slaughter house five
Vonnegut's 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 Slaughte!rhouse 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 i
Billy is told by the Tralfamadorians that free will is a uniquely human belief. " (Vonnegut 3) The death of all those innocent people could not be stopped, it was predetermined by some unknown force just as the destruction of the Universe, by a Tralfamadorian testing a new fuel, is also predetermined and unstoppable. The price for a "guilt free" life is the most precious part of human life, emotions. The Tralfamadorians are real to Billy because without them he cannot live with himself (Lundquist 82). Traflamadorians can "shift" through time as seamlessly as humans can walk towards a point. The Tralfamdorian view extracts the human conscience, which separates humans from the rest of the animal! world. A curse to be forced to live on with the guilt of survival. The feelings of guilt which emerged from his having survived the bombing of Dresden and from Billy's fortunate escape from death under the shelter of the fifth Slaughterhouse haunted Billy through much of his life. " (Tanner 199) Billy pilgrim has full knowledge, of who, when and where he will be murdered, yet he does nothing about it. Billy Pilgrim did not consider his survival a blessing, but a curse. Billy believes that he was taken by a Tralfamdorian ship to be an exhibit of a human being in a Tralfamdorian Zoo. The only way Billy Pilgrim can confront this guilt is to excuse his survival and trivialize the gift of life and the cruelty of death. There is nothing that can be done about war and death, "they are as easy to stop as glaciers.
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Acceptance Essays
