Literary Realism In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

The story “Chickamauga” is like a weird version of reality and the violence of war. Realism is something that makes situations what they are really like. It makes the characters and their surroundings so convincing. Naturalism analyzes reality from a natural point of view. In Bierce’s short story, “Chickamauga” he delivers a description of war with a child mindset.

Many writers in history have written science fiction novels and had great success with them, but only a few have been as enduring over time as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Slaughterhouse-Five is a personal novel which draws upon Vonnegut's experience's as a scout in World War Two, his capture and becoming a prisoner of war, and his witnessing of the fire bombing of Dresden in February of 1945 (the greatest man-caused massacre in history). The novel is about the life and times of a World War Two veteran named Billy Pilgrim. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut uses structure and point of view to portray the theme that time is relative.

The author writes of many different human beings, showing that each one thinks war is ultimately, the worst thing. While in the war, Billy is in the hospital during his imprisonment by the Germans. There is an old general there who was a teacher before joining in the war efforts. One day, in a conversation with Billy and another older man in the hospital, the general starts to talk about what he thinks of the war. He says, "You know-- we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "‘My God, my God----’ I said to myself, ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade’" (p. 106). This general feels that war is nothing but babies being murdered by one another. He is disturbed by the thought of war and the fact that so many young people are dying for its cause.

The anti-war message is upheld further with the ironies that Vonnegut provides in the book. One example is "when one of the soldiers, a POW, survives the fire-bombing, but dies afterward from the dry heaves because he has to bury dead bodies" (Vit). When Billy and one of his comrades join to other scouts the Vonnegut portrays as well trained, Vonnegut displays irony by killing the skillful scouts and allows the less competent Pilgrim and Roland to survive. Roland does eventually die because he is forced to walk around in wooden clogs that turn his feet to pudding. The greatest example of irony is seen in what Vonnegut claims to be the climax of the story. He explains the situation before the story even begins. He is referring to the:

Earnest Hemmingway once said "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." (Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference) War is a gruesome and tragic thing and affects people differently. Both Vonnegut and Hemmingway discus this idea in their novels A Farewell to Arms and Slaughterhouse Five. Both of the novels deal not only with war stories but other genres, be it a science fiction story in Vonnegut’s case or a love story in Hemingway’s. Despite all the similarities there are also very big differences in the depiction of war and the way the two characters cope with their shocking and different experiences. It is the way someone deals with these tragedies that is the true story. This essay will evaluate

The phrase “so it goes” is repeated 106 times in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. From “dead” champagne to the massacre at Dresden, every death in the book is seemingly equalized with the phrase “so it goes”. The continuation of this phrase ties in with the general theme on indifference in the story. If the Tralfamadorian view of time is correct, then everyone is continuously living every moment of their life and dying is not the end. However, if Vonnegut believed in this idea, then he wouldn’t have felt compelled to write about the firebombing of Dresden. It is clear that both Billy Pilgrim and Kurt Vonnegut are affected by the massacre they saw, but they have different ways of rationalizing it. Billy finds comfort in the Tralfamadorian view of life, whereas Vonnegut disagrees, and urges the reader to disagree too. The constant repetition of “so it goes” breaks the reader away from the Tralfamadorian point of view, and allows them to come to their own conclusion that although it would be nice to forget the bad parts of life, it is important to remember all of the past. Vonnegut helps the reader come to this conclusion by repeating the phrase after gruesome moments, and showing how meaningless life can be if the Tralfamadorian ideas are believed, as seen through Billy Pilgrim’s bland life..

The art of creating a captivating story, from only disjointed, incoherent, and incredibly raw, actual events brings with it difficulties. To call Vonnegut's work a triumph in the subject matter, is an understatement, and it's place in the modern literary canon, indubitable . A fervent use of humor, blended with the seriousness in investigating the purpose that is to be found in traumatic events, Slaugterhouse-Five acts as a form of therapy for the still-grieving author. With this, a deep character study into mental illness, and its affect on those closest. Deconstructing the formal war story, Vonnegut forms a vivid, and crisp image of the horrors that were World War 2.

