Billy Pilgrim Themes

, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 book by Kurt Slaughterhouse-FiveVonnegut. It lays out the experiences Billy Pilgrim, an assistant to a chaplain, has during the Second World War. Vonnegut served in the United States Army during the war and some of the events described in the novel are based on real experiences. Central among these events is the firebombing of Dresden which Vonnegut experienced and survived. The narrator gives the main elements of the story in the form of flashbacks. He focuses on the character of Billy Pilgrim who is weary of the war and gets involved in a series of unfortunate events that lead to his eventual capture by Germans. Through the experiences of Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut manages to spread

The fact that the author does not follow a chronological approach means that there are some who may dismiss the work as being bewildering. The way the author describes the events of the war can be said to lack smooth transitions found in quality literary work. However, this can be defended by indicating that the lack of smooth transitions shows how war can bring hardships. Since Vonnegut has experienced war himself, he can give an account of his experiences in a chronological manner. But since he wants to spread an antiwar message, he writes in a disjointed manner to show how war can be disruptive. The description of a massacre does not have to happen in an orderly manner since there is nothing orderly about such an event. Thus, Vonnegut is correct in using the style to present his antiwar ideas. He shows that the entire war is basically a massacre where many innocent lives are lost. The events that lead up to the loss of lives are all jumbled up and as such, the author is correct and effective in describing them in the manner that he

There are various cases that Vonnegut presents in the book to show how ironical war can be. In one incident, a soldier survives the firebombing that occurred in the city of Dresden. However, he dies afterward from the dry heaves he experiences. The soldier has to help in the many dead that result from that massacre and this leaves him emotionally scarred. Through this incident, Vonnegut shows how the war can have not only physical effects, but also psychological ones. There are atrocities brought on by war which may not be visible to the naked eye. Thus, it is up to the human race to decide there needs to be an end to the wars. Another case of irony is the high number of trained infantry scouts that are killed during the war yet characters like Billy and Ronald, who are not trained,