Slaughterhouse Five Analysis

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Tate Garces
Wombles
English Comp 1302
Cisco College
April 30, 2014

Slaughter House Five
‘Slaughterhouse Five”, written by Kurt Vonnegut, is a story of a man who was captured and incarcerated by the Germans during World War II. Billy Pilgrim, the main character, leads the reader throughout his life before and after the war. He travels through his past, his present, and his future throughout the story. He travels from 1944 to 1967, his childhood to his present then future and back several times. Pilgrim is a lonely, pathetic young man whose profession is an optometrist. He is living in upstate New York when he gets drafted into the army. Although, he isn’t there to fight, he is there to be the chaplain’s assistant. He is there solely to keep the soldiers spirits up. He then gets deployed to fight in battle at the Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg. The main focus of the story is the bombing of Dresden, which makes Billy question the value of life and death. The main reason Vonnegut wrote this story, is to show that, through Billy Pilgrim’s struggles, that he cannot find a meaning to life.
Vonnegut reuses a phrase over and over again in his book. “So it goes”, which basically mean whatever happens, happens and there is nothing you can do about it. This was his excuse and reason for every bad thing and every good thing that ever happened to him. However, for him being a soldier in the war it is a little odd that he uses this phrase countless times because in war, everything is crucial. There is nothing good about war, nor are there any excuses for war. It makes him seem like he doesn’t care what happens to him or anything around him. He seems very careless and num to the fact that he could die any day and any time. Vonnegut is makin...

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...hey will never go away. This quote shows that Vonnegut’s outlook on death is not only very passionate but also very different. It is almost like he is perfectly fine with death, because he will forever be here, not physically but mentally and spiritually.
The main reason Vonnegut wrote this story is to show his outlooks on life and death. He does not know the meaning and has never found it according to the story. In the beginning of the story, when he knows nothing about life or death or the meaning of the two, he hears a bird chirping almost like the bird is asking him a question. Towards the end of the story and the end of his journey with the war and such, he figures he would in fact figure out the meaning of life. But he hears the same bird chirping and asking the same question, which shows him he learned nothing and he still does not know the meaning of life.

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