In the novel, Slaughterhouse – Five, by Kurt Vonnegut many variations of literary devices are utilized by the author. Those literary devices are used to describe the encounters of the main character billy pilgrim in his confusing journey through time and history as he tries to uncover the meaning of war and its effects. Kurt Vonnegut being the sole survivor of the bombing of Dresden himself vicariously lives through the protagonist of the story to highlight the author's adventures and thoughts, as well as many soldiers in his place at that time. Those devices are also used to establish the idea that not only is war an unending battle but it is also a predestined part of the human existence. The literary devices used mostly by the author are irony, repetition, and symbolism.

When an individual hears the word “death”, he or she immediately thinks of the most negative words such as dark, hell, scary, horrible, etc. There is a small portion of the population that believes death is a positive event that does not truly matter. For example, an individual runs to the hospital when they encounter any symptoms to prevent their death or an individual spends thousands of dollars in order to go to the best doctor in order to buy them more time before dying. Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse Five, would do the exact opposite. Vonnegut would stay at home and enjoy the little time he has left because he is not scared to face death, just like Billy who is the main character of Slaughterhouse Five. Kurt Vonnegut uses

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut wants us to understand that time is inevitable and uncontrollable. This is similar to Time XXI by Khalil Gibran due to its description of time it describes how time is boundless, measureless etc. However, The Twilight Zone, “Nick of Time” by Richard Matheson is in direct contrast to Vonnegut’s ideas about time in Slaughterhouse-Five because in the show they were able to change their actions to change the future, which is completely in opposition to Slaughterhouse-Fives themes. In Slaughterhouse-Five a major theme in the book is taught by the tralfamadorians.

In the book Slaughterhouse-5, the war and death is plagued throughout the book, which establish an atmosphere of fear and cruelty, and also reveal the indifference of humanity. The cruelty of reality force readers to think about the real life and the theme of the book is a philosophy way that Vonnegut suggested how people could live in the world, staying in the negative situation that normal people cannot change but accept. As to the context, the book is full of the description of the cruelty of deaths during the war time, even Vonnegut uses a black humor to satirize. The phrase “So it goes” follows every mentions of death with the violent and cruel events, like ‘[taking the golden boots] from a dead Hungarian colonel, happen quite natural’ in the novel, which reflects the indifferent attitudes toward death more than people’s sympathy, sorrow and grief as usual (Vonnegut 67). As the word agreed by Vonnegut that ‘ there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers’, the war is

Kurt Vonnegut is the author of the book Slaughterhouse Five. Of course it was controversial, and still is. The first chapter addresses the conflicts of creating such a novel in the first chapter of the book. In the book Harrison Starr questioned Vonnegut asking if his book were to be a war book. Vonnegut said it was and Starr “Why don’t you make an anti-glacier book instead?” (4). Vonnegut believed what Starr meant by that was wars, like glaciers, are as unpredictable and unstoppable. (4). As one gets farther into the book it completely changed dynamics. The novel then goes into the story of Billy Pilgrim instead of the autobiographical view from the first chapter. The three main literary elements in which will be focusing on analysing is theme,

Vonnegut seems anonymous while also clearly identifying himself when he, the narrator, says: "That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book” (125). Vonnegut was captured by Germans at the Battle of the Bulge and transported to Dresden. The narrator begins the story describing his connection to the firebombing of Dresden and his reasons for writing Slaughterhouse-Five. He then segues to the story of Billy Pilgrim: "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time", thus the transition from the writer's perspective to that of the third person, omniscient narrator.

"When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'so it goes. '" This quote, from Kurt Vonnegut 's Slaughterhouse-five, has always stuck with me. Looking at the world through a softly tinted glass can brighten the edges. All the difficult and low stretches of life could be such a small fraction, if we would look at things from perspectives other than our own. Some would tell me I should enjoy revenge. That it could bring me as much joy as any other form of self gratification. Others would advise against it, recognizing its destructive tendency. True happiness is such a fragile emotion that weighing all the options and paths and different forms of it, make life decisions especially complex.

I was born into a family with a deep passion for the English language. My parents named me Leslie Margaret Daniels, being named after both their favorite author, Margaret Mitchell. Sadly Gone with the Wind never interested me as a reader but I have always shared my parent’s passion for literature. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is one of the timeless books I have read approximately four times now. I just cannot find a book that integrates alien space travel and World War II as tragically beautiful as Slaughterhouse Five does. Sadly, life is not a single fiction book. Therefore, outside of class I keep my self busy with extra-curricular activities. Most of my time is spent with my fellow color guard members. Color guard has taught