Analysis Of Slaughterhouse Five By Kurt Vonnegut

Charlie Barwell
Gordon
Honors English 10 P4
Mar 14, 2023
Kurt’s war
As Kurt Vonnegut writes his book “slaughterhouse five” he continues to depict a war fought by children. His criticism is blatantly and obviously the war is fought by children, it is even said that would have called his book “The children's crusade,”(19) However as Vonnegut continues to write an anti war book, It is not the criticism of war that made his message so powerful. The characters he creates criticize different aspects of how children have been forced to fight in war. Vonnegut uses his characters to show how the glorification of war causes children to accept the horrors of war as good or honorable, criticizing the glorification of war.
A society in which people are

Vonnegut’s vessel for showing the impact of war stories on people is Roland Weary. Roland, a soldier fighting alongside Billy Pilgrim, believes himself to be of a greater purpose. He believes that he is a member of the fabled “Three musketeers,”(53). Rolands need for acceptance comes from his childhood as “Roland Weary was only eighteen, was at the end of an unhappy childhood spent mostly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had been unpopular in Pittsburgh. He had been unpopular because he was stupid and fat and mean, and smelled,”(44). Wears childhood crafted him into a man that would take every opportunity for greatness. Vonnegut’s criticism of war that having the willingness to do anything to achieve greatness, as well as the exposure to war being a larger than life accomplishment, leads to one's demise. Roland Weary dies in world war ll in a cattle car filled with soldiers and human excrement, saying to everyone that his killer was Billy pilgrim and that he needs to be avenged. It is the almost poetic death that mainly contributes to Vonnegut's criticism of war. When Roland is so caught up in being the greatest, because his childhood was so bad, that he begins to

Vonnegut uses the character, Professor Roomford, to show how a false understanding of war decays civil society. Because “Billy [was] talking to himself from time to time,” Rumfoord dismissed him as a crazy outlier, a soldier who never was quite right(235). However Rufoord’s ignorance becomes even more problematic as we discover that “He was working on a one-volume history of the United States Army Air Corps in the Second World War,”(235). Billy is an expert in the bombing of Dresden and when “Lily had brought Rumfoord [a copy of] The Destruction of Dresden by an Englishman named David Irving,” Rumfoord continues to label Billy as crazy or not in control of himself(238). Rumford Is Vonnegut’s representation of the Americans who have never fought in war. Rumfoord denies Billy a sense of humanity because he does not want to accept the facts of war. It is his negligible understanding of war, that war is equitable to glory and honor, that lead him to make his false conclusions about billy. Vonnegut criticizes ignorance when he writes about Rumfoord, It is the lack of knowledge and the inability to pursue knowledge that lead to ignorance in modern society, especially in the U.S. where the division we have superimposed upon ourselves keeps us distracted from looking at how brutal war truly is. When 135,000 people die in an air bombing, in