Views on War in Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five
Many people returned from World War II with disturbing images forever stuck in their heads. Others returned and went crazy due to the many hardships and terrors faced. The protagonist in Slaughter-House Five, Billy Pilgrim, has to deal with some of these things along with many other complications in his life. Slaughter House Five (1968), by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is an anti-war novel about a man’s life before, after and during the time he spent fighting in World War II. While Billy is trying to escape from behind enemy lines, he is captured and imprisoned in a German slaughterhouse. The author tells of Billy’s terrible experiences there. After the war, Billy marries and goes to school to become an optometrist. During his schooling, he is put in a mental institution. As it is later explained in the novel, Billy was abducted by aliens and lived on their planet in their zoo for a period of time. Throughout this novel, Billy’s life doesn’t occur in a series of events. He also doesn’t have flashbacks of certain points in his life. Instead, he lives his life through time travel. His life jumps from many points in time including his experiences in the war, before the war, after the war and also on the planet of Tralfamadore. Throughout this novel, Billy Pilgrim’s and other humans’ views on war are simple: in essence, it’s one of the most destructive things that there is, but to the aliens on the planet of Tralfamadore, war is unimportant in the long run and should not be dwelled on.
By opening the cover of this novel, one might notice the subtitle. Underneath the title, Slaughter-House Five, reads the subtitle: The Children’s Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death. Without even reading the ...
... middle of paper ...
...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.
Work Cited
Vonnegut, Kurt. SlaughterHouse Five. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1980
Slaughterhouse-Five is a story of Billy Pilgrim 's capture by the Nazi Germans during the last years of World War II. Throughout the narrative, excerpts of Billy’s life are portrayed from his pre-war self to his post-war insanity. Billy is able to move both forward and backwards through his life in a random cycle of events. Living the dull life of a 1950s optometrist in Ilium, New York, he is the lover of a provocative woman on the planet Tralfamadore, and simultaneously an American prisoner of war in Nazi Germany. While I agree with Christopher Lehmann-Haupt that Slaughterhouse-Five effectively combines fact and fiction, I argue that the book is more centralized around coping.
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.
...t embrace change as the world around them continues to change at different speeds. It will be necessary for the company to utilize both primary and secondary research and various research methods to gain an overall analysis of the target market. They will need market research to aid in the decision making that will drive their business to the next level with the intent of maximizing the company’s returns.
In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, he talks about World War II and the bombing of Dresden. He writes about this historical event through the character Billy Pilgrim, Billy is drafted into the army at age twenty-one during World War II. He is captured and sent to Luxembourg and then later Dresden as a prisoner. Throughout the novel Vonnegut constantly ridiculous Billy. He describes Billy as a character that has no individualism and no choice in anything that happens in his life. Billy is used to show that everything happens because of fate. As a prisoner Billy has no control over his day to day life. While Billy is in Dresden the city is bombed, because of luck, only Billy and a few others survive the bombing in a slaughterhouse.
In Vonnegut’s science fiction and dystopian novel Cat’s Cradle, the main character, John, demonstrates his personal growth and from that, his enlightened attitude towards the unnecessary horrors that war creates. In the beginning of the novel, John sets out to discover and gather information on what people’s lives were like the day that the atomic bomb dropped. Along his path of discovery, he meets the Hoenikker family, of which Felix was the patriarch and the creator of the elusive, dangerous material ice-nine. John then gets sidetracked of his initial quest and becomes infatuated on his pursuit for more knowledge about ice-nine. From there, he stumbles across more of the Hoenikker children as well as the Bokonon people and their peculiar faith. Once John is on the island he learns of the disastrous potential that ice-nine has, and by the end of the novel, witnesses it’s power as it kills virtually the entire human race. At the very end of the novel, John recognizes what his quest for ultimate truth led him to (destruction of humanity) and furthermore sees the cruel, blind and horrible nature of war (ice-nine/weapons of mass destruction). Vonnegut’s next book, Slaughterhouse-Five, another science-fiction novel that was written just a few years after details the life of Billy Pilgrim, a goofy, awkward, and incompetent guy whose life never seems to turn out the way he anticipates. When Billy was a young man, against his wish, he was drafted to fight against the Germans in World War II. As most men do in war, Billy experiences horrific sights on and off the battlefield. As a result he greatly traumatized for the rest of his life because of it. Then, in h...
