Kurt Vonnegut: Prisoner Of War

On December 7, 1941, the empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on the American harbor at Hawaii known as Pearl Harbor, along with several other American provinces in the Pacific such as Guam and the Philippine islands. This vicious attack on American soil pulled America into the second World War [one of the most destructive and bloody wars the world remembers today]. Millions of young men enlisted into the Armed forces, one of them being Kurt Vonnegut at the age of 20. What Kurt Vonnegut did not know was that he was going to end up as a prisoner of war. Kurt Vonnegut’s experiences during this time in the hands of the Germans gave him a new outlook on the brutal conditions of warfare, the neglect that veterans were given after World War

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on November 11, 1922 (Pederson). Kurt Vonnegut’s family included his wife Jane Cox, who divorced him in 1979, one son, two daughters, and a second wife he married in 1979 named Jill Krementz (Pederson). After graduating from Cornell University in 1942, Kurt Vonnegut enlisted in the U.S. Army as Infantry (“Kurt”). After Kurt Vonnegut’s service, he went on to work as a police reporter, public relations for general electric, and eventually a freelance writer (Pederson). Regardless of Kurt Vonnegut’s successful career, he “wrestled with his own personal demons. Having struggled with depression on and off for years, he attempted to take his own life in 1984” (“Kurt”). Kurt Vonnegut’s life then came to an end when he “died on April 11, 2007, at the age of 84”

While the novel alone is a story about PTSD and war, the way Vonnegut tells it shows he is against war: “Absolutely everybody in the city [Dresden] was supposed to be dead, regardless of what they were, and that anybody that moved in it represented a flaw in the design” (Vonnegut 230). When understanding what Vonnegut saw at the firebombing of Dresden and what he describes about the event, it is important to note that the amount of destruction that occurred in the attack matched the capability of an Atomic bomb. Witnessing Dresden wasn’t the trigger for Vonnegut’s view however: “Vonnegut wrote articles for the school newspaper opposing American entry into World War II” ("Slaughter" 259). Vonnegut repeatedly focuses on murder and death in war while telling the events of how he came about adding the subtitle “The Children’s Crusade”