Slaughterhouse Five Analysis

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In Slaughterhouse- Five, Kurt Vonnegut’s themes of war and time travel to tell the story of World War II in Dresden through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim. Vonnegut uses flashbacks and blackouts to bring Billy back and forth throughout different eras of his life in order for him to develop a way to cope with the bombing in Dresden. Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, the protagonist Billy Pilgrim represents World War II with a twist. The war have several downfalls such as the damage it enables on those who have been involved within and negative effects on the prisoners and the The negative problems the prisoners face are constantly being face to face with death as if they cannot escape the horrors. Billy first near death experience was, “Early in 1968, a group of optometrist, with Billy among them, chartered an airplane to fly them from Ilium to an international convention of optometrists in Montreal. The plane crashed on top of Sugarbush Mountain, in Vermont. Everybody was killed but Billy. So it goes.” (Vonnegut, 60) This horrible experience made Billy snap to reality that death is something that happens to everyone and you can’t escape it. Negativity flows as an example within the theme of war because before Billy had learned to cope he dwelled on death. Before you realize it Billy is faced with war when, “American fighter planes came in under the smoke to see if anything was moving. They saw Billy and the rest down there. The planes sprayed them with machine-gun bullets, but the bullets missed. Then they saw some other people moving down by the riverside and they shot at them. They hit some of them. So it goes. The idea was to hasten the end of the war.” (Vonnegut, 378-379) There is no way to describe the tragedy. These people are... ... middle of paper ... ...to escape a destroyed place due to war. He cannot understand this world and why such things as people begin killed are happening so he must escape. The world is in twin paradox of fourth dimension it is hard to wrap your mind around and full of destruction and despair. The free will of these humans is incredibly hard to attain. These people must accept the fact that they are going to die it is in their fate and Billy came to terms that he cannot prevent it from happening. The title of the book represents a safe place for Billy ironically being a slaughterhouse. A place composed of death and emptiness. The book was written in a way for Kurt Vonnegut to tell the story of his life through a fictional character in order to remember the problems he faced. The flashbacks and blackouts enable the passing of time and show the similarities between the war and time travel.

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