Free Will and Warfare in Slaughterhouse Five Slaughterhouse Five is an oddly charming, anti-war book with a rather relevant historical background written by Kurt Vonnegut, who experienced first hand the events in Dresden during World War II. Vonnegut was a prisoner in Dresden, Germany, and at the time Dresden was a relatively defenseless and militarily bleak city. "The city was fire bombed so successfully (and senselessly) that 135,000 civilians were killed in the violent fire storm" (McKean). The suffering in Dresden was so horrible that writers, artists and historians have had a hard time conveying how horrible it actually was. Vonnegut wrote about his experiences forming the story throwing several drafts away, and in the small two hundred For instance, his narrator is in Dresden during the bombing and firestorm, he learns what happened through eavesdropping on whispering guards, a way of toning down the violence that Vonnegut witnessed. It is worth remembering that Vonnegut describes himself often feeling speechless when thinking about the bombing of Dresden. For instance, in the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five "I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought too it would be a masterpiece, or at least make me a lot of money since the subject was so big. But not many words about Dresden came from my mind then … And not many words come now, either." (Vonnegut 2). It is clear that the author has a complicated relationship with the words that eventually do come like his famous opening line "All this happened, more or less. The war parts anyway, are pretty much true" (Vonnegut 1). The phrase "pretty much true" is designed to make the readers uncomfortable. Getting back at the previous quote, in his later book "Palm Sunday" Vonnegut expresses guilt having benefited from its success. "The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only First off his experiences during the war were definitely traumatic, he gets lost behind enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge, he is taken prisoner by the Germans, he sees a fellow soldier die from gangrene while walking from a prisoner of war camp, so it goes, he is crammed for days in a train with other POWs, he survives the bombing of Dresden then observes the aftermath of the firestorm, including, many burnt and charred bodies, and then he witnesses a fellow POW 's execution for stealing a teapot so it goes. So there is no question Billy has experiences flashbacks to the war as if these incidents were happening in the present. It is not surprising that he suffers from hallucinations either. But what about the toilet plunger aliens? So Billy Pilgrim has a lot of clogged memories in his mind right? Toilets also can get clogged for many reasons, so the toilet plunger aliens serve as a way to unclog Billy 's mind. The hallucinations of these aliens help Billy work out the bad, clogged memories of war and horror. Something similar about the Germans and the Tralfamadorian Aliens is they both made Billy strip when he arrived, the Germans refuse to answer why they beat one prisoner and not another, Tralfamadorian aliens refuse to answer why they took Billy, the Germans confine Billy to a slaughterhouse, the Tralfamadorians confine him to a zoo. So obviously there are parallels between his past and
(p. 125). Vonnegut does this to give credibility to that part of the book as he was physically in Dresden as an American POW during the bombing. Thus, Vonnegut takes on an omniscient point of view in the novel by being both part of an above the action.
Though he was able to escape war unharmed, Billy seems to be mentally unstable. In fact, his nightmares in the German boxcar at the prisoners of war (POW) camp indicate that he is experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): “And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the car. Nearly everybody, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep. Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away” (79). Billy’s PTSD is also previously hinted when he panics at the sound of sirens: “A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting World War III at any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon” (57). The most prominent symptom of PTSD, however, is reliving disturbing past experiences which is done to an even more extreme extent with Billy as Slaughterhouse-Five’s chronology itself correlates with this symptom. Billy’s “abduction” and conformity to Tralfamadorian beliefs seem to be his method of managing his insecurity and PTSD. He uses the Tralfamadorian motto “so it goes” as a coping mechanism each time he relives a tragic event. As Billy struggles with the conflict of PTSD, the work’s chronological order is altered, he starts to believe
"In Slaughterhouse Five, -- Or the Children's Crusade, Vonnegut delivers a complete treatise on the World War II bombing of Dresden. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a very young infantry scout* who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them.' The reviewer concludes that 'Slaughterhouse Five is an extraordinary success. It is a book we need to read, and to reread.' "The popularity of Slaughterhouse Five is due, in part, to its timeliness; it deals with many issues that were vital to the late sixties: war, ecology, overpopulation, and consumerism. Klinkowitz, writing in Literary Subversions.New American Fiction and the Practice of Criticism, sees larger reasons for the book's success: 'Kurt Vonnegut's fiction of the 1960s is the popular artifact which may be the fairest example of American cultural change. . . . Shunned as distastefully low-brow . . . and insufficiently commercial to suit the exploitative tastes of high-power publishers, Vonnegut's fiction limped along for years on the genuinely democratic basis of family magazine and pulp paperback circulation. Then in the late 1960s, as the culture as a whole exploded, Vonnegut was able to write and publish a novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age. '"Writing in Critique, Wayne D. McGinnis comments that in Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut 'avoids framing his story in linear narration, choosing a circular structure.
