Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five Essay

Soldiers fight for survival and for the feeling of being proud of their country. War has existed and will continue to exist as long as there is a disagreement between two sides. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut was published in 1969 mainly to reflect war and notify the public that war is dangerous. In one interview, Vonnegut said, “I myself am a work of fiction.”(Carrigan) which turned out to be true because after his death people kept studying him more to find out what else he was trying to communicate to the world. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses absurdity to satirize war.

Vonnegut uses free will to satirize war. Billy didn’t know how to swim when he was a kid and that cost him when his dad pushed him in the deep end of the pool and left him to drown. Instead of finding his way out of the pool, he stays there because of free will. As a result of Billy staying in the pool, he is rescued by his father moments afte. Billy was “terrified, because his father had said Billy was going to learn how to

This crash is absurd because Billy and the co-pilot were together when the plane lost control. Billy was on his way to a trade conference in Montreal. The “barbershop quartet on the airplane was singing Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nelly, when the place smacked into the top of Sugarbush Mountain in Vermont. Everybody was killed but Billy and the copilot. So it goes”(156) Billy is aware that the plane was going to crash but does not inform other people. After the plane crashed, Billy said “so it goes”(156) because he cannot change what has happened. He has to learned to accept it and move on. Billy says the same phrase(so it goes) through the book every time there is sadness, like death. It is absurd to think there were any survivors. Vonnegut lets Billy and the co-pilot live because they are significant characters. Billy is the protagonist and the co-pilot carried people in the