What was the message of Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Through The Theme of War.
In Slaughterhouse five, Kurt Vonnegut uses the theme of war though the character of Billy, to show how war can desensitized one’s emotion, how it is senseless and immoral.
Through the violence and death of war, Kurt Vonnegut shows the reader how the innocence of Billy is lost. “We were foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood,” ( ). The word “virgins,” in this context means that Billy was innocent, he has just been exposed to war and do not know how to act, that’s why he described himself as being “foolish”. When Billy says “right at the end of childhood,” this means he has been deprived of his adolescence since he was a child, thus saying that he spent all his time in war. So what this says is that,
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“Poo-tee-weet,” ( ). This is the final quote at the end of the book, after the war and all the deaths came into an end. “Poo-tee-weet,” isn’t just what bird say, but this symbolises the stupidity of war and mass killing. The bird symbolises what the reaction of people is after a war. One would find himself speechless, because all that is left ,is the blood of innocent humans being shed for power and greed. So, the message Kurt Vonnegut is showing the reader, is that a society should not glorify war. Thus saying that the killing of innocent civilians is more important than, going to war and not gaining anything.
To conclude, Kurt vonnegut uses the theme of war in Slaughterhouse five to show how war has been glorified by the society in which Billy lived in. The glorification of war then led into the bloodshed of many innocent live. By sending adolescent in war, not only did war create more bloodshed, but war desensitized the adolescents to become numb to reality. Therefore, at the end, both sides loses, thus making war