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Slaughterhouse Five - The BEST

Kurt Vonnegut?s novel Slaughterhouse Five, represents a man?s desperate, yet, useless search for meaning in a senseless existence. Vonnegut uses a narrator, which is different from the main character to develop his theme.

Vonnegut introduces Slaughterhouse Five in first person. In the second chapter, however, this narrator changes to a bystander. He wants the reader to realize that the narrator and Billy Pilgrim, the main character, are two different people. In order to do this, Vonnegut places the narrator in the text, multiple times. ?An American near Billy wailed that he had excreted everything but his brains...That was I. That was me.? This statement clearly illustrates that the narrator and Billy are not the same person. The narrator was the American disgusted by Billy.

Vonnegut places his experiences and his views in the text. He begins the book by stating, ?All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true...I?ve changed all of the names.? He feels war is a senseless act and, Slaughterhouse Five allows Vonnegut to express his feelings on the

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Kurt Vonnegut?s Slaughterhouse Five suggests that a man cannot change his fate. ? At this point, the aliens of Tralfamadore had captured Billy. ?Billy Pilgrim was packed into a boxcar with many other privates. ?They had been lying in ambush for the Germans. I?ll call it the children?s crusade. Any attempts to change the past or the future are meaningless. ? In both cases, he is a person taken against his will. Vonnegut uses this statement throughout the book to show that death is death, there is no glorious or great death; all death is equal. The narrator made a vow to O?Hare?s wife, in chapter one, that the story would not do this. In chapter five, he is not only abducted by aliens, but he is also a prisoner of war. His fantasy had made the real experience only worse. Therefore, there is nothing to search for, and the search for meaning is useless. When this occurred, he was terrified.

Approximate Word count = 738
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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