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War stories creative writing
Literary impacts of world war 1
Literary impacts of world war 1
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Recommended: War stories creative writing
Is it not on the normal we hear about PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from former veterans go through. They struggle to keep calm and collected visiting through flashbacks from war and maybe other memories that may not be true. Facing trying to have a normal life after being a prisoner of war (POW). Kurt Vonnegut writes using the setting he seen in his life, making a war drama from a first person experience making it fictional at the same time an autobiography. Being free from war is just illusive according to Kurt Vonnegut. Even though I never been to war I see him trying to show that war hinders us mentally through encounters in war.
One of the great literary devices is setting. Throughout the story there are three different setting.
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These settings kind of tell a different story with each settings. While In Germany, Billy goes through some excruciating experiences of imprisonment and violence that cause him to start skipping through time. In Chapter 1, the narrator expresses to us that he and his wife consumed some time after the war in New York, which Billy Pilgrim's "Ilium" seems to be based on. The likeliness between the narrator and Billy's wartime and postwar experiences increase the sense that Slaughterhouse-Five could be founded on Kurt Vonnegut’s life also know why it could be an autobiography. Another setting throughout the novel is the hospital. Billy spends his first night in the POW camp in the hospital after the war, he runs into another veteran Eliot Rosewater and come about some science fiction novels that help him escape from his awful life for the next 30 years. Billy is recovering from a plane crash in a hospital in Vermont in 1968, he starts saying the name “tralfamadore”. In many ways, the Tralfamadorians are delicately linked to the Germans. The first thing the Germans do when Billy arrives at their prison camp is to make him take off his clothes... which is also the first thing the Tralfamadorians do when Billy arrives on their planet. (These aliens are lewd.) When a German prison guard thumps an American in the face and the American questions why, the German answers, "Vy you? Vy anybody?" (pg. 37, chapter4) respectively, the Tralfamadorians reject to accept the question of "why" they abducted Billy: they say, "There is no why" (pg. 68, chapter 6). These three settings of recovery strongly associate with relief.
At the same time, the moments of the stress and memories that are driving him crazy are really temporary. Once Billy leaves the hospital, he loses control again. Then he is shipped to Dresden, which he was departed from the veteran hospital lead to his marriage to Valencia. I see these as places from the war and after that lets you know he is still trapped in a mind war set the from the reflection of the Germans in the Tralfamadorians
When it comes to literary devices of course genre has to be in the top of those because genre changes how you read a book as in to take it serious or to see where they going with the story.
A form of genre that was I seen while reading this book would be an autobiography. It’s not fully about him, but since it has truths from Kurt Vonnegut’s life more straight forward, what happened to him in Dresden. Most of the narrative is focused on the fictional character also.
Slaughterhouse-Five is also predominantly about various features of war such as how much it sucks , also how much it trips people up after it happens, and also how commonly one-sided life is that we have to go fight in wars and then mature and die afterwards. So that's why relating Slaughterhouse-Five as a war drama mainly does the plot concentrate on World War II, but the book also applies a lot of time pondering war as an experience that affects us through eh long
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Billy has no control over his being in a time warp. In the midst of his life in New York he will suddenly find himself Tralfamadore; he has become "unstuck in time" ( 22). The Tralfamadorians eventually show Billy the important moments of his life, but they do not always show them in sequence. They do this so Billy can fully understand the true reasons for and the importance of the events.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five the main character Billy Pilgrim experiences few emotions during his time in World War II. His responses to people and events lack intensity or passion. Throughout the novel Billy describes his time travel to different moments in his life, including his experience with the creatures of Tralfamadore and the bombing of Dresden. He wishes to die during most of the novel and is unable to connect with almost anyone on Earth. The fictional planet Tralfamadore appears to be Billy’s only way of escaping the horrors of war, and acts as coping mechanism. Billy seems to be a soldier with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as he struggles to express feelings and live in his reality. At the beginning of the novel the narrator proposes his reason for writing the book is to explain what happened in the Dresden fire bombing, yet he focuses on Billy’s psyche more than the bombing itself. PTSD prevents Billy from living a healthy life, which shows readers that the war does not stop after the fighting is over and the aftermath is ongoing. Billy Pilgrim’s story portrays the bombing and war in a negative light to readers, as Vonnegut shows the damaging effects of war on an individual, such as misperception of time, disconnect from peers, and inability to feel strong emotions, to overall create a stronger message.
All throughout the book, Billy allegedly time-travels to various points in his timeline. Though many authors have written about time-travel since H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, in Slaughterhouse Five no such time-travel truly occurs. In Billy Pilgrim’s world, Kilgore Trout has written a great deal about time-travel. In fact, Kilgore Trout was “Billy’s favorite living author and science fiction became the only sort of tales [Billy] could read” ...
...his novel believe war to be the most disgusting and most distructful thing in the universe, the Tralfamadorians enlighten one human on their thoughts of war. They don’t feel Billy should put as much time as he does into dwelling on something like war that is inevitable. They ignore it and rate it relatively low on a scale of importance. From World War II, Billy is left with many vivid memories that he would rather not have. He has first handedly seen what he thinks is the most evil thing in the universe. He is frequently haunted by images of his experiences. But maybe if he would just tell himself that there is nothing he can do about war, maybe if he just looked the other way and ignored it, maybe then he would be happy and in a state of peace like the Tralfamadorians.
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five as an Antiwar Novel. War can affect and inspire people to many degrees. Kurt Vonnegut was inspired by war to write Slaughterhouse Five. which is a unique book referred to sometimes as a science fiction or semi-autobiographical novel.
