Analysis of Slaughterhouse-Five, a Novel Written by Kurt...

Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel written by Kurt Vonnegut, tells the story of the devastating effects of war on a man, Billy Pilgrim, who joins the army fight in World War II. The semi-autobiographical novel sheds light on one of history’s most tragic, yet rarely spoken of events, the 1945 fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. Kurt Vonnegut was born in 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana to German parents. As a young man, Vonnegut wrote articles strongly opposing war for his high school newspaper, and the school newspaper of Cornell University, where he attended college (Allen 1). World War II broke out when he was just 16 years old, and at the age of 20, Vonnegut joined the US army. Speaking about his disdain for war, Novels for Students discloses,†¦show more content†¦In 1952, his very first novel, â€Å"Player Piano† was published. Over the next 17 years, Vonnegut published 5 more novels, including Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969. This was the book that launched his fame, and a film adaptation of the book soon followed in 1969, which was successful and only increased his popularity further. He went on to write 9 more novels before his death in 2007. The anti-war story of Slaughterhouse-Five centers on an awkward Billy Pilgrim, a man who travels through time and has had extraordinary experiences on the planet Tralfamadore with its inhabitants, the Tralfamadorians. Pilgrim, like Vonnegut, fought in World War II and was still relatively new to the war when he was taken as prisoner by German soldiers. He too was held in a slaughterhouse underground, which led to his survival of the 1945 Dresden Firebombing, and was also held behind to gather and burn the remains of the dead. Pilgrim claims that on his daughter’s wedding night, he was first abducted by the Tralfamadorians, the aliens that inhabited the planet Tralfamadore. These aliens have a fourth dimension; time. The Tralfamadorians view time as a literal timeline; everything is predetermined, and they can access any point of time at their will. Pilgrim returns to earth and believes that it is his duty to make humans aware of this philosophy, and to spread the Tralfamadorians’ message. By the end of the book, the reader comes to find that the time shifting and extraterrestrial experiencesShow MoreRelatedStyle Analysis of Kurt Vonnegut on Slaughterhouse Five1623 Words   |  7 Pagesexample, for instance, is Kurt Vonnegut who may have been stimulated by the war, thus writing Slaughterhouse Ââ€" Five. Though one may categorize this piece as science fiction or even auto - biographical, it can also be interpreted as an anti Ââ€" war piece. 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