Critical Book Review of Slaughterhouse Five

In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut explains his experience of the World War II bombing of Dresden, Germany. Vonnegut's creative antiwar novel shows the audience the hardships of the life of a soldier through his writing technique. Slaughterhouse Five is written circularly, and time travel is ironically the only consistency throughout the book. Vonnegut outlines the life of Billy Pilgrim, whose life and experiences are uncannily similar to those of Vonnegut. In Chapter 1, Kurt Vonnegut non-fictionally describes his intentions for writing the book. Vonnegut personally experienced the destruction of Dresden, and explains how he continuously tried to document Dresden but was unsuccessful for twenty-three years after the war. Vonnegut let the audience know his continued displeasure with his attempts in order to inform them how difficult of a task the completion of his novel was. Throughout the novel, Billy Pilgrim is traveling to different moments in his life. He has seen his death, as well as his birth, and everything in between. Also, Billy Pilgrim has traveled to the planet "Tralfamadore." The audience doesn't know if this claim is true, but Billy is convinced that he has been abducted by the Tralfamadorians and taken to their planet. The Tralfamadorians are very significant in that they can view time in a completely different way than humans. The aliens see and entire event, not just individual moments like humans see. Tralfamadorians have seen the beginning and end of the universe. They describe this ability to Billy as "looking at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains instead of a small pebble of it" (p34).

Kurt Vonnegut served in the Armed Forces during World War II and was captured during The Battle of the Bulge. He and a group of American prisoners of war were taken to Dresden to take part in a prisoner work camp. Vonnegut and his fellow soldiers were housed n an underground facility when Dresden became history as the most loss of human life at one time. On the night of February 13, 1945, Dresden was firebombed by the Allied Air Force. The entire city was demolished and 135,000 people were killed. The number of casualties is greater than that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, yet the Dresden massacre is virtually unheard of. This massacre undoubtedly left a huge impression on Vonnegut, and his struggle to live with this horrible fact delayed the production of his book for twenty-three years. He had wanted to write a book from the time that he got home from the war, but his confusion and torment hindered his ability to write about the destruction. All of this anguish is what prompted Vonnegut to write his novel how he did, however. This background has certainly impacted Slaughterhouse Five, especially since the novel is a fictional story based on a real event. Vonnegut derives everything he uses from the Dresden bombing, including his writing technique. In the novel, Vonnegut is expressing his antiwar feelings, and he clearly expresses the fact that he does not want to glorify war because it is a treacherous thing. Vonnegut has written thirty-one novels, and the novels written after his involvement in World War II have consistently been about wars and sent antiwar messages. It has also been said that Vonnegut is a proponent of science fiction. He disclaims this fact, but it can be seen in many of his writings, including Slaughterhouse Five. He has typically used science fiction to characterize the world and the nature of existence as he experiences them. His chaotic fictional universe abounds in wonder, coincidence, randomness and irrationality. Science fiction is also technically useful, he has said, in providing a distance perspective, "moving the camera out into space," as it were. And unusually for this form, Vonnegut's science fiction is frequently comic, not just in the "black humor" mode with which he has been tagged so often, but in being simply funny. He is known for his satire and in a review for Slaughterhouse Five, Life magazine said "A funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears."

In the first chapter, Vonnegut states forthright that there will be no climax. He has situated the book in a fashion that it is not chronological, has isn't linear, is fictional and non-fictional, and maintains the same satirical voice throughout. The style makes the reader think there is no plot line, and that Vonnegut is freelance writing, however his work was greatly thought out, for twenty-three years actually. Vonnegut's constant confusion about the war and circular thoughts left few options for techniques in which he could tell his story.

To portray the story clearly would have been virtually impossible, since the author himself didn't even know the answers to his questions, so he approached it in a unique way. This organization, or assumed lack thereof by the audience, indicates strongly Vonneguts deep confusion about life and death, and his juggling with ideas over the concepts.

At some points in the story Vonnegut changes from third person to first person, indicating that he was among the soldiers. When the paths of Billy and the narrator meet up at Dresden, there is a brief period of person shift. The narrator uses 'us' and 'we', simply because Vonnegut is there too. Charles B. Harries, who wrote, "Time, Uncertainty, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: A Reading of 'Slaughterhouse Five'" explains the person change as this: "He [Vonnegut], too, had suffered capture and malnutrition and the devastating firebombing. He, too, worked in the corpse mines and saw a friend shot for plundering a teapot from the ruins." Vonnegut's switch in person once more reinforces with the audience that this is his story of figuring out his confusion and he wants to reiterate the fact that he was experiencing the same things Billy Pilgrim was experiencing. Vonnegut initially started using first person in the first chapter, but it appears to the audience that the first chapter was written after the novel, because it is more of an introduction than literature. Starting in chapter two, Vonnegut switches to third person because he is indicating the start of his novel, which is fictional, and he also is including things in the novel that didn't happen directly to him (Tralfamadore).

In Slaughterhouse Five, the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is given a pessimistic point of view. From the very start of the book, Billy Pilgrim is described as "a funny-looking child who became a funny-looking youth--tall and weak, and shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola" (p30). The most notable part of Vonnegut's character presentation is the lack of it. He is not specific with descriptions of characters. Vonnegut's character descriptions are neither dramatic nor descriptive; they are merely there.