slaughterhouse-five
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was written as a general statement against all wars. Vonnegut focuses on the shock and outrage over the havoc and destruction man is capable of wreaking in the name of what he labels a worthy cause, while learning to understand and accept these horrors and one's feelings about them. Through his character, Billy Pilgrim, he conveys not only these feelings and emotions, but also the message that we must exercise our free will to alter the unfortunate happenings that might occur in our lives.Vonnegut had tremendous difficulty writing this novel. He says, "I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen" (Vonnegut 2). He did not count on his emotions interfering with his attempts at a factual and logical report of such atrocities. It took Vonnegut twenty years to directly face his private demon of the firebombing of Dresden in the form of this novel. He had trouble recalling any memories of substance about his time in Dresden. It could be said that he was blinded by the firebombs of Dresden. It was not until Vonnegut returned to the sight of the bombing twenty years later, along with one of his war
He, like Billy, is torn between the desire to forget Dresden and his obsession with finding a way to reconcile the human suffering he observed there. On Tralfamadore, he is exposed to the Tralfamadorian philosophy on life. He writes this novel so that war does not look wonderful, and so we do not have many more of them, and they will not be fought by babies such as they were back in Dresden (Vonnegut 15). Billy's trip to Tralfamadore allows him to examine the human race as a whole from afar. This [novel] is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt" (Vonnegut 21-22). Billy does this through his time traveling and visits to the planet Tralfamadore. And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot. Vonnegut debates this concept from the outset of the novel when he tells a friend that he is writing an anti-war book. In this way, he is able to pass off any bad experiences in his life, including Dresden, as a terrible nightmare and not a part of reality. He wants life to make sense (Lundquist 17). On February fourteenth, the Americans carried out a second raid, which completed the destruction of the city.
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Acceptance Essays
