In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five there are many unique and this that may not make sense at first at least. While reading this novel I have noticed that Kurt Vonnegut has chosen to repeat many phrases throughout. One that really stood out to me was “mustard gas and roses” the passage that stood at the most to me was in chapter four when Billy received a call from a man he doesn’t know, and he can smell the mustard gas and roses on his breath. I believe this unknown man is Vonnegut the author calling for one of his old buddies drunk late at night. This phrase is being repeated in many places in the book. The first time it is said is in chapter one when Vonnegut is the narrator he drinks a lot and calls old girlfriends and friends late at night. …show more content…
In chapter one Vonnegut says, “I get drunk drive my wife away with breath like mustard gas and roses…” (9). Vonnegut wife does not want anything to do with Vonnegut when he is drinking a lot and most likely a wreck from the war and maybe why Vonnegut wants to call his old girlfriends late at night to get some love that his wife no longer gives to him. However, Billy is not the happiest with his wife either in chapter 5 he says “Billy didn’t want to marry ugly Valencia. She was one of the symptoms of his disease. He knew he was going crazy when he heard himself proposing marriage to her...” (137). In that quote, Billy calls himself crazy for proposing to her and that is his disease or the effects of the war talking and making him marry someone his doesn’t want to. Even though Billy does show some love for her he is mentally not in that right place to give or receive much affection. That can be his mustard and roses because the war is affecting his abilities mentality and he cannot think straight and marry someone he really wants to be with and truly
Vonnegut makes clear that he, too, has experienced Billy's struggles. He does so by intruding into the accounts of the fictional Billy with his own personal thoughts. In one case Vonnegut states, " . . .it would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim--and for me too"(121). Another such event occurs when Pilgrim travels "back to Dresden, but not in the present. He was going back there in 1945, two days after the city was destroyed. Now Billy and the rest were being marched into the ruins by their guards. I was there. O'Hare was there"(212).
Critics often suggest that Kurt Vonnegut’s novels represent a man’s desperate, yet, futile search for meaning in a senseless existence. Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, displays this theme. Kurt Vonnegut uses a narrator, which is different from the main character. He uses this technique for several reasons.
The Parallel Plot Lines in Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut is and will always in my eyes and in the eyes of many others the writer who made the science-fiction genre safe for not only mainstream appeal, but also critical acclaim and intellectual contemplation. Even though Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series were released in roughly the same timeframe as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, none has held the same aura of respect and significance to the literary zeitgeist as Vonnegut's monumental masterpiece. The respect Slaughterhouse-Five garnishes among bookworms and the intellectual elite alike is no accident. Kurt Vonnegut's universal acclaim and appeal surely comes in no small part from his gift for connecting, almost unnoticiably, seemingly unrelated objects and events to give them deeper meaning, creating a phenomenon known within Jungian circles as synchronicity. By making his novel so multi-layered by drawing these comparisons, such as in being transported from a train car into a POW camp to an extraterrestrial spaceship that hums like a melodious owl, human beings being trapped within each moment in time like an insect in amber, and the writer's own repetition of his current project to a jokey old song, the writer gives us a deeper insight into the real multi-layeredness of space and time.
In the novel Slaughter House-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, challenges the thinking of American society by incorporating the element of satirizing materialism and the worship of objects as an inadequate source of meaning for life. The theme of materialism arises often in the text and can be interpreted as a delightful purpose of life for many characters that are all commonly corrupt and discontented. Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran who was in the city of Dresden when the destruction of Dresden occurred, seems to have a different outlook on how life is structured and what really matters. Although like most other characters Billy himself too gets ridiculed by Vonnegut’s subtle satire on materialism. After the war Billy is an optometrist and is living reasonably well in a Georgian home in Ilium. Residing in the city of Ilium where the General Forge and Foundry Company is, safety goggles are high in demand and Billy says, “Frames are where the money is” (Vonnegut 24) referring to how the profession can result in having a high income. Talking about the optometry business in general, it brings in a good about of revenue because when patients receive eyeglasses, the tendency for your vision to fluctuate increases and you have to keep going back to get new frames with your new prescription. This also refers to the materialistic aspect and how certain individuals have to always have the newest, in this sense referring to the newest frames. He was making over sixty thousand dollars a year, gave his wife stylish gifts, and drove and Cadillac. Despite having all of these possessions, “Billy’s home was empty” (Vonnegut 61) Materialistic dependencies are a distraction from compassionate ideals that are focused more around social aspects of relatio...
