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What Is The Theme Of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. follows Billy Pilgrim, a time traveler in World War II. This historical science fiction is based on Vonnegut’s own experiences in the war, making it startlingly realistic for a book on time travel. Billy Pilgrim has a rather unique life. Frequently becoming “unstuck in time”, Billy can go from war to a birthday fifty years later to alien planet and back to war again. This results in a comical look on life from Billy where nothing ends.
Because Billy Pilgrim experiences time differently, he has witnessed his death multiple times, as well as his birth, and every experience in between in no particular order. Because of this, there is nothing for Billy to learn. This omniscient trait makes Billy an interesting main character. It is an effective way to detach the reader from the story, but still make them care about what happens. …show more content…

enlisted in the United States Army during World War II. While a prisoner of war, he witnessed the bombings of Dresden in 1945. He survived the bombings by hiding in a meat locker the Germans called Schlachthof Fünf, Slaughterhouse Five. It is obvious that these memories influenced the book, including the theme. Most of Vonnegut’s books carry a theme of peace, probably because of Vonnegut’s experiences in the war. Slaughterhouse-Five describes the death and destruction of the Dresden bombings not as a necessary war tactic (although mentioned as such later in the book), but a horrifying event that affected too many innocent people. Slaughterhouse-Five acts as a different point of view on the war, not just highlighting the glory of it all. By illustrating the Dresden bombings in such a personal manner, Vonnegut lays down an underlying warning against

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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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25,000 people died when the Allied forces dropped incendiary devices over Dresden, Germany. After surviving this, Kurt Vonnegut was forced to clean up the charred bodies. Although the term did not specifically enter the english language until after the publishing of Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of what he witnessed there. Most people who suffer from PTSD use common coping techniques some are simply in denial, some stay in an emotional state of uneasiness, while others result to self-harm. Vonnegut uses the novel as a coping mechanism to find new ways to handle the disorder.

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Slaughterhouse Five Thesis

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There are two inevitable aspects of life: war and death. Kurt Vonnegut addresses this idea in his novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” in an effort to reconcile with the war in Dresden. Not only does he want to reconcile with it, but he, also, wants to teach everyone that warfare and death is an element of life. In “Slaughterhouse-Five,” Vonnegut uses imagery, repetition, and satire to develop the theme of war and death. Kurt Vonnegut demonstrates the literary device, imagery, to combat the theme of war and death.

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The alternate explanation of time is left vague so we can internalize the concept just enough to get us moving on it but not too much so that we can keep up with Billy's time hops. This not only changes our views on time but also adjusts the way we see and read literature. This was also about perspective because of the

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The most important points Vonnegut is trying to get a crossed to his readers are the issues of the inevitability of war, fatalism, and of free will. War is usually fought over religious beliefs, different cultures, land, or governmental disputes. We as people are more willing to be violent to one another to get our point across then to avoid war entirely by recognizing everybody's differences and learning to live together in peace and the key to no violence is communication. War is inevitable because both sides are never going to accept one another's differences. The bombing of Dresden wasn't necessary because there was no threat coming from there.

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Much like money, time is a human construct. Human beings created the concept of time to organize the events of their lives in a continuous, chronological order. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five, depicts a different interpretation of time and the organization of events in Billy Pilgrim’s life. Billy Pilgrim’s life is broken up into brief events, and Vonnegut writes the events out of chronological sequence, which adds a unique flair to an already distinctive work of literature. In addition, Vonnegut includes the Trafalmadore alien’s perception of time to further solidify the theme in his work.

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