To find a humorous book on the topic of war is like finding a patient with O- blood type, rare. You wouldn’t necessarily find Slaughter House-Five by Kurt Vonnegut in the comedy section, but it is indeed a war book that brings out “thoughtful laughter”. To create thoughtful laughter, Vonnegut uses comic relief to reduce the emotional impact of Billy’s insights to the true feelings of fright and human pain and suffering experiences. Billy, an optometry student, puts his studies on hold when he gets drafted in the military during World War II. He is sent to fight against the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, where he was then captured by a group of Germans shortly after he arrived. A German war photographer responsible for war propaganda wanted the guards to stage capturing Billy. While the Germans were staging a rather “picture perfect moment”, Billy probably would’ve ruined it. He gave“ [a] smile as he came out of the shrubbery [that] was at least as peculiar as Mona Lisa’s, for he was simultaneously on foot in Germany in 1944 and riding his Cadillac in 1967”. It is quite amusing to think that it was probably Billy’s broad smile was …show more content…
Suddenly, the conflicting groups of bombers, soldiers, and pilots no longer try to harm each other, but rather heal each other. “Billy extrapolates: the capsules are returned to America, where women work to disassemble and make sure that the destructive things inside will never be able to harm anyone. Hitler becomes a baby. All people become babies, generation after generation, returning to "two perfect people named Adam and Eve"”. The reversed movie was a bit silly and it provided us with a beautiful and caring story, but sadly, it is only a fiction. In reality, war cannot be reversed and all the chaos it has caused cannot be