...ities from WWII in his experiences at Dresden. Vonnegut’s writing is unique because “the narrator offers a very different kind of war story—one which combines fact and fiction” (Jarvis 98). With the combination of fact and fiction, Vonnegut successfully connected events from WWII to the political references and societal conflicts during the Vietnam War.
Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut is an anti war novel told by the narrator who is a minor character in the story. Slaughterhouse-Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has come "unstuck in time. "The bombing of Dresden is what destroyed Billy. Dresden’s destruction shows the destruction of people who fought in the war: the all the people who died. Some people, like the main character, Billy Pilgrim, are not able to function normally like before because of what they saw, because of their experience. Throughout the book, Billy starts hallucinating about his experiences with the Tralfamadorians: he wants to escape the world which was destroyed by war, a war that he does not and cannot understand. Vonnegut uses the technique of repetition.. The main repetition is “so it goes” which is told after anything related to death, he also uses other repetitions throughout the book. The major theme of the story is the Destructiveness of War. Vonnegut uses repetition to reinforce the theme of the story.
In conclusion, Slaughterhouse-Five is an anti-war novel because Vonnegut, the character, says it is in the first chapter, the terrible damage it left on Billy, and how it exposes war's horrifying practices. Knowing these elements, one might wonder why people still have wars. Although these anti-war novels cannot completely stop wars, they are important. The role that such novels play is one of raising awareness of war's actions and wrongdoings. Since the role of the novels is important, authors should continue to write them to keep people informed and educated about a problem of such a huge magnitude.
Many people think, “Vonnegut is best when relating his wartime experience” (Clark). This hints at the possibility of Slaughterhouse Five being a product of the true events of Vonnegut’s wartime. So when one looks at such accusation further, it is clear to the reader the abundance of talk about the war the narrator so evidently speaks about. Here is one of many times this takes place in the novel when the narrator explains, “We were formed in ranks, with Russian soldiers guarding us; Englishmen, Americans, Dutchmen, Belgians, Frenchmen, Canadians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Australians, thousands of us about to stop being prisoners of war” (Vonnegut, 7).
Slaughterhouse Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim who has become “unstuck in time.” He travels back and forth being able to see his birth, death, and all the years between his birth and death. During the times he travels back and forth they either happen repeatedly or out of order. A major theme in Slaughterhouse-Five would be War and Death. In the beginning of the story, Billy Pilgrim talks about the bombing of Dresden, which it killed almost 100,000 Germans. Some parts of the story are based on Vonnegut experiences. Vonnegut survived a war which it could lead to having some kind of lasting effect on him. In chapter one Billy or Vonnegut, goes to Dresden again with his old friend Bernard O'Hare. Where he meets his wife and sensed
Billy Pilgrim is the main character of Slaughterhouse-Five. He is a father, spouse, successful oculist, survivor of the Firebombing of Dresden, and a World War II veteran. Billy was a college student studying optometry when he got drafted to enter the military. He was directed to fight in Luxembourg; Battle of the Bulge, and a war against the Germans. During the war he was caught by a swarm of German soldiers. While being held captive, Billy gets on almost everyone's bad side, being so weak, sad, and worthless. He also has persistent bad dreams that keep him up at night, but where many people do not survive, he does. His broken knowledge of time displays how the trouble of reporting disturbing occurrences calls for uncommon literature skills. Even though he has annoying traits, he manages to make it through a horrible atrocity called the FIrebombing of Dresden.
Vonnegut states it best; “It is so short and jumbled and jangled… because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like ‘Poo-tee-weet?’”(13). As a means of representing Billy’s PTSD and resulting mental condition, the book had been written in achronological order. Consequently, the novel is best understood when placed back in chronological order. Billy Pilgrim was born in New York in 1922, and had a relatively normal childhood, and plans on becoming an optometrist till he is drafted to fight in the Battle of the Bulge in Germany. Unfortunately, Pilgrim, and some of his comrades are captured, and taken to work for the enemy in Dresden, Germany. However, one night, allied forces decide to carpet bomb the city, yet thankfully Billy and his friends, who were hiding in the meatlocker of the Slaughterhouse that they were held captive in, remained safe. Yet, the hardship did not end for Billy. For several days Billy was forced to evacuate dead bodies from the rubble. Finally after several days of his morbid work, Russian forces finally come to liberate the city, and Billy
Another novel Vonnegut wrote during the time of the Vietnam War was Slaughter House 5 or The Children's Crusade. As an anti-war book, it is the mental breakdown of how war trauma affects an individual's mind. The novel reflects most of Vonnegut's own personal experience in war, during World War 1 in the Dresden bombing and in the Battle of the Bulge. There is a psychoanalytical criticism of Vonnegut's Ego trying to keep the balance of sanity and insanity as the Vietnam War events bring back unsettling memories. Or as a historical criticism comparing the events of and events leading to both wars and
Kurt Vonnegut makes use of outrages details in order to portray how absurd the idea of a perfect society is. Vonnegut draws the reader's attention by describing the physical aspects Of Harrison with such words as “Harrison's appearance was Halloween and Hardware” which is simply unthinkable for a fourteen-year-old boy(Vonnegut, pg 38). The society itself is simply appalling from having an announcer that can't even read to having everyone dumbed down to having the mental capacity of a child not only that but they would have people with simply average skills and bring them down so that those who were below average would not feel bad for themselves. Not only this but even then there is no freedom when someone is to put in even a bit of thought
An iconic American fiction writer, Kurt Vonnegut is a rarity in American letters: a cult figure known for his radical and experimental novels who also achieved widespread popularity. Vonnegut, a World War II veteran who survived the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, began writing short stories after the war while working as a publicist for General Electric.