Slaughterhouse-Five

Critical Analysis of Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five is an exquisite novel written by Kurt Vonnegut that deals with the repercussions and warped mindset that comes from war. The author himself hadn’t been involved in time-traveling or having been abducted by aliens like the character in his story. Even with these fictitious events occurring, the fire-bombing of the city of Dresden was a historical event that took place during the second world war and witnessing the event firsthand, Vonnegut struggled many years later with writing about the carnage that took place. In his story, the character Billy Pilgrim is one who seems to possess a special ability to travel through time, but is unable to control it. He travels back and forth through his life experiencing each important event repeatedly and even claims to have been abducted by aliens known as Tralfamadorians. The novel seems to place an emphasis on how twisted his idea of time is. Although his sense of time was different from everyone else, an issue that seems to present itself over others within the story is how the lines between fantasy and reality can so easily be distorted.

            In reading the first few chapters of the story, the reader can quickly conclude that there is no real climax in the story. The main character, Billy, jumps from one time period to another, those including his birth, time in Dresden as a POW, and even when he is assassinated by a laser rifle. It is possible that from the events he experienced through the war, Billy was so mentally damaged that he literally had to reinvent his reality in order to cope with his issues. One example of how contorted fantasy and reality was how he talks about his abduction by aliens and in how they explained the true nature of time. The Tralfamadorian said, “If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings, I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will.’ I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.” Humans believe in the right to free will whereas the aliens believe that free will is only an idea made up by earthlings. They believe that time was structured in such a way that no one had control over the past, present, and future. Realistically speaking, they were all doomed to an unchangeable end.

            Adding to this, the alien talked of how particularly structured time was and how it was never to be changed. The Tralfamadorian claimed that the universe will come to an end. Although they knew when and how the end would come, they would not prevent it from happening because it was meant to happen and they would do nothing to change it. Since the idea of time would always be this way, it was better to “spend eternity looking at pleasant moments” instead of focusing on the bad ones. This was their reasoning for not attempting to change their pre-determined future.

            As is evident in the story, fantasy and reality were obviously blurred, but this was used as a way of coping with the horror and destruction that Billy faced during the war. The entirety of the novel was used as a way to explain the horrors of war and how it impacts everyone involved. From coping with the mental damage to the physical aspects of war. After analyzing the book written by Vonnegut, I believe that he got his point across about the damages of war. Although the book is viewed as anti-war by most readers, “there would always be wars and they were as easy to stop as glaciers melting.”

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001