Bombing of Dresden in World War II

10 20 November 2017 What Role Do Tralfamadorians Play In S5? Slaughterhouse-Five is a truly mind bending book by the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr. It is the tale of a inelegant World War II veteran/soldier, Billy Pilgrim. His war experiences and the mental and physical effects it had on Billy lead him to the ultimate conclusion, that war is incomprehensible . A huge part of the book are “The Tralfamadorians”.The Tralfamadorians are plunger shaped time altering aliens who bring Billy to their planet…

The bombing of Dresden, Germany occurred during the Second World War between the 13th and 15th of February, 1949. The attack was done by Britain and the United States through the use of an aerial bombing. Within the four raids that the allies carried out, 3,900 tons of highly explosive bombs and incendiaries were dropped on the city by heavy bombers of the United States Army Air Forces and the British Royal Air Force. Dresden, Germany was the country’s seventh-largest city and the largest of the…

someone who was affected by the bombing of Dresden, and someone who is taken by Tralfamadorians (an alien species) to talk to him about their theories of time. There are many ways to react to a catastrophe, but the author emphasizes the significance of confronting it, and Billy Pilgrim does just that. This American classic anti-war novel is relevant to today because it puts a focus on the different reactions there are to tragic events that both Billy Pilgrim and real world people share;…

Kurt Vonnegut, in his novel, “Slaughterhouse Five” recounts his experiences of World War II through Billy Pilgrim, the main character. Vonnegut’s purpose is to describe his wartime experiences and antiwar view. He adopts a complex and elusive tone in order to successfully engage and entertain his readers. Vonnegut begins his novel in the first person. We are given a first-person point of view in the sections embedded in the first and last chapters of the book. Throughout the rest of…

Billy Pilgrim’s life is impacted by what he saw and went through during the war. In Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Billy Pilgrim suffers from severe PTSD that leads him to time travel and being kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians. Slaughterhouse Five was first banned in Oakland County, Michigan and has been since 1972 according to Betsy Morais. The book should be allowed to be read in high schools because it shows the reality of war and the aftermath, PTSD. Although it is challenging to judge a book,…

Age and danger. No matter where you go in life these words will cling to you like weights slowly dragging you down. “You’re too old to do this, it’s dangerous”, “You’re too young to believe in that, it’s unsafe”. The message behind The-Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and the movie Guardians of the Galaxy by James Gunn is to break these weights called age and danger, Live life to the fullest and do not let such things hold you back.…

Kurt Vonnegut was working on his famous Dresden war book ever since the second world war ended. The concept was simple: to write what he remembered about Dresden, and become wealthy. However, he found very little to say about Dresden, and after 23 years, he continued to talk about the book he was writing, as there was just as little to say 23 years later. He went to visit an old friend from the war, and the friend, O’Hare, had nothing to say that could help. Vonnegut finally came to the…

Vonnegut and O’Brien tackle the Cold War as a new era in warfare, in which battles were not fought truly fought over land acquisition or the survival of a people, against an opposing force, but against an enemy that represents our enemy. We fight our enemy’s ally because we do not agree with their way of life or the people that agree with it because they believe the same thing about us. Vonnegut showcases the game of chess played between two opposites for no prize but survival using the least…

of a man in World War II and his role as an unlikely survivor after the war. The poem Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen and John Kerry’s testimony before the Senate also discuss lesser-known experiences of war, describing the dissonance between firsthand experiences and other accounts. These works show how people create a narrative of noble and patriotic conflict to garner support for war efforts, forming misconceptions that invalidate soldiers’ experiences. First, people portray war as…

“War” the amount of power behind this non important word is immense.This world does not know how brutal war can be; it can completely shatter a person's mental status. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut does not only write about the history through his life and the Dresden bombing, but more about the impact it made on Billy, a former soldier who fought in the war. Vonnegut sorts out the rhetorical devices proper such as repetition, hyperboles, metaphors and other rhetorical devices to help give a…