Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, World War II ended shortly after the bombing of Dresden in February 1945. Although the war ended on the Eastern front shortly after the bombing of Dresden, it would be months later before the Japanese finally surrendered, to officially end World War II. War is inevitable, however, through Vonnegut’s science fiction and Tralfamadorians philosophies, suggests that we must focus on the peaceful moments rather than the atrocities of war. Billy Pilgrim was a Prisoner of War in 1945 during the Dresden bombing. Before the War, Dresden was a beautiful city, known for its architecture and museums (‘Bombing’). When Billy arrived in Dresden, he was told, “‘You needn't worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden

He was twenty-five years old and had been a prisoner for the last four-and-a-half-years (5). Dick went to work that normal day, bagging and loading coal. At the end of the day, Dick returned to his prison camp. At 9 p.m. he began to hear the sirens, no one in the camp noticed, as the sirens were a common occurrence. Soon after the sirens, they heard the noise. The city of Dresden was being showered with bombs from American B17’s. Dick stepped outside of his camp, “The sky was a nightmare of lurid flames; aircraft on fire and blowing up in great gouts of titanic violence. An inferno of noise, flames and flying dust. And then, quite suddenly, it stopped.” There were two more bombings that night, Dick’s life had been spared (6). A few days later, Dick, still a Prisoner-of-War was sent back to Dresden, which was a graveyard of rubble. Instead of bagging coal, he began digging mass graves. Then the digging stopped, and the burning of bodies began. Weeks later, Dick heard Churchill’s voice announcing the War was over (10). Dick Sheehy’s real life story, is very similar to fictitious Billy Pilgrims experience as a Prisoner-of-War in Dresden. Both Dick and Billy had a hard time dealing with the aftermaths of the Dresden bombing. It took Dick forty-five year to retell his story, and even then, “The tales that were coming out of the city were too horrible to

More people died in World War II than all other wars since then. Since the end of the devastating war, the forty-four richest countries have not been at war with each other. The Fallen of World War II video said that since then end of the war our world has been at peace. However, peace is hard to measure. To calculate peace, it would be like trying to calculate the number of people that did not die, from the wars that did not happen. “We must remind ourselves of how terrible war once was to see the peace that has been growing around us” (Halloran). The Tralfamadorians from Slaughterhouse-Five would say, war is inevitable. Since the end of the World War II, we have been at peace, so we must focus on that. We cannot change the seventy million deaths, and we cannot prevent future deaths, so we must focus on the peace that has come out of the