Slaughterhouse-Five Analysis

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Recommended: The effects of World War 2 on American literature

Classical...Blah...Blah...Blah. That is all a high schooler can hear when they go to english class and find out they are reading a classical book. Immediately tuned out, and thinking they aren’t even going to read it because they don't understand it. Most think it will be a Shakespeare book written in a different format. Well if you open your mind that isn’t the case. Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut takes a classic book about war and twists and turns the way they tell the story about war. In the beginning, the book starts off to portray to be a boring war book, but when you continue it flashes through different dimensions and creates a not so classic feel too an oh so classic book making it very well suited for being apart of the literary …show more content…

An influential quote spaced throughout the whole book. It appeared in chapter one and I was puzzled as to what it meant. You read that and just keep going because they aren't words that pop out at you so much right? As I kept reading I started noticing a pattern as to what those four words meant. It seems to be they have a very powerful meaning now. Everytime a character would pass away they author would write “and so it goes” to make a morbid death into something that doesn’t pop out to you because war is war and you can’t fix what has already happened. The article titled The Meaninglessness of Coming Unstuck by Martin Coleman explains the style of the book and why it truly is the way it is. One specific part that caught my eye was that this story is about two men specifically, and their personal lives are embedded into a war story, masking their real stories therefore giving people an allusion to some things that might not be related to the war at all. The story is really a tale of the war with twists as mentioned earlier. As the reader gets deeper and deeper into the book they begin to tell the style the author has used, and enjoys how it is used. Slaughterhouse-five has very short sentences that explain exactly what you are looking for, within the text there are spots of humor that should be funny but you don’t really know when to laugh. Vonnegut has a very dry style of writing, but it works for hi. Still in our society however many years …show more content…

Who would have guessed that? Along with war comes experiences that many haunt a person or will never be able to let go of. 70% of adults in the U.S. have experienced a traumatic event (PTSDUnited). PTSD or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder comes home with many soldiers. Most of the time they can't make sense of what is going on and why they are acting the way they are. In the book Slaughterhouse-five Billy Pilgrim goes through many stages of PTSD. Back when World War II was happening doctors weren’t aware of PTSD. The majority of the time doctors just thought that their patients were going crazy, much like what Billy’s daughter was thinking about her father. Classical authors such as Vonnegut put in the element of Billy seeing aliens to make him seem crazy and people to wonder what was wrong with him, because in that time that was the strangest thing that could occur. PTSD is seen as a very large problem after many different situations such as rescuers after a fire, war, and the operators helping someone talk through a tough situation. This book is apart of the literary canon because it is real. It talks about real problems people have and makes it interesting, not only is it fun to read but it's eye opening to see what others

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