Billy Pilgrim time travels to various moments in his life at random, which suggests he has no power over his mind and the memories that haunt him. He “is spastic in time, (and) has no control over where he is going next” (Vonnegut 43), as he struggles to make sense of his past. Billy’s ability to remember events in an erratic sequence, mirrors the happenings of war. War is sudden, fast paced, and filled with unexpected twists and turns. Billy cannot forget what he experienced during his time as a soldier, and in turn his mind subconsciously imitates this hectic quality of war. This behavior proves that although the war is over, “psychologically, Billy has never fully left” (Vees-Gulani). For many soldiers, especially those who were prisoners of war (POW), it is inevitable that their mind will not be like it once was (Vees-Gulani).
When Vonnegut created Billy Pilgrim, he made Billy subject to the experience of the war. In fact, Billy experiences it almost. exactly the same as Vonnegut himself had, including the experiences of being a POW and in the firebombing of Dresden. The. But in Billy's case, Vonnegut writes it with.
The answer lies within the book and within the man himself. Kurt Vonnegut served in the Armed Forces during World War II and was captured during The Battle of the Bulge. He and a group of American Prisoners of War were taken to Dresden to take part in a prisoner work camp. Vonnegut and his fellow soldiers were housed in an underground facility when Dresden became history as the most loss of human life at one time. On the night of February 13, 1945, when the Americans were underground, Dresden was firebombed by the Allied Air Force.
Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut is an anti war novel told by the narrator who is a minor character in the story. Slaughterhouse-Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has come "unstuck in time. "The bombing of Dresden is what destroyed Billy. Dresden’s destruction shows the destruction of people who fought in the war: the all the people who died. Some people, like the main character, Billy Pilgrim, are not able to function normally like before because of what they saw, because of their experience. Throughout the book, Billy starts hallucinating about his experiences with the Tralfamadorians: he wants to escape the world which was destroyed by war, a war that he does not and cannot understand. Vonnegut uses the technique of repetition.. The main repetition is “so it goes” which is told after anything related to death, he also uses other repetitions throughout the book. The major theme of the story is the Destructiveness of War. Vonnegut uses repetition to reinforce the theme of the story.
In the novel, Vonnegut introduces the reader to his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. The story uses time travel to give the reader a glimpse into different segments of Billy’s life, not just the war part. Vonnegut (1969) writes, “Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun.” Vonnegut (1969) writes that Billy first became “unstuck in time” during the war. After his regiment was destroyed by the Germans, Billy was a dazed wanderer behind enemy lines (Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five). During that era, Billy’s condition would have been called “shell shock” or “battle fatigue” (McClellend). Today, veterans that are suffering from psychiatric issues are diagnosed with PTSD. After reading Vonnegut’s novel, essays, and his own family members’ personal accounts, it is evident that both Vonnegut and his protagonist suffered from PTSD.
