Pros And Cons Of Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel which has been challenged for its graphic descriptions of events which occurred during the later years of World War 2. There are many other reasons which prompted communities to ban the book such as its anti-religious thoughts and sexual content. Although this book is highly graphic and can be offensive toward some religions, it should not be banned because it shows you the inside of a person who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and it also encourages readers to think differently of how life works and gives historical information about a firsthand experience of being a prisoner of war and a survivor of the bombing of Dresden. Although it is true that it uses graphic imagery and at some points ridicules

There was limited information on the firsthand accounts of the bombing of Dresden in the actual city. Since Vonnegut experienced it and wrote the novel around the fictional character of Billy Pilgrim, it’s a great source of information for recounts from the survivors of the bombing. Pilgrim experienced horrendous things once the bombs stopped falling on the city, he saw the remains of bodies under the rubble and charred. Everything that survived was sent back to a time of savagery “Wild dogs, packs of rats fattened on corpses, escaped maniacs and murderers, soldiers who would never quit killing until they themselves were killed.” Pilgrim saw how the war affected all the people and how it didn’t exclude civilians. It was meant to kill everything and cause the enemy’s morale to break. “Everything was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn.” The only thing left after the bombings were charred bodies and hollowed out buildings, the entire city became a skeleton of rubble and bodies. There are many more experiences which help show how it was for prisoners of war during WW2 such as being transported in cramped cattle cars, similar to how the Jewish people were transported to concentration camps. The graphic descriptions make the reader imagine how hellish it must have been for everyone, not only the American

The war and his later experiences made him hallucinate everything he had seen like the Tralfamadorians and his own death. So it goes. In his later life he is constantly reminded of the death of young men, not only because his son is a Green Beret, but because he is given a casualty review whenever he reads the news. “And every day my government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes” One of the main points of the novel is to show the effects of seeing such horrific events at a time of war, and how it can affect a victim of it for the rest of their life. The novel is successful at showing the effects of war trauma while simultaneously being entertaining to keep the reader focused on why all these events which are occurring without chronological order. People today need to continue to learn about the effects of war trauma, therefore it should not be banned especially now since many veterans are sometimes ignored not only by the people but by the government as