Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

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Slaughterhouse Five. I truly do not even know where to begin with this book, partially because the middle is where the end should be and the end the middle. However, more likely the reasoning then that is because this book, in all of it’s seemingly random and strange ways, is truly an amazing piece of work. At first, it was too difficult for me to see it. Kurt Vonnegut honestly does such an incredible way of hiding that I think it would take most people a while though. But what it was that I couldn’t see was the repetition. “So it goes,” “Me and my friend O’Hare.” He repeats both of these things so many times throughout this irregular book at the most unintelligible times, or that’s how it seems at least. But rather, it was quite a strategic move to put them where he did, because it shows what he is thinking. Vonnegut did not dwell too much on what he was going to right, …show more content…

As I said before, it is very jumbled, but at the same time it isn’t. No, Vonnegut does not write in chronological order, but that isn’t to say he writes with no order. I believe that he ranks the events in an order of apparent importance. This is why he starts off writing about how he would write the book, then himself, then O’Hare, arriving at Billy Pilgrim and finally the war itself. Although he writes as memories come back to him, not later as he really thinks about it, Vonnegut’s mind was already ranking them in their importance. So the fact that this is the order is making it so that he personally sees the war as he can best remember it. That is why his own thoughts are so jumbled but the thoughts of Billy Pilgrim are not. he truly believes that Billy Pilgrim was another person, living through the horrific events with him. He was not