Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
by Kurt Vonnegut
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Book Reviews of Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
Book Review: A Look into the Future and a Peek into the Past
Summary: 5 Stars
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five is a well known American classic. It provides a look into the future, a peek into the past, and a narration of a portion of the present life of Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist and unlikely hero. Vonnegut took a creative risk by writing a novel that could be categorized as both science fiction and historical. In doing so, he created what could be considered one of the most innovative and successful works of literature of the modern age.
Vonnegut's main character, Pilgrim, has the ability to "come unstuck in time." He has learned how to move in between memories of the past and visions of the future. The most vivid memories come from Pilgrim's time spent in the war. He has many horrific reminiscences of being herded into Dresden, which, through his time travels, he knew would be destroyed. Pilgrim also has "memories" of his time spent in the future on a planet called Tralfamadore, a planet where he is taken after he abducted by aliens who enjoy keeping him as a type of pet to study. Vonnegut smoothly transitions between these two sets of recollections by Therefore, Vonnegut's work seems less like choppy satirical anecdotes, and more like a fluid story.
In my opinion, Slaughterhouse Five succeeds in conquering the eternal question of time. Billy, unlike most people, is given the opportunity to not only reflect on the different parts of his life, but also relive them. Rather than focusing on living in his present life, though, Billy is constantly moving in and out of time in the search for why things are happening. He has been given a gift, but he is unable to take each moment as its own. He has to learn, like the Tralfamadorians already have, that the reason that something is happening is not important, it is just the fact that it is happening. Instead of thinking like and Earthling, Pilgrim must learn not to ask, as he does in the beginning: "Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything?" and just accept that the answer to all his questions of time is merely: "Because this moment simply is."
Book Review: A painful, beautiful look at history, violence, and humanity
Summary: 5 Stars
It's probably been over a decade since I last read Slaughterhouse Five, but after recommending it to a student who's been excitedly reading through it, I got the urge to dive back into Vonnegut's world again. There are few who don't know what Slaughterhouse Five is about, but for the unaware, it's the tale of Billy Pilgrim, a WWII veteran who was present at the fire-bombing of Dresden and now finds himself "unstuck" in time, catapulting around through his life. Of course, it's also the story of Vonnegut himself, as he deals with his memories of Dresden and tries to find some meaning behind it all. There's so much beauty and honesty in Slaughterhouse Five that it's hard to know where to start. Vonnegut's rambling, train-of-thought style isn't for all tastes, but for those who lose themselves in his world, it allows for marvelous asides and powerful moments, as well as Vonnegut's typically cynical optimism. As much of a contradiction as that sounds, it's the only way I know how to describe Vonnegut's work - there's no doubt that he's deeply cynical about the world and humankind, but he nonetheless hopes for better, hopes for improvement and wishes that people could learn from the past. And there are moments of stunning beauty and hope here - for instance, the quiet and profoundly moving sequence when Pilgrim watches a war film unfold backwards, watching as American and German planes slowly suck wounds and shrapnel from the cities and soldiers before delivering the bombs home to be dismantled and taken away where they will never be used again, or the overwhelming pain of the Dresden bombing itself. As much as Slaughterhouse Five is known for its humor, it's a quiet, dark humor, more of a bemusement at the world around it as a satire. But what lingers is not the humor; it's Vonnegut's inimitable, wonderful world view, one that I miss as the world continues to change on a daily basis. But, as the man himself wrote: So it goes.Book Review: WWII, Vietnam, Iraq -- Classic Antiwar Books Never Go Out of Style
Summary: 5 Stars
Well-read in the Vonnegut oeuvre, I somehow had missed SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE and, put in the mood for an anti-war book by the relentless news from Iraq, I remedied that this week. Unfortunately, readers the world over recently lost Kurt Vonnegut (and so it goes); reading this book makes me miss him more than ever.