Vonnegut writes in the first chapter that he was once given advice against writing an anti-war novel, because "...there would always be wars, [and] that they were as easy to stop as glaciers" (Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 3). However, rather than writing an anti-war novel, Vonnegut writes a response to the tragedy of war through the eyes of a soldier (Novels 272). Vonnegut narrates the story of Billy Pilgrim, a soldier who went through the same experiences as Vonnegut did. Narrating the story of someone else allows Vonnegut distance and separation from the painful events at Dresden (Harris). Through Billy's story, Vonnegut introduces opposing ideas throughout his novel, creating tension between conflicting forces and philosophies. The opposing ideas in Slaughterhouse Five are differing views of time, and inco...
In the spring of 1945, near the end of World War II, American and British bombers rained a hail of fire upon the city of Dresden, Germany. With an estimated 135,000 dead, Dresden is known as one of the deadliest attacks in History, nearly twice as many deaths than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Kurt Vonnegut was among the few who lived through the firestorm; he wrote a book about it in fact. Slaughter House-Five (1969) is a fictional recount of his experience of the war. Many of the events (at least the parts set in WWII) are real experiences of Kurt. The people in the war are, for the most part, real; Vonnegut just changes all the names. The main character, however does not seem to have been a real person, and has a very unusual war experience.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is an anti-war historical fiction novel about the bombings of Dresden, Germany in 1945 at the end of World War II. Slaughterhouse-Five succeeds as a historical fiction novel because it is fictional and imaginative but also set in the past, rooted in factual information about that time period and the events that took place in Dresden. Much of the historical information in Slaughterhouse-Five is considered eye-witness information because the novel is semi-autobiographical because Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden and he also survived the fire bombings. Vonnegut’s historical fiction novel is unique in its genre because the focus is on the effect of surviving the bombing of Dresden rather than explaining
Kurt Vonnegut uses a combination of dark humor and irony in Slaughterhouse-Five. As a result, the novel enables the reader to realize the horrors of war while simultaneously laughing at some of the absurd situations it can generate. Mostly, Vonnegut wants the reader to recognize the fact that one has to accept things as they happen because no one can change the inevitable.
The first of the themes illustrated in this passage is fatalism, the idea that all events are inevitable and cannot be changed. The passage begins with Billy urinating on the ground outside the compound and then pondering the question, "Where had he come from, and where should he go now?" (Vonnegut 124). This problem
In an interview published in The Vonnegut Statement, Kurt Vonnegut states that one of his reasons for writing is "to poison minds with humanity. . . to encourage them to make a better world"(107). He uses poison, not in the context of a harmful substance, but as an idea that threatens welfare or happiness. In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut strives to disturb the complacency of his readers by satirizing humanity and its institutions, such as religion, science, and war, to name a few. If Vonnegut is successful in his endeavor, he may disturb some enough to make them see the folly of what humanity has achieved, and attempt to make some meaningful and positive changes. In some instances, however, Vonnegut hedges his bets by not relying entirely on the perception of humanity, and succumbs to the temptation of plain speaking.
