Views on War in Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five

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Views on War in Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five

Many people returned from World War II with disturbing images forever stuck in their heads. Others returned and went crazy due to the many hardships and terrors faced. The protagonist in Slaughter-House Five, Billy Pilgrim, has to deal with some of these things along with many other complications in his life. Slaughter House Five (1968), by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is an anti-war novel about a man’s life before, after and during the time he spent fighting in World War II. While Billy is trying to escape from behind enemy lines, he is captured and imprisoned in a German slaughterhouse. The author tells of Billy’s terrible experiences there. After the war, Billy marries and goes to school to become an optometrist. During his schooling, he is put in a mental institution. As it is later explained in the novel, Billy was abducted by aliens and lived on their planet in their zoo for a period of time. Throughout this novel, Billy’s life doesn’t occur in a series of events. He also doesn’t have flashbacks of certain points in his life. Instead, he lives his life through time travel. His life jumps from many points in time including his experiences in the war, before the war, after the war and also on the planet of Tralfamadore. Throughout this novel, Billy Pilgrim’s and other humans’ views on war are simple: in essence, it’s one of the most destructive things that there is, but to the aliens on the planet of Tralfamadore, war is unimportant in the long run and should not be dwelled on.

By opening the cover of this novel, one might notice the subtitle. Underneath the title, Slaughter-House Five, reads the subtitle: The Children’s Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death. Without even reading the ...

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...his novel believe war to be the most disgusting and most distructful thing in the universe, the Tralfamadorians enlighten one human on their thoughts of war. They don’t feel Billy should put as much time as he does into dwelling on something like war that is inevitable. They ignore it and rate it relatively low on a scale of importance. From World War II, Billy is left with many vivid memories that he would rather not have. He has first handedly seen what he thinks is the most evil thing in the universe. He is frequently haunted by images of his experiences. But maybe if he would just tell himself that there is nothing he can do about war, maybe if he just looked the other way and ignored it, maybe then he would be happy and in a state of peace like the Tralfamadorians.

Work Cited

Vonnegut, Kurt. SlaughterHouse Five. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1980

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