Slaughterhouse Five Literary Analysis

A common theme portrayed in Slaughterhouse Five, 2BR02B, and many other stories by Vonnegut it authority. The government is often antagonized as an opposing force to human individuality. In Slaughterhouse Five the government is portrayed as an entity that sends children on bloody crusades with no regard for human life. In 2BR02B the government controls the gas chambers, and each life that someone brings into the world comes at the cost of another one. Human life, in both stories, is regarded as interchangeable, or a means to an end by the governments that rule over them. Just as death in war is random, so is the death in 2BR02B. As far as the government is concerned, it doesn 't matter who dies as long as someone dies to make room for the next. Both stories also have elements of detachment from the sorrows of life. The people from the world of 2BR02B take up a casual outlook to the idea of death as death is no longer something to fear, but something that they think they have control over. When the painter starts making cynical comments about life the orderly casually and cheerfully suggests that he kills himself. Similarly Dr. Hitz, and Leora Duncan share a nonchalant attitude concerning their job of euthanizing people. In fact when they find out that triplets are born they are more concerned with the paperwork rather than the loss of life. On

Billy Pilgrim’s indifference is an extension of Vonnegut attempting to come to terms with the violent nature of man. However this “comfort” is suggested to be “cruelly inadequate” and described to be an “opiate of the terminally weary”, and that the solace Billy Pilgrim finds in indifference only serves to help accommodate him to the atrocities of the world rather than standing up to