Throughout his career, Kurt Vonnegut has used writing as a tool to convey penetrating messages and ominous warnings about our society. He skillfully combines vivid imagery with a distinctly satirical and anecdotal style to explore complex issues such as religion and war. Two of his most well known, and most gripping, novels that embody this subtle talent are Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. Both books represent Vonnegut’s genius for manipulating fiction to reveal glaring, disturbing and occasionally redemptive truths about human nature. On the surface, Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five are dramatically different novels, each with its own characters, symbols, and plot. However, a close examination reveals that both contain common themes and ideas. Examining and comparing the two novels and their presentation of different themes provides a unique insight into both the novels and the author – allowing the reader to gain a fuller understanding of Vonnegut’s true meaning.
On the surface, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five are vastly dissimilar works of literature, each with its own creative style and plot. However, when the texts are examined with a discerning eye one can notice multiple thematic undercurrents such as war fate,time and suffering hidden in plain sight. Overwhelmingly common in Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five are strong anti-war sentiments which show all the ways "war is deleterious towards the human condition."(Marvin) Vonnegut shows how war only causes pointless suffering and destroys the human body through countless ironic deaths, including Edgar Derby's, who is shot for stealing a teapot shortly after hundreds of thousands are massacred in the Dresden fire bombings. Another instance of an ironic death is when Billy Pilgrim and Ronald Weary join the two infantry scouts. Ironically, Pilgrim and Weary, who lack any significant military training, are not killed and the highly trained scouts are. Maybe the single greatest example of irony in Slaughterhouse Five is when the bird remarks " poo-tee-weet", after the fire bombings. This a nonsensical thing to say following such a massacre, but according to critics it shows that war and killing are nonsensical.(Marvin)Arguably , as palpable as the serious physical toll the war exacted on Billy, is how it brought about delirium and instability for him. After the war Billy is relegated to a mental hospital because of his reactionary mental state. Most likely, the cause of this insanity is all the death he witnesses in the war.(Marvin) Unable to cope with all of the suffering he witnesses, Billy slides into a very unstable state. Strangely enough, he discovers the Tralfamadorians, who incidentally hold beliefs that ratio...
He knows that he will never understand man's cruelty, but he does know that it is not inevitable; he knows that it can be stopped. He knows that one day the world will stop sending its babies off to fight, and that constant war is not the fate of the universe. A prayer in the novel that is stated both in Billy's Tralfamadorian world, as well as in his real world, goes as follows: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference" (60, 209). This prayer summarizes Vonnegut's message to his readers. Parts of life are inevitable and must be accepted, but many parts of life can and must be changed.
When Billy was at a party, he got drunk and was unfaithful to Valencia. Billy “somehow persuaded a woman to come into the laundry room” with him (Vonnegut 46). Billy helped this drunk woman take her girdle off. Billy thought that everything was alright, but “he couldn’t remember the name of the woman” (Vonnegut 46). Billy then left the party because people were “expressing disgust for Billy and the woman” (Vonnegut 47). Because he got drunk at a party and cheated on his wife, he obviously has no respect for his wife or for women in general. Vonnegut portrays a lack of regard for women through Billy’s actions, who does not love the woman he married nor does he have respect for the woman that he cheats with. He does not love her; he does not even know her name. They just had a quick hook up in the laundry room of a party. Also, the woman was drunk during this time. If Billy had any respect for his wife or women in general, he would not have done this. How Billy treats the woman at the party shows that Slaughterhouse-Five has material “that has as its basic motivation and purpose the degradation, debasement, and dehumanizing of persons” (Viex 28). The woman at the party is not written about as a person, she is not even given a name. The sole purpose of her character is a drunk woman that Billy cheated on his wife with. Through Billy, Vonnegut shows a lack of respect for
One of the ways Billy shows his ineffective ways of dealing with death is by using Risa Walker as sexual escape from his daily life. For example he shows himself using Risa Walker for pleasure when he admits, “So, instead, we said, “I love you,”, and let it go at that” (Banks 40). Spending time with Risa is daily escape for Billy. It is the one time of the day where he completely forgets about the bad things that have happened in his life and focusses on Risa. Billy does not really like her but is using her for his sexual pleasure after his wife is dead. It is not like they love each other it is more like they need each other because they are both burdened with stron...