Slaughter House Five
When one begins to analyze a military novel it is important to first look at the historical context in which the book was written. On the nights of February 13-14 in 1944 the city of Dresden, Germany was subjected to one of the worst air attacks in the history of man. By the end of the bombing 135,000 to 250,000 people had been killed by the combined forces of the United States and the United Kingdom. Dresden was different then Berlin or many of the other military targets which were attacked during World War II because it was never fortified or used for strategic purposes and, therefore, was not considered a military target. Because of it's apparent safety, thousands of refugees from all over Europe converged on Dresden for protection (Klinkowitz 2-3). Dresden's neutrality was broken and the resulting attacks laid waste, what Vonnegut called, "the Florence of the Elbe." Kurt Vonnegut was a witness to this event and because of fate, had been spared. He wrote Slaughterhouse Five to answer the question that resounded through his head long after the bombs could no longer be heard. "Why me?"- a frequent question asked by survivors of war.Vonnegut was tormented by this question and through Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist in Slaughte
However, with the Tralfamdorian view also comes a heavy price. Whatever will, or has happened will always happen and did always happen. The cost of this new vision is the human conscience and the concern for life (Tanner 198). On other days we have wars as horrible as any you've ever seen or read about. Thousands of children were killed on ships en-route to the slave market and many others were sold, never to be seen again. " Billy does not feel remorse or anger when he hears of the war in Vietnam because it is just a frame in time, which has, is and always will happen. The Traflamadorian world provided Billy Pilgrim with the escape that he needed from his guilt. Billy by accepting the Tralfamadorian view of the world frees himself from the metal sphere and from his guilt. There was no answer to Billy's question because war is not logical, nor is it just. His guilt is in many ways comparable to the guilt felt by the survivors of the Holocaust. Billy is told by the Tralfamadorians that free will is a uniquely human belief. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. That is why Billy Pilgrim invents a world where a justification can be given, where life and death are meaningless and feelings of guilt disappear. Billy believes that he was taken by a Tralfamdorian ship to be an exhibit of a human being in a Tralfamdorian Zoo.
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Acceptance Essays
