Major Themes of Slaughter House by Kurt Vonnegut

In Slaughterhouse-Five, the author, Kurt Vonnegut, did an excellent job to narrate the life story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who could travel between his past and future back and forth. And as readers went through the novel, there were two major themes that would stick in their mind, which were the condemnation of war, and the attitude towards life.
The central event of the book, the bombing of Dresden, has caught the readers’ attention to the power of a war. The unnecessary war attack brought 135,000 German civilians to death, and hundreds of artistic and historical buildings were destroyed -“Dresden was like the moon now nothing but minerals” (81). Furthermore, as the book mentioned two times that during World War II in Germany, candles and soaps were made from human fat, which was originally from “Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the state” (46). Without a doubt, these massacres were serious crimes. In addition, the war had no mercy; it always bought all kinds of civilians to participate in the battlefield after all soldiers were killed. And this explained why most soldiers were teenagers at the end of the war, like what a British officer said in the novel: “We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies” (50).
In the novel, there were several characters that showed the darkness of humanity. Perhaps, Paul Lazzaro was the most obvious one. In the novel, he used an extremely inhumane way to torture and killed a dog that tried to bite him because he thought that revenge was “the sweetest thing in life” (65). And unfortunately, Billy was one of his “victims” too, he died from the murder of this person in 1976. Moreover, the novel presented the ugly mind of a man, Roland Weary, who is “in love” to co...

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...TO TELL THE
DIFFERENCE” (95).
This poetry presented a very objective evaluation toward free will: it admitted the power and limited the free will at the same time. There is always something people can change, but there are also some that they cannot change. Moreover, this poetry provided a more comprehensive philosophy toward the events around people than the idea of the Tralfamadorians: in order to accept bad things that were out of control, people should also try to tell what they could do, and be courageous to find a way to control or deal with it.
Overall, this novel contained the author’s appeal for a more peaceable and friendly world. It taught the readers an attitude toward life that people should try to do the best of their capabilities as their wills, stayed optimistic under any negative situations, and accepted the realities that they were unable to alter.