The Reality of a Perfect World in Slaughterhouse Five With countless wars and other conflicts, history seems to tell that a perfect world without violence can’t happen, as Henry Rollins remarked, “I don't think you'll ever have a perfect world because we humans are prone to error.” In his satirical anti-war book Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut focuses on World War II and the bombing of Dresden as he demonstrates the senselessness of war. In the passage from Slaughterhouse Five analyzed in this essay, the main character Billy Pilgrim, a time traveler and World War II soldier, travels a few hours further in time to watch a World War II movie backwards. This passage was chosen due to the way Vonnegut uses a backwards movie to exemplify the
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To start, Vonnegut conveys his message of the impracticality of a perfect world through the use of diction. As Billy Pilgrim watches the World War II movie backwards, destroyed American bombers are fixed and lifted back into the air by German fighter planes. As this scene, originally showing aerial warfare, is played backwards, the narrator describes, “[The German fighter planes] did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation” (93). Vonnegut uses the word choice of “formation” (93) in the description of two well known World War II enemies, America and Germany, to emphasize his point. The use of two war enemies joining together like comrades solidifies Vonnegut’s point in the reader’s mind that our world can’t be free of violence. This is due to how unreasonable an example of a war turning into an alliance sounds, supported by …show more content…
The World War II movie originally has a scene detailing the bombing of Dresden, which was a traumatizing event that Billy Pilgrim survived. However, as Billy Pilgrim watches this scene backwards, the bombs and fires are pulled back into the bomber planes and the city is restored. The narrator tells, “The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires…” (94). The fires and bombs dropping are what Billy Pilgrim can vividly remember, so Vonnegut includes ridiculous imagery of the fires being sucked out of Dresden to illustrate the implausibility of world peace. This connects to both Vonnegut’s view of a perfect world being irrational and an event heavily described throughout his novel. Vonnegut uses Dresden as a specific example detailing a outlandish change of an event from tragic and deadly to positive to support his overall message, using outlandish imagery to emphasize this unrealistic quality. As Billy Pilgrim reaches the start of the original movie, meaning the end of the reversed movie, the American soldiers who were flying the planes “turned in their uniforms, became high school kids” (95). Vonnegut uses the image of a young soldier going back to their innocent past and trading in their uniforms for regular school clothes to focus on personalizing soldiers and show how they mostly come from nonviolent
To start, Vonnegut conveys his message of the impracticality of a perfect world through the use of diction. As Billy Pilgrim watches the World War II movie backwards, destroyed American bombers are fixed and lifted back into the air by German fighter planes. As this scene, originally showing aerial warfare, is played backwards, the narrator describes, “[The German fighter planes] did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation” (93). Vonnegut uses the word choice of “formation” (93) in the description of two well known World War II enemies, America and Germany, to emphasize his point. The use of two war enemies joining together like comrades solidifies Vonnegut’s point in the reader’s mind that our world can’t be free of violence. This is due to how unreasonable an example of a war turning into an alliance sounds, supported by …show more content…
The World War II movie originally has a scene detailing the bombing of Dresden, which was a traumatizing event that Billy Pilgrim survived. However, as Billy Pilgrim watches this scene backwards, the bombs and fires are pulled back into the bomber planes and the city is restored. The narrator tells, “The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires…” (94). The fires and bombs dropping are what Billy Pilgrim can vividly remember, so Vonnegut includes ridiculous imagery of the fires being sucked out of Dresden to illustrate the implausibility of world peace. This connects to both Vonnegut’s view of a perfect world being irrational and an event heavily described throughout his novel. Vonnegut uses Dresden as a specific example detailing a outlandish change of an event from tragic and deadly to positive to support his overall message, using outlandish imagery to emphasize this unrealistic quality. As Billy Pilgrim reaches the start of the original movie, meaning the end of the reversed movie, the American soldiers who were flying the planes “turned in their uniforms, became high school kids” (95). Vonnegut uses the image of a young soldier going back to their innocent past and trading in their uniforms for regular school clothes to focus on personalizing soldiers and show how they mostly come from nonviolent