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Book Report On Slaughter House Five By Kurt Vonnegut

714 Words3 Pages

Nour Hachemian
English
09/05/17
Slaughter House Five
Reading Assignment

Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut, is an anti-war book. The author mocks the war through a character named Billy Pilgrim, and he tells us the story of his crazy and adventurous time traveling. Kurt Vonnegut communicates his anti war principles, and demonstrates how sad and horrible war actually is, and the amount of destruction it can cause. He also explains in great detail the bombing of Dresden, and the after effects that it had on the city and the people. Kurt Vonnegut is able to go in such great depth, because he lived through the bombing himself, and was able to experience how horrible and devastating it is to be a soldier..

When Billy is visiting his old …show more content…

Billy sees that the city is covered in dead bodies, and Billy was forced to dig up the corpses “There were hundreds of corpse mines operating by and by. […] Bodies weren’t brought up anymore. They were cremated by soldiers with flamethrowers right where they were” (Vonnegut, 214). The message that the author is trying to communicate with us, is how inhumane and cruel people can be to cause such destruction. For Vonnegut, the only thing that results in a war, is death and tragic …show more content…

These actions remind one of that of the Germans, because of all of their similarities. They both make Billy strip from his clothes, and they in-prison him somewhere where he can not get out. “Billy got of his lounge chair, went in the bathroom to take a leak. The crowd went wild.” (Vonnegut, 112) The only difference between the two is that being abducted by aliens is a better experience than being a prisoner of war. The Tralfamadorians treated Billy better than the Germans ever treated any soldier.

When Billy gets captured by the Germans, they lock him with other soldiers in a box cart “Human beings in there were excreting into steel helmets […] Human beings also passed canteens. Human beings in there took turns standing or lying down” (Vonnegut, 70). Vonnegut is exaggerating the “human beings”, to show us that the soldiers were not being treated like humans. The author is trying to say that nobody should go through this level of misery and

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