Five

In the book Slaughterhouse Five, there are many questions that go around, but the main question is who the author of the book? In the book, the author says on a constant basis “That was me. I was there.” I believe the narrator of the book is Kurt Vonnegut. The explanation for this is author mentions his friend Bernard O’Hare at the beginning and the end and rarely in between and when O’Hare’s character would show up when the author would say again “I was there. So was my old war buddy Bernard V.…

Both Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, and Briefing for A Descent into Hell, written by Doris Lessing, show signs of a disturbed individual; one whose life has been altered from reality. Billy Pilgrim, the main character of Slaughterhouse Five, disconnects from reality from the destruction of war. On the other hand, Charles Watkins, the main character of Briefing for A Descent into Hell, becomes disconnected from reality due to a mental breakdown. These novels deal with the works…

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…

The Optics of Life, Death, and War The perspective of a novel is pertinent for understanding its theme and purpose. It is revealed early on in Slaughterhouse-Five that different perspectives contribute to the novel’s meaning. Upon introducing Billy Pilgrim’s character, Vonnegut identifies the protagonist’s profession as an optometrist and also emphasizes his career’s importance to the story, stating that “Ilium is a particularly good city for optometrists” (Vonnegut 24). The phenomenon of…

An absurdist novel Slaughter house- Five depicts the atrocities of man through the struggles of Billy Pilgrim whom is attempting to live with the trauma of both his childhood and his experiences within the war. As the embodiment of the common man, Billy is constantly dealing with the abuse and cruelty of man. These abusers are clearly used to depict the general abusive nature of man. Although Billy Pilgrim attempts to lead a normal life after experiencing the atrocities, his bouts of mental…

Davis Thalhuber Mrs. Boston AP Language and Composition 8/25/2017 Slaughterhouse Five Essay: Structure (flashback, chronological): The structure of Slaughterhouse-Five is written in a flashback where the main character, Billy Pilgrim, goes back and forth of when he was apart of the bombing of Dresden. Billy Pilgrim has PTSD, in which he goes from his present life of being a successful optometrist while having two children too his past life of joining the army and being captured at a…

claiming that he was taken there and tests were performed on him. Tralfamadorian ideas are only apparent to Pilgrim during the story, because only he can become “stuck” and “unstuck” in time, meaning that he experiences different parts of his life at any given moment. At this point in the book, the transitions between past, present, future, and Tralfamadore become slightly muddled, making it easy to lose track of what is occurring in the story at that time. As Billy Pilgrim becomes “stuck” and…

Analysis of ”Slaughterhouse-Five,” A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut “Slaughterhouse-Five,” the magnum opus of famed American author Kurt Vonnegut, is an inconsistently narrated story that could be interpreted to explain many different aspects of life, ultimately settling on the dominant theme of uncontrollable fate and the lack of free will humans have over their own eventual demises. Vonnegut writes the story from multiple perspectives—initially telling the story of the unnamed narrator, who then…

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five, the main character Billy discusses death numerous times and how it’s simply a part of life. To further go on, The Tralfamadorians also see death as just another aspect in life, “Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes’ (27). This quote talks about how the Tralfamadorians view death and that to them it is irrelevant. Vonnegut uses the phrase “So it goes”…

others through mere observation. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and The Wars by Timothy Findley both utilize characters that display inconsistent personalities in public contrasted to how they act in private. Especially in wartime, humans are pushed to their limit and more than often emerged disfigured physically and mentally. Through this observation of the public and private lives demonstrated by the characters of The Wars and Slaughterhouse-Five, all that they held private are lost or…