes the class divide through the connection of a mistress and her servant. Set in modern-day India, it is the story of two women: Serabi Dubash, an upper-middle-class housewife whose wealthy surroundings hide the disappointment and shame of her abusive marriage, and Bhima, a passive illiterate toughened by a life of loss and despair, who has worked in the Dubash household beyond than twenty years. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: the death or absence of a husband, violence, a pregnant woman, and the hope for a brighter future.
The setting of The Space Between Us includes many issues such as the power of privilege and wealth; poverty; education; domestic violence and women's rights.

The protagonists undergo similar experiences in their lives: enduring "disappointment and shame ", abuse from husbands they loved, anticipating the successes of their children to bring them happiness, and consoling each other through their bond. Both the Serabi and Bhima are perceptible with this quote, “… if I am not a mother, then I am nothing…” (Umrigar). The Space Between Us reveals how the lives of the rich and poor are naturally connected yet vastly detached from each other, and how the strong bonds of womanhood are forever opposed by the divisions of class and

culture.
The authors of both Slaughterhouse-Five and The Space Between Us give characteristics to the novels that contrast and compare. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut uses more of a darker sinister tone between the lines. The mood is more of a movie then heartfelt. However, in The Space Between Us, the novel is set along a warmer and family based line.

In the second chapter, the bird’s curious refrain, “And what do the birds say? Poo-tee-weet?” (Slaughterhouse-Five 19), leaves with the unanswered doubt of what life is like in the aftershock of war - life’s greatest destructive enemy.