The book, Slaughter House-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, is based on the main character named Billy Pilgrim who is a little "lost" in the head. Billy is always traveling to different parts of his life and rarely in the present state. Throughout the book Billy mainly travels back and forth to three big times in his life. In each different time period of Billy's life he is in a different place; his present state is in a town called Illium and his "travels" are to Dresden and Tralfamadore. When Billy is in Illium he is suppose to have a "normal" life; he is married, has two children, and works as an optometrist. Then Billy travels back to Dresden where he was stationed in the last years of WWII and witnessed the horrible bombing. When Billy travels to Tralfamadore he is in an "imaginary" state, everything that happens to him is more like a dream. Through Billy's travels in time he shows that he is striving to find meaning in the events that happened in his life that he is afraid to acknowledge. As Billy says himself, "All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist," (1) this just proves even further that fact that Billy cannot ever forget any event in his life.
Billy is used to showing that everything happens because of fate. As a prisoner, Billy has no control over his day to day life. While Billy is in Dresden, the city is bombed, because of luck, only Billy and a few others survive the bombing in a slaughterhouse. The people of Tralfamadore tell Billy that humans do not understand time because everything they do is in singular progression.
War veterans wrote Slaughterhouse-Five and The Things They Carried. Some parts of the book are made for readers to believe and the other parts give realistic examples of war. The authors introduce their plots as truth-based on purpose. In the chapter “Notes”, O’Brien admits: “that part of the story is my own.” (O’Brien 151). In the first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut begins with: “All this happened, more or less.” (Vonnegut 1). The authors create a picture for the reader on their past experiences to make their stories real. Even the parts that are fiction are not lies, because the writers have the knowledge to be able to generalize, shorten, and produce events in the book. O’Brien writes: “story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” (O’Brien 172). It seemed as if Vonnegut and O’Brien used fiction to make the story more exciting. They write abo...
Slaughterhouse Five is not a book that should be glanced over and discarded away like a dirty rag. Slaughterhouse Five is a book that should be carefully analyzed and be seen as an inspiration to further improve the well-being of mankind. Vonnegut makes it clear that an easy way to improve mankind is to see war not as a place where legends are born, but rather, an event to be avoided. Intelligent readers and critics alike should recognize Vonnegut’s work and see to it that they make an effort to understand the complexities behind the human condition that lead us to war.
Both his time travels and the aliens’ view of time are related because they define time as a collection of moments. If time is a collection of moments, his life appears less upsetting because he can cherish the happy memories and simply accept the difficult ones as a mere moment in time. If his life is viewed in a linear progress, it appears more tragic, as it becomes a story filled with heartbreaking moments that directly lead to painful resolutions. This explains how both his time travels and the Tralfamadorian understanding of time help Billy deal with the traumatic incidents in his
Billy Pilgrim is also not like Pilgrim who is the main character in the “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, although they have same last name. His experience is very horrible in the war, there are just have violence and cruel, like the soldier who is in the “Three musketeers”. Imaginary, a man who just naive and have a great lucky, how can he keep his life in the war, just lucky? It is funny. Thus, though the whole novel “Slaughter-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, the main character, Billy Pilgrim is a contradictory person who has the naive and sane attitude together, in almost time he looks like a child, but his wise can “see” at his speaking and action, likes his speaking “So it goes.” (2) Not only is the indifference to the lives, or the hatred and
Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, uses the biblical allusion of Lot’s wife looking back on the destroyed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to parallel the story of Billy Pilgrim during the war and his experience after, when he returns to the United States. Although the reference is brief, it has profound implications to the portrayal of America during World War II, especially the bombing of Dresden. Although Lot’s wife’s action dooms her to turn into a pillar of salt, the narrator emphasizes her choice to indicate the importance of being compassionate and having hindsight. Ultimately, Slaughterhouse-Five critiques the American social attitude to disregard the unjust nature of its actions in World War II. Furthermore, Vonnegut’s novel explicates this by elucidating the horrors of war—especially in regard to the massacre of innocence, how it leaves the soldiers stagnant when they return home, and leaves them empty with an American Dream that cannot be fulfilled. In order to combat violence, the novel stresses that one must hold human life to a higher value and be compassionate towards others; America must acknowledge its mistakes so that the soldiers who fought and died for her so that the soldiers may move on.