Slaughterhouse Five Critique

Slaughterhouse Five was written by Kurt Vonnegut. This book is the result of Vonnegut’s efforts to write a book that accounts for his experiences in World War II. In this fictional novel all the recounted war stories, except the time travel, are Vonnegut’s personal war experiences of his combat in Europe. But the book is not about Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five is a story fowling a young to old Billy Pilgrim, but not necessary in that order. Billy is a subject of alien experimentation who now has contact to a higher level of knowledge than the rest of the human race. Or he is a man with a broken brain full of false memories and no grasp on the real world. His accounts of alien planets and time travel are the mystical and mysterious part

This is proof that the message that Vonnegut’s intended message for the book was to show that was grizzly, fought by babies, and not glorious like shown in much of the media that was produced about the war those days. Another piece of evidence that Slaughterhouse Five has an anti war message, rather than a pro war one is the way that Kurt Vonnegut describes how World War II was fought and describes the lives of the soldiers on the front line of combat. He describes how the soldiers didn’t even have proper fighting equipment:

When Billy joined the regiment, it was in the process of being destroyed by the Germans in the famous Battle of the Bulge. Billy never even got to meet the chaplain he was supposed to assist, was never even issued a steel helmet and combat boots. This was in December of 1944, during the last mighty German attack of the war. Billy survived, but he was a dazed wanderer far behind the new German lines. Three other wanderers, not quite so dazed, allowed Billy to tag along. Two of them were scouts, and one was an antitank gunner. They were without food or maps. Avoiding Germans they were delivering themselves into rural silences ever more profound. They ate snow. (Vonnegut

THat they didn't have what they needed to fight a good war. But that gives the impression that there is a good kind of war. War is war, and the way Vonnegut writes this book, give the impression that war would, or could be good and just with the certain parameters and requirements. To be an anti war book, Vonnegut would have to be more focused on talking about how the concept of war is bogus, and should not be engaged in, no matter the circumstances. This is a short but extremely valid argument that almost discredits all previous arguments for Slaughterhouse Five being an anti war book. The fact that is doesn't discourage the act of war itself makes it a pro war