Slaughterhouse Five

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Recommended: Billy pilgrim character analysis

Over the past two months I read the classic novel Slaughterhouse Five. In this essay I will summarize the novel, do an analysis of the main character, and analyze the theme of the novel. The setting of this classic novel is in Germany during World War II and the conflict is between United States of America and Germany. Slaughterhouse Five starts out with the main character, Billy Pilgrim, in the ruins of a crashed plane, which he only survived, going to Montreal for an optometry press conference. After the crash he gets a little traumatized and starts going crazy. When his daughter, Barbara, comes to see him she doesn’t know what to do with him. She tries to act like nothing’s wrong and help him get back to normal. Then it jumps to Billy in a war battle in behind enemy lines in Germany. To make it even worse he has no weapon, ragged clothes, he is all alone, and is the scrawniest person in the army. While he is wandering looking for someone to surrender to he runs into three other people, Roland Weary and two other privates. Then it jumps to present day where Billy Pilgrim is going to optometry school and he marries the founder of the school’s obese daughter. After marrying his daughter Billy’s father-in-law sets him up in the optometry business. Then it tells the reader about how he has two kids a boy and a girl, Robert and Barbara. Then it jumps even further when his daughter is at his house trying to figure out why he is embarrassing himself and his family by sending in letters to the newspaper of his experiences on a far off distant planet called Tralfamadore. Then it jumps back to the war and starts with how Billy wants to just give up and turn himself in. Due to this they have to split up, the two other privates go ahead... ... middle of paper ... ...s dead. The third time the theme is seen is when Billy and the rest of the American prisoners are being transported to Dresden. During this Edgar Derby is writing letters to his wife in his head. This represents the theme because it shows how wars tear families apart. The fourth time this theme is seen is when Billy arrives in Dresden and someone says that it is the most beautiful city they’ve ever seen. The book continued to explain that Dresden was the only city that hadn’t been bombed in Germany. This represents how war is destructive because it shows how wars can lead to the destruction of cities and the killing of innocent people. In conclusion, Slaughterhouse Five was about a scrawny eighteen year-old that survived the war, during the war he developed some unique character traits, and by the end of the war he learned that war is very destructive first handed.

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