8/13/2019 Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five Report Essay

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Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-five is a story about World War II, in which Vonnegut himself has

participated. He is showing us the real side of the war and what is coming after it, but it is not

only about the war, it is also about the life and everything it consists of. Main protagonist is

Billy Pilgrim who comes from New York. Vonnegut uses his own experiences of World War

II, while trying to show us how hard it was for those who participated in it and to show us the

real destructivness of War.

During World War II and earlier in World War I there have been many casualties of

those who fought and even those who were sitting back at home doing nothing else but

hoping for it to end as soon as possible. Billy Pilgrim was one of those who saw it all from

first hand. While he was imprisoned by Germans he was situated in camp in Dresden, which

was bombed by the American afterwards, and Billy saw death of thousands of people. That

was when his involvement in the war ended, but the real war, that one in his head just started.

After coming home Billy got engaged to Valencia, and shortly after that he had a nervous

breakdown. With the nervous breakdown everything changed, traumas of the war were

intensified. Reader can see how it becomes evident that the war affected his psyche. First of

all he claims that he was abducted by so called Tralfamadorians, aliens from a galaxy far

away. Possible reason for those hallucinations is the will for leaving this world that is

destroyed by wars and killing. That is one of the themes of this work, the destructiveness of

war. As we can see it is not only the destruction of buildings nor is it only the death toll that

matters, there is also large disturbance in minds of those who have seen it all. That is the real

side of the war, the side that Vonnegut wants us to perceive. Closely connected to the

destructiveness of war is motive that appears after every sentence that refers to death.

8/13/2019 Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five Report Essay

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Whenever the motive of death appears there stands following phrase: So it goes.. Repetition

of that phrase accentuates the inevitability of death, there is no person in this world that can

escape from the jaws of the death. But Billy Pilgrim is not afraid of his death, because he has

seen it already when he was abducted by the aliens, there is no place for thoughts about it.

And even if the wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.

There is also one more message that Vonnegut gives us through Tralfamaldorian's

philosophy, that is embodied in following quote:That's one thing Earthlings might learn to

do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.

Basically readers can see a clear message that is telling us not to think of bad things that

happened to us, because we are losing precious time needlessly, we are going to die anyway

so feeling bad is not an option.

The book made me think about the concept of life and what it is all about. As we can

see at the end of our life there is death and there is no way we can escape it. Along with that

there is the idea of forgetting the bad things that happened to us and focusing on good ones.

At one point it made me start thinking about time I have lost on thinking about all the bad

things that happened to me. There is no way I can have an affect on them, so I am going to try

not to think about bad memories anymore. I sure am recommending this book to those who

find it that good book is a pleasure to read, because while reading it readers get into the world

of one war veteran and they can see how the war affected his understanding of life.