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Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

672 Words3 Pages

I’ve just completed reading the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and I was surprised to find myself excited to read this book every day. I decided to read this book because it was highly praised and recommended to me by my friend Clara. Normally science-fiction is not my genre of choice; however I try to read any book that is a peer recommendation. In the beginning, the story is told by an unknown narrator who is trying to write a book about his experience of the firebombing of Dresden Germany in 1945. He goes through his process of creating this novel by gathering memories from talking to old friends. The rest of the book is the same narrator reading his finished novel to the reader. This book is his version of anti-war literature …show more content…

One particular instance was when Billy asked why the Tralfamadorians had chosen to capture him and they respond by saying: “‘Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why,’” (97). I find the notion of being stuck in the moment comforting. At any given moment there will always be a past, present, and future and as humans we think that once the present has passed it is gone forever. Our memories give us the chance to relive our lives as if we too were unstuck in time. We must learn to focus on the good memories and not the bad ones. It’s hard for me to pick out a part of this book that I did not like because I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Overall the style of writing was hard to get comfortable with, however I realize the nonlinear storytelling emphasizes the point Vonnegut is trying to make about time. Also, one thing that was never explained was how Billy escaped or was released from his alien zoo. These details are very minor and did not take away from my enjoyment of reading this

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The Tralfalmadorians’ belief in fate demonstrates the idea that one should accept the things that cannot be changed. When Billy is abducted by these aliens, they explain to Billy that there is no such thing as free will. The aliens are able to see into the fourth dimension, where “‘[all] events are structured’” or preordained (Vonnegut 85). They believe that no one has control over his or her destiny because the future always exists a certain way. Billy uses this philosophy to help himself cope with the realities of death and war.

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Archetypes In Slaughterhouse Five

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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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How Does Kurt Vonnegut Use Ptsd In Slaughterhouse Five

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It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber" (Vonnegut 86). Though Billy introduces it as a literally alien concept, this extraterrestrial experience may be a metaphor for how the war made him feel hopeless and small. The lack of free will in the Tralfamadorian way of living is a reflection of Billy's life as a prisoner of war. While initially discouraging, there is a degree of liberation in the absence of choice.

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Vonnegut's Use Of Satire In Slaughterhouse-Five

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Seamlessly blending fact and fantasy, Vonnegut creates a bittersweet smoothie of the novel Slaughterhouse-Five. As his father comments, Vonnegut never wrote a story with a villain in it – and Vonnegut responds that he had learned that “there was absolutely no difference between anybody .. Nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting” (8). This reflects his own ideas on his later experiences of World War II, of surviving the firebombing of Dresden and being held as a prisoner of war by the Germans.

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Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

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He also experienced the bombing of Dresden. Over 135,000 people were murdered. In Slaughterhouse-Five Billy’s experiences are important because, “Throughout the novel, Vonnegut draws upon the historical events of his life to date, which is also the lifespan of his character Billy Pilgrim”(Moss, Wilson). After the bombing, he worked for the Nazi army and had to dig corpse mines. His friend was also shot for stealing a teapot from the rubble.

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The surprising variations of the seriousness and light-heatedness allow Vonnegut to show effectively that war is absurd. The most important historical plot strand of Slaughterhouse-Five is Billy Pilgrim’s war experience which occurs during the last six months of World War II. This plot strand follows Billy through the battle of the Bulge and his presence as a POW during the bombing of Dresden, Germany. Vonnegut contrasts these documented milestones with incredible amounts of dramatic irony and dark humour.

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People are influenced by the events that surround them. Individuals transform into a product of their environment and experiences of the time. The literature and art often reflects the time period in which it is written in, and Vonnegut’s novel is no exception. The novel takes place during World War II, but is written during the time of the Vietnam War. With the Vietnam War, came a lot of anti-war propaganda.

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Once Billy is taken prisoner, he begins jumping through time and living life out of chronological order because of the damage from this initial experience. Within the disorientation of his time travel, Billy suddenly

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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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Happiness And Death In Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse-Five'

847 Words | 4 Pages

Billy talked about these nice moments again and again, showing how he had a great appreciation for life, which was reinforced when he met the Tralfamadorians and they explained how time really passes, “If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I 'm grateful that so many of these moments are nice,” (269). When reading this book quite a few of us believed that it proved how monotonous and boring life was, when it really just de-emphasized death and made the lives of the characters much more meaningful. In fact, Slaughterhouse-Five is not Vonnegut’s only novel where his overall message can be found, which is that all life is moving towards death, so we might as well find at least okay-ness, even in the face of doom and gloom. Even though his approach may seem much too simple, it is often difficult for us as humans to think of the chronology of life instead of just the end result of death.

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Similarities Between Slaughterhouse Five And To Kill A Mockingbird

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The story Slaughterhouse Five is told in 3rd person limited. It is portrayed in the eyes of Billy Pilgrim which has the some life experiences as the author Kurt Vonnegut. In the beginning of the book he states that he is going to write a book about is life. Billy Pilgrim goes to fight in Dresden and is sent to a POW camp just like the author.

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Slaughterhouse Five Passage Analysis

829 Words | 4 Pages

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, the reader realizes just how much significance every passage has and how much it contributes to the rest of the novel. Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel about World War II experiences and journeys through time of Billy Pilgrim, from his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant, to postwar and early years. During the novel Billy experiences the events of his life in random order, moving from his past as an American prisoner of war in World War II, to his humdrum middle-class life in the present-day, to his future as a zoo curiosity on the planet Tralfamadore. One passage that summarizes one of the main themes in this novel is when Vonnegut says, “It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again.

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Slaughterhouse Five Themes

200 Words | 1 Pages

Slaughterhouse- Five is not an ordinary novel. The author, Kurt Vonnegut, writes the story in an eccentric way that messes with the expectations of reading a novel. (ADD REASONING WHY, ONLY WAY COULD WRITE ABOUT DRESDEN BOMBING) Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut openly bends, breaks, or ignores the conventional rules of storytelling.

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Kurt Vonnegut's Literary Analysis

921 Words | 4 Pages

The inclusion of his own beliefs, experiences, and outlook makes the book a intimate, closer look to Vonnegut’s life, making his stories engaging. His works also include imaginary worlds and characters to illustrate themes in a different manner. For example, in Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut writes about Tralfamadorians as alien beings who show predetermination from how there is no such thing as free will and how every action is in place already, explaining that every “moment is structured in that way” (Vonnegut

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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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