Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

War has been a relevant theme in literature and culture throughout history, slowly desensitizing the mass to the gruesome and painful outcomes of war itself. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is an anti-war novel with influences from the author’s life experiences.

Billy Pilgrim is your average American boy, studying to be an optometrist when he is suddenly drafted into the U.S. Army in order to fight in World War II. The author, Kurt Vonnegut was also drafted into the U.S. army and “fought in the Battle of the Bulge” (Biography.com Editors). This was also the first battle Billy fights in. Billy is then captured by the Germans and taken to a prisoner of war camp in Dresden, Germany. Billy experiences his first time-bending experience when

his entire life literally flashes before his eyes. Billy now knows the date his wife will die, the day his daughter will be married and the date he will reach his own demise. Billy did not only experience his life up to that point, but his life in its entirety, all the way up to the final chapter.

Billy is back into his modern state and the city is carpet bombed by Allied forces and Billy takes shelter in the meat locker of an old slaughterhouse. These events correspond directly with Vonnegut’s life as he also took shelter “in an underground meat locker” (Biography.com Editors). Billy will survive his time in the meat locker but will forever have to live knowing the events throughout his life. He will return to his normal life in the United States and gets married and has two children. He becomes an optometrist and hangs a poster in his office that states “’God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference’” (Vonnegut). This is representative of Billy’s extensive knowledge about his own life, and what the future holds for him. Billy must know when it is okay to change the course of events, and what events he cannot change no matter the circumstances. This can become frustrating for Billy because he does know the day his wife will die, which occurs when she is on her way to visit Billy in the hospital after he

experiences shock reactions due to his involvement in the war. Billy also believes that he has been visited by aliens known as the Tralfamadorians, who do not believe in a set time line, but an arrangement of events, justifying the time-hopping lifestyle Billy has been living. Billy preaches this belief on a radio talk show but finds it hard to convince the public. In an effort to change the paradigm of the nation Billy makes a tape recording, stating the day and how he will die.
Slaughterhouse Five is a story of a confused veteran who experiences extreme states of shock and post-traumatic stress disorder following his involvement in the war.

Billy Pilgrim was only in his youth when he was enlisted into the military and his experiences of capture and taking shelter in a meat locker have all led to his diminishing mental state. Billy is “so traumatized by his experiences that time has shattered into pieces” (Vinke). Vonnegut is successful in portraying events within his own life, possibly including his own PTSD experiences, in order to magnify the effects of war on a population. Vonnegut uses the quote “so it goes” (Vonnegut) in order to explain death, as he has been desensitized through his experiences and mirrors this feeling through the life of Billy Pilgrim. Billy is never really visited by aliens as Vonnegut writes but has just used the views of the Tralfamadorians to validate his own experiences in the war itself. These views of life as a series of events and not a set time is the way Billy copes with his deteriorated mindset and is the core in which Slaughterhouse Five is based upon. Slaughterhouse Five magnifies the shock veterans experience, and is successful in its anti-war

endeavors.