Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five: The Reality Of War

The Reality of War War is depicted as necessary and soldiers are strong and ready for war, but is this actually reality? Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut is the story of a man named Billy Pilgrim who was in the army during WWII at the age of 21. In the novel, Billy is captured by the Nazi’s in Germany. The book follows his story as a POW, his experience during the bombing of Dresden and how the war impacted him and his mind after. Whereas the dominant narrative of war suggests soldiers are strong, mature men and that the enemy is a threat, Vonnegut uses irony to show that, in reality, war is filled with weak, childlike soldiers and the enemy is just like us and nonexistent.
In the dominant narrative of war, soldiers look strong, mature and ready to fight. Vonnegut subverts this narrative by depicting that soldiers are actually weak and unorganized children.

Whereas Vonnegut depicts the enemy or Nazis as kind people and reveals they are just like normal people. Vonnegut writes, “They were adored by the Germans, who thought they were exactly what Englishmen ought to be. They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun” (94). Vonnegut uses irony to demonstrate that even though the English are POW’s of the Nazi’s they are fairly treated, well fed and healthy. The German’s are interested in the English way of life because they make war seem fashionable even though it is the opposite of that. Vonnegut claims, “The dog who had sounded so ferocious in the winter distances, was a female German shepard. She was shivering. Her tail between her legs” (52). The description of the dog foreshadows to the fact that the Nazi’s are not as strong or terrifying as the Americans thought. Also, Vonnegut uses irony to describe that the Nazis are just as weak and scared as the American armies are, even though they seem like a