What's most amazing is how the book slides through time and space effortlessly and without distracting the reader. No one's about to condemn it for its "episodic" nature, in other words. Beyond Billy Pilgrim, there are no important characters... just this looming presence of unstoppable, unexplainable, unethical authority. That can be government, the military, or a single person (a whole cavalcade of them come and go in Billy's life). For instance, how powerful is it that few Americans -- even among the most educated -- realize that the bombing of Dresden, Germany, killed more people than the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The German civilians were torched with "conventional" weapons. The Japanese, of course, with an atomic bomb ("unconventional" weaponry?).
And so it goes.
Included in this classic-for-a-reason anti-war book is the high arc of Vonnegut's signature humor and creativity. Billy Pilgrim is kidnapped by extraterrestrials from Tralfamadore. They know a thing or two about life (it goes on) and death (it doesn't). Somehow the mix of horrifying history, science fiction, and pitifully funny (humorously pitiful?) morality tale come together like a symphonic orchestra made up of disparate parts. Only Vonnegut, it would seem, could pull it off.
Inspired by World War II, given momentum by Vietnam, and kept aflame by Iraq, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE will never lose relevance because it hinges on the absurdity that is man and his addiction to power and war. Like Billy Pilgrim, it will slide through time and space effortlessly and forever.
Book Review: My first Kurt Vonnegut book and I loved it!
Summary: 4 Stars
Slaughterhouse-Five was a building that served as a German POW camp during World War II. Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner there and witnessed the firebombing of Dresden. The long lasting impressions of this incident inspired him to write a fictional story about Billy Pilgrim's experience as POW, mixing fiction with reality.
I think this novel is about the horrors of war, the sacrifice of young men who are still like children for the purpose of defending your country, and the helplessness of humans to direct their own destiny. The author accomplishes this in a jumble of events where Billy's experiences and observations of war and encapturement are mixed with his mental time travel through his life. Billy's time travel occurs after he was abducted by the aliens know as Tralfamidoreans on his daughter's wedding night. He was transported to their planet for several years to be observed like an animal in a zoo. The Tralfamidoreans believe that life occurs in 4 dimensions and whereas you cannot change how it enfolds, you can visit any moment in your life as it is occurring. Death will not exist because you can always visit another part of your life at the same time.
Slaughterhouse-Five is a very enjoyable novel. The sadness and horrors of war are balanced with the absurdness of Billy's postwar life and the Tralfamidorean influence. Two things in this book have really made an impression on me. First was the terrifying reference stating "the candles and soap were made from the fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the state". This made a terrible impression on me and I really hope it is a myth. Second was Vonnegut's repetitive "and so it goes" statement whenever someone or something dies. I like that phrase and now find myself using it quite often. This was my first Kurt Vonnegut novel and I can't wait to read another.
Book Review: Strange, surreal, anti-war story
Summary: 4 Stars
It's hard to say much about something one understands so little. Such is the case for me with Slaughterhouse-Five, a relatively short, oft confusing anti-war story inspired by Vonnegut's experiences during WWII, specifically, US and Britain's bombing of Dresden in February of 1945. Vonnegut's sources (p 188) place the death toll at 135,000, while more recent data (this from Wikipedia which cites a 2008 study) set it nearer to 25,000, a still staggering sum. The author begins Chapter One with, "All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true," and explains how he came to write the story and choose The Children's Crusade as its subtitle. "So it goes."
In spite of the (five!) pages of notes I took to help keep track of what was going on, I was in an almost constant state of confusion while reading it. Only afterwards, by reading through my notes and several other sources, was I able to make sense of things. It follows a completely unprepared, militarily clueless, time-traveling chaplain's assistant named Billy Pilgrim before, during, and after WWII. He interacts with fellow soldiers (I found the war parts the most interesting), an alien race called the Tralfamadorians, and his wife and children. Pilgrim's talk of the alien race is a primary cause for concern for nonbelievers. "And so on."
In spite of the many time traveling tangents and strange happenings, I liked the story for several reasons: I now understand the book's title, it's a challenging read; it depicts war, as expected, in all its horribleness; and it's like no other war story I've read before. Slaughterhouse-Five is a uniquely good look at the badness war. Also good: The Things They Carried by Timothy O'Brien, Operation Homecoming: Iran, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families edited by Andrew Carroll, and Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich.