Kilgore Trout

Billy Pilgrim, while not the narrator of Slaughterhouse Five, is the main “character”. Character is used loosely when describing Billy because he doesn’t choose what happens to him throughout the entire book. He is forced to watch horrific events unfold because he is too weak to be active. Billy Pilgrim has suffered a lot in the book and has flashbacks, that is described as becoming unstuck in time. This feeling of being unstuck in time seems to be caused by PTSD and schizophrenia. Billy…

Occurring both in fiction as well as the real world, people and characters are subjected to factors that affect how they think, act, and behave. As such they often have sides that are unknown to 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…

Joyful Death & Futile Faith "Being alive is a crock of shit" (Vonnegut). This seven word statement by Vonnegut's recurring character Kilgore Trout perfectly summarizes the message carried throughout Vonnegut's work. The upbringing of Vonnegut himself contributes to this lackluster view: he grew up amid the Depression. He watched his dad work himself to death as his mother courted suicide. He saw the massacre of innocents amid the firebombing of Dresden and became a prisoner of the Germans…

behind enemy lines in 1945. In reality, Billy has become unstuck from himself. He comes to believe that he has been abducted by aliens, Tralfamadorians, who taught Billy how to time travel. Comparatively, at the bookstore, Billy finds a novel by Kilgore Trout about “an Earthling man and woman abducted by extraterrestrials… put on display in a zoo” (Vonnegut). At this moment, Vonnegut makes the connection between how Billy’s reality has blended into another’s fiction. O’Brien explains that in…

Filled with dark themes and murderous stories, the Bible seems almost opposite to Christianity's supposedly peaceful nature. However Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, ironically uses Biblical allusions and twists the godliness of Jesus to explore innocence and empathy for soldiers and civilians negatively affected by war. He humanizes Biblical figures that are originally portrayed as simply disobedient to people acting wrongly due to innocence and compassion, emphasizing…

Kurt Vonnegut uses imagery and manipulation of fiction to reveal truths about human nature we would deny. Cats Cradle and Slaughter-House Five are two examples of Vonnegut 's writings that use these skills to show the gory, but at times hilarious truths of war, science and reality. Although both novels have their plots and characters, they shared some common ideas and themes. In the novel Cats Cradle, John the narrator sets out to research information for his book titled "The Day the World…

Loss of innocence can be a result from conflict and is something that everyone experiences. The following writers give an example of how it can change us forever. Blackberry Picking shows Seamus Heaney looking back on a childhood pastime of picking blackberries where eventually he feels guilty over the unnecessary amount he gathers. Similarly, Death of a Naturalist also written by Heaney is about the narrator stealing frog spawn. The idea of war is hinted at and the effects of the loss of…

The novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children 's Crusade written by Kurt Vonnegut is well loved by many people. The novel is about Kurt Vonnegut’s past and future in the perspective of the main character Billy Pilgrim. Through Billy Pilgrim’s experience with the Tralfamadorians and the frequent time travel between past and future. Kurt Vonnegut explores the issues of the inevitability of war, fatalism, and of free will; also the form of his writing, why it took so long to write, his experience…

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most influential American novelists of the twentieth century who has brought about a phenomenal distinction in literature. Most of the writers have written only in a particular concept or genre, but Kurt Vonnegut has imprinted his undeniable mark in science fiction with humor, social commentary with absurdity and so on. Kurt Vonnegut has written fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. His works are occupied with…