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Slaughterhouse Five Summary

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The Horrors of War and More This book report is over Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This book was published by Dial Press Trade paperbacks and is 270 pages long; it was originally released in 1969. This book has been described as a semi-autobiographical, anti-war science fiction book. This book report will summarize the events of Vonnegut’s novel, and analyze its themes. The narrative in Slaughterhouse Five jumps around chronologically. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is unstuck in time. In one chapter he will relive many parts of his life. This summary will attempt to follow the events in a mostly chronological order. Most of this book is a third person narration following Billy Pilgrim. However, the author, Vonnegut, narrates …show more content…

He completes optometry school, and becomes engaged. Billy breaks down and is committed into a veteran’s hospital. While receiving treatment there, he meets a veteran who shows him the books of Kilgore Trout. Kilgore trout has inventive sci-fi stories, although he is not a great writer. Billy gets married, and because of his wealthy stepfather, grows rich in the optometrist business. He also becomes president of the Lions Club. During his18th wedding anniversary, the optometrist barbershop quartet traumatizes him, reminding him of Dresden. Later the novel jumps to when Billy is taken by the Tralfamadorians, though he already knew it was going to happen. He briefly stays in a clear dome in a zoo. They also mate him with an actress named Montana Wild hack. She has a baby with Billy. One of the importances of the Tralfamadorians, is there perception of time and lack of free will. Time exists in one place for them in the 4th dimension, but they are tied down to each moment that happens. This is a parallel to Billy Pilgrim. It is stated in the book that,” Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.” When someone is dead, they are also alive in a different moment. When he is back on earth in 1968 he wants to share his insights. He is the only survivor of a plane crash full of optometrists. After, he is operated on in a Vermont hospital. His desperate wife dies on the way to see him. Billy has

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343 Words | 2 Pages

As an optometrist, Billy is meant to correct the vision of the ill sighted, but ironically, his vision is corrected by time travelling aliens. Another way true sight prevails is through the readers themselves, they decide weather they see Billy’s time traveling abilities as true, or they can argue that Billy is suffering from posttraumatic

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Billy’s lack of giving up helps him stay determined. Wilson Rawls shows that Billy is very hardworking in chapters 1-6. Billy was so hardworking to get his dogs in these chapters. For Example it took Billy two years in order to get his dogs. He had to raise/earn $50 (which is $500 today).

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531 Words | 3 Pages

Billy in no means was a rambo-esque type bloodthirsty killer, but more the awkward what am I doing here type instead. The innocent optometrist was once again forced into a stressful situation. He was the topic of deliberate bullying from other enlisted men, reasons being from his inability to sleep through the night, which could be linked directly to his traumatic experiences when he was younger, to the fact he couldn't keep up with the other men while participating in physical exercise. This lead to a group of men being killed which i’m sure didn't help bialys conscious. The stress only added up more when Billy had to experience the bombing of the beautiful city of dresden in a meat locker.

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673 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut intertwines reality and fiction to provide the reader with an anti-war book in a more abstract form. To achieve this abstraction, Kurt Vonnegut utilizes descriptive images, character archetypes, and various themes within the novel. By doing so, he created a unique form of literature that causes the reader to separate reality from falsehood in both their world, and in the world within Vonnegut’s mind. Vonnegut focuses a lot on the characters and their actions in “Slaughterhouse Five.”

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867 Words | 4 Pages

Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day” (Vonnegut 23). Billy can go from being a prisoner in war to on a planet called Zircon-212. That was the planet he would frequently visit and stay in a zoo there. He bounces in and out of so many times in his life. Half way through the book he flashes to the day he dies, but since he is unstuck in time it really doesn't matter.

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288 Words | 2 Pages

Title: Slaughterhouse-Five Author: Kurt Vonnegut Thesis: Throughout KVs SF, he describes in matter of fact way the psychological impact/effects of the devastation of war and death upon Billy Pilgrim and how he handles it. Through the exploration of Billy Pilgrim’s detached and indifferent thoughts, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five illustrates the coping mechanisms of a World War II veteran with post traumatic stress disorder.

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1106 Words | 5 Pages

To understand the history of past cultures, it is imperative that both sides are heard. Many novels continually showcase this new outlook on history. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, demonstrates the New Historicism perspective with subjective accounts, reflections of the time it is written, and lack of the opposing side ’s outlook. To begin, New Historicism is showcased by subjective accounts that are apparent in developing the

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697 Words | 3 Pages

When Billy is in the zoo the Tralfamadore leader tells him that their books “have no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.” (Vonnegut 88) Just like Billy and his experiences… no beginning, middle or end. Likewise, Billy’s ability to choose what moment he wants to travel to is inadequate and the book doesn't offer a feeling of relaxation or beauty.

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468 Words | 2 Pages

Billy eventually accepts the views of the Tralfamadorians as the lack of free will is prevalent is his life. He is drafted against his will to participate in a war he has no drive to fight in. He has a notable lack of training, is innapropriately dressed as Cinderella, is generally indifferent about his survival, and yet manages to live while those around him

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1162 Words | 5 Pages

Billy is said to become unstuck in time to different events in his life. He flashes to memories of Dresden, which is the war that he participated in. He also has episodes of his flight crash, he knows how he will die, and how his wife dies. This book is so sporadic, the audience never truly knows when this book is taking place in Billy’s life. Each page could contain three or more different events in Billy’s

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1077 Words | 5 Pages

Trout uses science fiction and its different elements such as cognitive estrangement and structural fabulation in order to build a metaphor that guides the reader into thinking about an aspect of society that the author wants to criticize. This communicative piece intends to portray social criticism in the way Vonnegut does it, but taken to our reality and analyzing aspects we want to condemn. We opened the book on chapter nine and decided to write our own new plot as if Billy Pilgrim was the one reading it. We wrote the text and inserted it as part of the chapter in order to adhere it to the rest of society’s criticism seen in the book in the very best Vonnegut style. In order to interpret Vonnegut’s intentions and purpose of social criticism throughout Slaughterhouse Five, specially in chapter nine, it´s necessary to understand science fiction and its elements.

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599 Words | 3 Pages

Vonnegut’s novel is more of a science-fiction novel and references time traveling and aliens. The jumping around of events throughout the book makes it hard to concentrate on the timeline of the book. At one point Vonnegut writes how Billy Pilgrim is “simultaneously on foot in Germany in 1944 and riding his Cadillac in 1967.” (Vonnegut 58) This passage from the novel illustrates how the storyline of Slaughterhouse-Five becomes convoluted due to Vonnegut’s sporadic use of fantasy.

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988 Words | 4 Pages

Billy gave his power and life to tralfamadorians who control which moments from his life he goes to next. “When I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes". (Page 27) He learns from the tralfamadorians and not his experiences, he completely lost his contact with the world and people dying around him. The war swallowed Billy whole and consumed his ability to control his life.

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1189 Words | 5 Pages

How did Kurt Vonnegut use postmodern approaches to create an antiwar antinovel in Slaughterhouse 5? When Slaughterhouse 5 was published, it could have been considered as an outsider in the literary world. In the midst of the Vietnam war, it was preaching antiwar notions, and in a time where straightforward linear storylines dominated the media, Slaughterhouse 5 presented a challenging nonlinear plot. The nonlinearity in plots would later on become a staple of postmodern literature but Kurt Vonnegut missed the peak of the postmodern era publishing the novel in 1969; a decade before the peak in the 1980's.

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1041 Words | 5 Pages

Because of Dependent Personality Disorder, not only did Billy feel the need to have a relationship with someone but his relationship was ruined because of his fearful

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