Women’s history in the United States has always been represented as a struggle for rights. Wealth and status were tied to either their fathers or husbands. In the early 1900s, women were afforded the traditional roles of society. The majority of women worked in the home. If they were of the 18% young or poor women, they also worked in factories as laborers, manufacturing items for the booming industrial revolution (U.S. Department of Labor, 1980). During this time period the workplace was not in compliance with current safety standards. There was no minimum wage yet, work conditions were horrible and they worked long hours, “In 1900, the average workweek in manufacturing was 53 hours,” (Fisk, 2003). Women took “pink collared jobs” or “woman’s work” that paid less than men’s wages. These jobs such as secretaries, waitresses, garment workers and housekeepers are still significantly underpaid today. Many widows and mothers were not able to make ends meet and often had to have their children work as well to support the family. Women had no rights to change these conditions or their circumstances. The inability to partake in the democratic process was something many women were angry with; Alice Paul was one of them.
“How nice- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive” (Vonnegut 181).
There were many steps in the struggle of voting in America between the late 1700’s and early 2000’s, but this analysis focuses on the main restrictions and the over comings of these limitations to the Wh...
Etzel, Michael J., Stanton, Bruce J., Stanton, William J. (2004). Marketing. (13th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
According to the text, marketing research is defined by the American Marketing Association as "The systematic gathering, recording, and analyzing of data with respect to a particular market, where market refers to a specific customer group in a specific geographic area" (McDaniel & Gates, pg. 6). Marketing research serves two basic functions; first to provide data and insight to a company's decision makers and second to use the data to determine new opportunities for a company (McDaniel & Gates, pg. 6). Through the years, Marriott has used market research for opportunities to expand its brands. In the 1980's Marriott identified an opportunity to expand its target market a...
Grover, R & Vriens, M 2006, The handbook of marketing research: Uses, misuses, and future
Malhotra, N.K., 2002. Basic Marketing Research: A Decision-Making Approach. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.: Prentice Hall.
Primary marketing research is collected for the first time if the company has enough money to finance it, but in most case it is the second more accurate one. It is original and collected for a specific purpose, or to solve a specific problem. Primary research delivers more specific results than secondary research, more expensive and time consuming, which are an especially important consideration when the company is launching a new product or service. There are many ways to conduct primary research. By customizing tried-and-true approaches, focus groups, surveys, field tests, interviews or observation, you can gain information about your target market. Primary research is generally based on sampling techniques and requires statistical methodologies. The sample size could be as small as 1 percent of the market and thus the information and results gathered are highly accurate.
In order for my product to be successful, I strategize a marketing plan. Market Research is one of the main steps taken in the initial process of strategizing a marketing plan, The primary function of market research is to identify the customers needs and views. During the market research of my product, I discovered that because of the competition, (Herbal Essence Shampoo brand) my product would really need to stand out on the market. Also, during that research I discovered that Herbal Essence?s sales had dropped 6% over the last 2 years, because of their marked up prices. These were great pieces of information, as they will serve helpful during the marketing mix portion of my marketing strategy. The marketing mix is one of the first steps taken in applying an overall marketing strategy for your product. A Marketing Mix is the combination of product offerings used to reach a target market for the organization. (Armstrong & Kotler 2007) The marketing mix includes product, price, promotion and place (also known as distribution)
This paper will outline the importance of marketing research and apply that importance to a communication to the management team at Johnson & Johnson’s Consumer Products group. The discussion with management will include the use of current marketing research tools by the company today and the application of each.