Style Analysis of Kurt Vonnegut on Slaughterhouse Five

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one of the most well known World War II authors. His humble beginnings and early life misfortunes shaped not only his writings, but also his view of the world. His imprisonment in Dresden in World War II, however, formed his opinions about war at an early age and later inspired many of his works and style of writing. After the returning from World War II, Vonnegut voiced his sentiments through his writing that war was wasteful and uncivilized. Vonnegut developed a unique blend of sadness, satire, and simplicity, along with his ability to understand the audience, which made his novels comprehensible and inspirational to any

Throughout Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut chooses to use special literary techniques that better explain his own encounters in war as well as help his readers bare the horridness of war. Vonnegut adds black humor in his text to benefit readers as well as “an author-as-character” perspective to set barriers and help protect his own memories in the war. Without adding these two specific devices, Vonnegut could possibly have lost reader’s interests in the book or lost his own interest in writing the book.

In order to illustrate the devastating affects of war, Kurt Vonnegut afflicted Billy Pilgrim with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which caused him to become “unstuck in time” in the novel. Billy Pilgrim illustrates many symptoms of PTSD throughout the story. Vonnegut uses these Slaughterhouse Five negative examples to illustrate the horrible and devastating examples of war. The examples from the book are parallel to real life experiences of war veterans, including Vonnegut’s, and culminate in a very effective anti-war novel.

Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” is a sardonic novel chronicling the experiences of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran, survivor of the Dresden firebombing, and protagonist of the novel. Billy is a very unreliable narrator who has become “unstuck in time”. Billy is constantly journeying through time; at one moment he’s a flourishing optometrist and the next he’s a prisoner of war in Germany. Billy is forced to deal with an existential crisis presented forth by the great destruction he witnesses. These horrible atrocities that Billy encounters (bombing of Dresden, execution of Edgar Derby, etc.); however, are all really means to an end. They expose Billy to a contrast, that is, a way in which he can assess his own life and search for meaning. Life and being are seldom questioned. Billy is unique. He watches as thousands of lives are extinguished and he can only wonder “why?” The fact of the matter is, there is no answer. There is no reason why. Billy cannot understand this, which, ultimately, leads to his acceptance of the Tralfamadorian view that nothing has any meaning at all.

“It is so short and jumbled and jangled... because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.”(Chapter 1). World War II, years of war that saw young men, or children, go into battle, many never to return. A massacre that will leave a scar on this earth that will never truly heal. Kurt Vonnegut attempts to capture the hostility of this war, which he was a part of, in “Slaughterhouse-five”. A primary theme of the novel is war is cruel and childish. Vonnegut does not glorify war or make anyone sound heroic, he describes war as undisciplined and a cataclysm for everyone involved. There were victims on all sides of the battlefield, no one was a true winner, and it all could have been avoided if people could stand to work things out

It takes and ruins peoples lives in many ways for no reason. It has been going on for many years and will still be going on throughout the history of humanity. In the novel Slaughterhouse five, by Kurt Vonnegut,Vonnegut illustrates the impact on humans that war gives by using historical allusions emphasizing the absurdity and horror of it. Vonnegut illustrates the human aspect by using historical allusions to World War 2. Vonnegut vividly depicts the firebombing of Dresden throughout the novel from a third person perspective of Billy Pilgrim, who is a prisoner of war in

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five demonstrates the importance of perspective. It challenges some of the most important human ideas that unite us and shape the human perspective, and presents an alternate world that is equally true. In addition, it achieves that status as the “greatest anti-war book of all time” by demonstrating the missing pieces in our view of war.

It is expected for arguments to arise when writing about controversial topics. Many times the meaning of a book is not as obvious as the author intended, which may lead to problems. Other times, books are challenged because they contain sexual or inappropriate material. When Kurt Vonnegut released Slaughterhouse-Five critics were quick to judge his peculiar way of writing. Although Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five was oftentimes misunderstood, interpreted as inappropriate, and judged for the peculiar point of view, critics seem to appreciate and accept one aspect of it: the structure of the book.

Vonnegut's comments on the similitudes amongst himself and other writers, particularly the impacts of adolescence and war on composing, alongside the improvement of varying mentalities toward viciousness that drove Vonnegut to separate himself from Hemingway. War in Slaughterhouse-Five is a principally manly exertion, described by misinformed masculinity and bloodthirstiness. Maybe remembering the toxic manly talks of President Johnson, Vonnegut utilizes includes the "post-coital fulfillment" some war lovers get from what is informally known as "wiping up". This helps him as a author because he has the ability to show the direct impacts of the effects of war.

War is a tragic experience that can motivate people to do many things. Many people have been inspired to write stories, poems, or songs about war. Many of these examples tend to reflect feelings against war. Kurt Vonnegut is no different and his experience with war inspired him to write a series of novels starting with Slaughter-House Five. It is a unique novel expressing Vonnegut's feelings about war. These strong feeling can be seen in the similarities between characters, information about the Tralfamadorians, dark humor, and the structure of the novel.

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.

In Tina Fey’s memoir of her life, Bossypants, she provides many examples of challenging the ideas of femininity in today’s modern society. This is important because it shows younger women that despite the inequalities for women in the workplace, the inequalities can be overcome, and women can go on to live successful lives with the careers that they want. In Bossypants, Fey tells different anecdotes about the struggles that she ran into during her position as a female writer in Saturday Night Live and how these struggles ultimately made her a better writer and person after she had overcome them. In today’s society, one of the biggest examples of inequality in the workplace is that in the majority of the fields, females get paid significantly less than their male co workers who do the same job. The book Bossypants is the perfect example of how to educate the audience about important issues such as inequalities in the workplace while also keeping the audience entertained with one-liners and different forms of comedy throughout the whole story. It is important that Fey talks about these examples because she shows that even though she may have struggled and that her male co workers were not always supportive of her, she did her best anyways and she worked to become the boss so that she could be in charge of her own work. In Bossypants, Tina Fey talks about the struggles of being a female writer in her field, and how to focus her energy on her work to become the boss. She elaborates on the inequalities of women in the world of employment and how these inequalities can affect women’s careers.

Where innumerous catastrophic events are simultaneously occurring and altering the mental capability of its viewers eternally, war is senseless killing. The participants of war that are ‘fortunate’ enough to survive become emotionally distraught civilians. Regardless of the age of the people entering war, unless one obtains the mental capacity to witness numerous deaths and stay unaffected, he or she is not equipped to enter war. Kurt Vonnegut portrays the horrors of war in Slaughterhouse Five, through the utilization of satire, symbolism, and imagery.

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,

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